- Jennifer Lopez said she felt like she would "die" when her 1st wedding to Ben Affleck was canceled.
- "It was the biggest heartbreak of my life," Lopez said in an interview with Apple Music.
In a new interview with Apple Music reporter Zane Lowe, Jennifer Lopez confessed that she felt like she was "gonna die" after she canceled her first wedding to Ben Affleck in the early 2000s.
The couple initially announced they were postponing their nuptials in a statement released in late 2003. "Due to the excessive media attention surrounding our wedding, we have decided to postpone the date," the statement read, according to People. "When we found ourselves seriously contemplating hiring three separate 'decoy brides' at three different locations, we realized that something was awry."
"We began to feel that the spirit of what should have been the happiest day of our lives could be compromised. We felt what should have been a joyful and sacred day could be spoiled for us, our families and our friends," the statement concluded. By late January 2004, the pair had officially split.
"It was the biggest heartbreak of my life," Lopez told Lowe of canceling the first wedding. "And I honestly felt like I was gonna die." It hurt her so much that she said she couldn't perform any songs from the 2002 album she wrote while in love with Affleck called "This Is Me...Then."
She added that her breakup with Affleck sent her on a "spiral" for the next 18 years where she couldn't get love "right."
Though Lopez described the fact that she rekindled her romance with Affleck about 20 years later and they're now married as "a happy ending" to her struggles, she also didn't hide the toll that the media attention took on her relationship.
"That was part of what destroyed us, was the outside energy that was coming at us," she told Lowe. "And we loved each other, it was hard. It felt at times unfair."
She said that their love was treated as a "joke" and they had to break up and rebuild their careers separately to "prove ourselves again."
Lopez said that she and Affleck "love" that the public and media are now rooting for them 20 years after their love story first began. "I get it," she said, of the public seeing them as proof that happy endings do exist outside of the movies.
"You can get a second chance if you do the work and you don't give up," Lopez said.