Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez‘s rekindled romance twenty years after they called off their engagement is prompting some of the couple’s other high-profile exes to join them on this walk down memory lane.
Last week, Lopez’s ex-boyfriend Diddy playfully posted a #TBT paparazzi shot of himself and the singer holding hands during their short-lived late-90s relationship. And this week, Gwyneth Paltrow was also dragged into the online conversation surrounding Bennifer 2.0 after her brand Goop posted a meme using an old, early-aughts photo of her with her ex, Affleck. In the picture, a bored Paltrow labeled “gemini szn” rolls her eyes as the actor, labeled “mercury in retrograde” whispers something in her ear. The company captioned the shot “’Tis the season,” while an embarrassed Paltrow commented on the meme, “Oh my god you guys.”
Affleck and Paltrow first met on the set of Shakespeare in Love and dated for three years before calling it quits in 2000. In 2018, the actress revealed that while they didn’t work out romantically, her and Affleck have remained friendly. She said on The Howard Stern Show, “It’s interesting, I think there’s certain boyfriends where you are trying to work stuff out, right? Like, you’re trying to heal certain stuff from your childhood, and he was very much a lesson in that way.” Paltrow was engaged to Brad Pitt from 1994 to 1997 before meeting Affleck and, following their breakup, wed Chris Martin in December 2003.
And two years after his breakup with Paltrow, Affleck was linked to yet another of his co-stars who he worked with on the set of *Gigli—*Jennifer Lopez. In November 2002, the pair got engaged shortly after the pop star filed for divorce from her second husband, Cris Judd. But days before they were set to walk down the aisle in 2003, the couple postponed the event, blaming “excessive media attention,” and by January 2004 they had officially broken up. In 2016, Lopez explained on The Jess Cagle Interview that the media played a big role in the end of that relationship. “We just happened to be together at the birth of the tabloids, and it was like ‘Oh, my God.’ It was just a lot of pressure,” she said. “I think different time, different thing, who knows what could’ve happened, but there was a genuine love there.”
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