Jennifer Garner has opened up about her former marriage to Ben Affleck with a candid confession. The actress appeared at a bookstore event alongside author Laura Dave in Los Angeles on Thursday.
During the conversation, the duo talked about Laura’s enjoyment of listening to music while she works, which prompted Jennifer to recall that her ex-husband shared the same habit. "Do you guys do this? Do you listen to a song over and over again? I just want to tell you something. I've survived this. I have lived through it," she shared.
"Ben Affleck listens to a song over and over. I had a three-month-old and a three-year-old living in a rental in Cambridge, Massachusetts while he was shooting The Town. And he listened to Beyoncé's Halo, and I would be nursing."
The former couple were married from 2005 to 2015 and share three children, Violet, Fin, and Samuel. Around the same time Ben directed his second film, The Town, Beyoncé was topping charts with her breakout hit "Halo".
Ben has previously shared that he often listens to the same songs on repeat while working. "I listen to music when I write and usually I will find a couple of songs that are inspiring to me and I just sort of put them on a loop and then I will write to music," he said in a 2016 Golden Globes interview.
"And I find that it’s kind of hypnotic and it allows me to concentrate more and it puts me more in the kind of feeling of the scene that I want the story to have. And so I think music is really, really helpful."
Jennifer's candid insight into her former marriage comes after she opened up about how their relationship shifted while co-parenting their three kids. During a recent interview with Marie Claire, the actress discussed going through a public divorce. "You have to be smart about what you can and can't handle, and I could not handle what was out there [in the press]," she said.
"But what was out there was not what was hard. The fact of it is what was hard. The actual breaking up of a family is what was hard. Losing a true partnership and friendship is what was hard."
She continued: "So much about my life surprises me…that I'm able to co-parent at this point in time with peace and equanimity and a partnership that I didn't know I would ever get back to."
"I think it's important for women to know, when they think, 'Oh, I'll never see that, I'll never have that feeling, I'll never be friends with this person again', [that] time is the opportunity. Time is the opportunity to heal. Time is the opportunity to forgive, to move on and to find a new way to be friends."