But that doesn’t mean he didn’t acknowledge them. In fact, the Argo star spoke to the difference in lifestyles he and Jennifer shared in her documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which was released just six months before she’d file for divorceafter two years of marriage.
"I had a very firm sense of boundaries initially around the press while Jen I don't think objected to it in the way I did," Ben explained in the documentary. "I very much did object to it."
“I said, 'Listen, one of the things I don't want is a relationship on social media,’” Ben remembered. “And then I sort of realized it's not a fair thing to ask. It's sort of like you're gonna marry a boat captain and you go, 'Well, I don't like the water.'”
As he put it, “We're just two people with kind of different approaches trying to learn to compromise."
But as the muse behind the documentary—which chronicled Jennifer’s journey in making her feature film, This Is Me… Now: A Love Story—he was worried he’d be torn between honoring the creative and maintaining his privacy.
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"I know as a writer and director, I certainly do the same things," he later shared in the doc. "But things that are private, I had always felt, are sacred and special because in part they're private. So, this was something of an adjustment for me."
But ultimately, he realized his fears had been for naught.
"I don't really love being in the making-of documentary about my personal life, which is why I'm relieved that, it seems like I might be in this but I'm not really," he explained. "I was worrying for no reason. The movie wasn't about me. It was about the ability to love yourself and that love story is a lot f--king harder to find than Prince Charming."
However, their love story turned out to be just as elusive.
Despite what seemed like an ending pulled straight from the storybooks—a romance rekindled almost twenty years after their first engagement ended—on Aug. 20 Jennifer filed for divorce in Los Angeles’ Superior Court, per records obtained by E! News.
Though the date of the filing fell exactly two years after the pair held a wedding ceremony in Georgia, the “On The Floor” singer listed their date of separation as April 26, 2024.
For more on Jennifer and Ben’s journey together—and all the signs their hope was turning to heartbreak—keep reading.