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Ben Affleck Reveals How His Kids Reacted to Story of Them Trolling Him
Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck didn't set out to be a shining example of post-split possibility, but here they are.
Not that their kids would call them experts or anything.
But Garner—who almost starred in Affleck's latest dual-threat effort Animals, which is streaming on Netflix and was originally going to co-star Matt Damon instead of the film's director—have now been exes for longer than they were married. And, while they were always on the same page about putting their children—Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 14—first, it wasn't easy to put everything aside to achieve that goal.
However, they eventually did, and now you may as well call them consciously uncoupled.
“I see the way my kids dote on their dad and I’m happy for them,” Garner wrote in her June 21 Father's Day tribute. “To love and be loved by a great dad is a gift. Happy Father’s Day to all of the dads and to the kids of dads, too.”
Married for almost 10 years before announcing in June 2015 that they were separated and planning to divorce, the pair started looking so at ease on family outings that they sparked reconciliation rumors after Affleck and Jennifer Lopez started divorce proceedings in 2024.
Nor was it the first time that hopes were high for a resurgence of the O.G. Ben and Jen, the pair who hightailed it to the Bahamas with their kids when the split news broke having set the tone early on about the importance of operating as a team, even when it's really hard.
Which, from the outside, can sometimes look a lot like two people still in love.
Brian Fluharty/Getty Images
"Happy Father’s Day to 3 people’s favorite landing spot," Garner wrote in tribute to Affleck in 2025, posting a throwback photo of the Argo star holding one of their babies.
Case in point, Affleck and Garner are very supportive of each other—he told Variety ahead of Animal's Oct. 9 premiere that he's hoping to find a project to work on with her—and remain close after going through a lot to get to this place in their relationship.
"You have to be smart about what you can and can’t handle, and I could not handle what was 'out there,'" Garner, 54, told Marie Claire U.K. earlier this year, referring to what was said about their split when it was happening. But it wasn't the stories that were hard, she continued, "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."
But, she noted, "Time is the opportunity to heal. Time is the opportunity to forgive, to move on and to find a new way to be friends.”
Though even now, their situation still has its pluses and minuses when it comes to parenting under respective roofs.
“I become mom and dad; he becomes dad and mom,” Garner acknowledged to Bustle in February. “You kind of can’t help it, right? Because you don't have the benefit of both sides of the yin and yang being in the same house. And so you have to have a bit of both in the way that you parent. There's a little bit of loss in that, but there's also something gained in that."
Jennifer Garner/Instagram
Affleck, 54, called himself (not for the first time) "really lucky" to have a "really good co-parent and partner" in Garner, telling GQ in January 2025 that she's "wonderful and great and we work together well."
And Garner—who, incidentally, has been dating boyfriend John Miller since 2018—has acknowledged how her perspective has shifted regarding what she still has with Affleck, versus what she lost in the divorce.
"When our kids get married, we’ll dance, I know that now,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021, referring to how she told Vanity Fair in 2016 that her dream of dancing with the love of her life at her daughter's wedding had been dashed. “We’ll boogaloo and have a great time. I don’t worry about that anymore."
By then, Garner had proven time and again that their family was paramount, and that whatever she needed to do to help Affleck for their children's sake—such as take him to rehab in 2018—she would do.
"The main thing is these kids," she told Vanity Fair in 2016, her first post-split interview, "and we're completely in line with what we hope for them." And no matter how she was feeling, she noted, "if you see your kids love someone so purely and wholly, then you’re going to be friends with that person."
And though Violet, Seraphina and Samuel may consider their mom "fully cringe," as The Last Thing He Told Me star quipped on the Jennifer Hudson Show in February, Affleck would beg to differ.
"Jen is a superhero mom," the Oscar winner gushed to E! News in 2016. "She is an amazing mother." And when it came to the kids, "We try our best, we put them first and that's what we do."
And in 2020, Affleck told People, "When you have children with somebody, you're connected to them forever...Our marriage didn't work, and that's difficult. Both of us really believe that it's important for kids to see their parents respect one another and get along, whether they're together or not."
But while the public reverence Affleck continued to show for his ex made some people wonder why they couldn't just get back together already, the Gone Girl star has made it pretty clear that ship has sailed.
"We had a marriage that didn't work. This happens," Affleck told Howard Stern in December 2021. "She's somebody I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn't be married any longer. We did it amicably. We did our best. Did we have moments of tension? Did we have disagreements over custody? Was stuff difficult for us? Did we get angry? Yes, but fundamentally it was always underpinned with a respect."
And ultimately, he didn't want what was going on in his and Garner's household before the divorce to "be the model that our kids see of marriage."
BG004/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
Mind you, by the time he talked to Stern, Affleck had reunited with Lopez almost 20 years after their first engagement ended, proving that anything was possible. Almost as quickly, however, they demonstrated why do-overs aren't always a good idea and their marriage ended after two years.
But on the bright side, Garner-Affleck shippers had new fuel for that fire.
Which even Garner gets, having rooted for other celebrity exes in the past. "When Jen Aniston and Brad Pitt broke up," she told Vanity Fair in 2016, "I was dying to see something that said they were getting back together."
All the joint graduations, school plays, holidays, baseball games and paintball outings in the world may not ever be a sign of Affleck and Garner giving romance another go, but the way they've made this chapter of their lives work for their children has always been worthy of applause.
For more proof that all is not ever really lost, see more of the friendliest celebrity exes:
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Jennifer Aniston & Brad Pitt
No, they are never, ever, ever getting back together. But at this point—between the birthday parties, the friendly embraces and even freaking acting out a sexual fantasy in a star-studded virtual reading of Fast Times at Ridgemont High—it feels like the former Hollywood golden couple is just taunting us.
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Sarah Silverman & Jimmy Kimmel
You know you're cool when you can pop into your ex's talk show and give him a hard time. Such was the case when Silverman turned up on Kimmel's stage in 2018 to chat about her show I Love You, America and his "cute," "bright," "funny" wife Molly McNearney. "It's not fair!" the actress cracked. "She gets, like, new woke Jimmy. I had Man Show Jimmy."
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Chris Pratt & Anna Faris
TBH, we might still be mourning this relationship harder than either of its participants. Because when Faris—now married to cinematographer Michael Barrett—heard that Pratt was set to wed Katherine Schwarzenegger in 2019, she offered to officiate. She even sent over a gift after the newlyweds welcomed daughter Lyla in August 2020. Thrilled for son Jack to become a big brother, a source told E! News at the time that Faris "is very supportive."
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Tarek El Moussa & Christina Hall
It would have been super easy for the exes' relationship to become a flop. But more than four years after a messy split, the HGTV stars are still killing it at two projects: parenting kids Taylor and Brayden and turning run-down properties into someone else's dream home.
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Lisa Bonet & Lenny Kravitz
Literally "best friends" as the rocker put it in a 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the parents to actress Zoe Kravitz still consider themselves kin. "We're one big happy family," Lenny said of his ex, who went on to wed Jason Momoa before their 2020 split. "It's beautiful, and it just shows you what can be done."
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Julianne Hough & Brooks Laich
After the Dancing With the Stars co-host and former hockey player called in quits in 2020, the pair have continually proved they are on good terms.
In 2025, Hough enjoyed a trip to the lake with Laich and his then-pregnant fiancée Katrín Tanja Davíðsdóttir.
And when Laich announced his marriage to the former Crossfit athlete in 2025, Hough celebrated the news, writing on Instagram, “Congratulations! So so happy for you both. Sending you all the love, health and happiness for the years to come to you and your beautiful family."
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Ben Affleck & Jennifer Garner
Since their 2015 breakup, the parents to Violet, Seraphina and Samuel have hit the conscious uncoupling trifecta: Joint vacations, shared holidays and public displays of admiration with Ben dubbing his ex "an amazing mother" during a 2016 interview with E! News.
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Jennifer Garner & Michael Vartan
Affleck isn't the only one of Garner's exes who she's stayed close with after breakup. She's also friends with her former Alias costar, who she briefly dated in 2003 before her marriage to Affleck.
"I can’t remember why I was Bavarian, but I do know today is your birthday," Garner wrote on Instagram in 2023 along a still from Alias, in which she was dressed in a dirndl. "I hope it’s a great one, Michael! XX."
Nina Dobrev & Ian Somerhalder
The Vampire Diaries costars may have called it quits in 2013 after three years of dating, but they've remained close friends since then. In 2014, somerhalder started dating Nikki Reed and tied the knot later that year. Naturally, Dobrev befriended the Twilight actress.
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Lady Gaga & Taylor Kinney
The two called it quits in July 2016 after five years together. The singer said on SiriusXM's The Howard Stern Show the following October that she's "very close" to Kinney, adding, "He's been my lover and a friend for so long."
"We love each other," she said. "That's it."
Beth Dubber/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
Mindy Kaling & B.J. Novak
The Office's on-and-off pairing remained so tantalizingly close after the series wrapped in 2013 that even Kaling gets why people are still shipping them. "If I was on the outside looking at it, I would think the same thing," she told Good Housekeeping in 2019 of naming him godparent to her kids. "But the truth is that B.J. is so much more like family now than a platonic friend."
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Ashlee Simpson & Pete Wentz
The exes had no trouble coparenting their son Bronx after finalizing their divorce back in 2011. The Fall Out Boy bassist has even said his former wife is "an awesome mom."
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Miley Cyrus & Nick Jonas
So she's over those "7 Things" then? The Jonas Brothers musician has said he's "really friendly" with the "Wrecking Ball" singer. "We've got a good relationship."
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Michael C. Hall & Jennifer Carpenter
The Dexter stars first met on set in 2006 before things got romantic in 2008. And though they divorced in 2011, Carpenter assured there was "nothing but love and respect" between the exes a few years later.
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Bruce Willis & Demi Moore
Long the gold standard of copacetic exes, the parents to daughters Rumer, Tallulah and Scout remain so tight that the decision to ride out coronavirus stay-at-home orders together in Idaho was a no-brainer. Quarantine dance party anyone?
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Jennifer Lopez & Marc Anthony
Some four years after their 2014 divorce, Lopez was still giving her former spouse—dad to her twins Max and Emme—props. "While I was married to Marc, he really helped me with my confidence and he saw where I suffered," she said on a 2018 episode of Sunday Today. "He was like, 'You're a great singer. Don't ever let anybody tell you you're not a great singer.' And I respected him so much 'cause I consider him one of the best singers of all time."
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Courteney Cox & David Arquette
Even if it hasn't been his day, his week, his month or even his year, the actress will be there for her former husband and Scream costar. "I mean, as divorces go, I would say it's one of the better ones. For sure," she shared on Running Wild With Bear Grylls eight years after their 2010 split. Raising daughter Coco, she continued, "We're good co-parents together."
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Cameron Diaz & Justin Timberlake
Their real-life romance may had fizzled in 2007, but that didn't mean the two couldn't heat up the screen in the 2011 movie Bad Teacher.
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Peter Facinelli & Jennie Garth
Sure, the initial few months of their 2013 split were rough going, but the two have now reached the group vacation stage of their divorce. "I really like her husband and I think he's a great guy," the Twilight alum told LaPalme Magazine of a 2017 trip to Cancun that included Garth, Dave Abrams, Peter's now-fiancée Lily Anne Harrison and their three daughters Luca, Lola and Fiona.
As for his relationship with Garth, he continued, "People come into your life for a reason and relationships can change," he told LaPalme. "Just because we aren't living together doesn't mean you can't love each other."
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Will Arnett & Amy Poehler
Despite a surprise separation in September 2012, the Blades of Glory costars decided to put on a united front for their children. "As you know, Will and I are very, very good friends," Poehler explained during a 2014 interview with Howard Stern. "We are doing a really good job. I don't think a 10-year marriage constitutes a failure. I think relationships are really tough."
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Maren Morris & Ryan Hurd
The Grammy winner and songwriter ex—who finalized their divorce in January 2024—have remained on good terms as they continue to parent their son Hayes. In fact, the pair live just five minutes apart from one another, which makes co-parenting a breeze.
“Our stops are really easy,” Morris told The Zoe Report in May 2025, “and we’ll have family dinners.”
(Originally published April 17, 2025, at 5 a.m. PT)
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