Jennifer Lopez declares she is 'free' and 'happy' in her single era... after Ben Affleck heartbreak

For the first time in years, four-time married Jennifer Lopez is embracing her status as a single woman. 

The star is solo again after officially ending her marriage to Ben Affleck more than two years after walking down the aisle in a Las Vegas chapel. 

Now, less than two years removed from the dramatic split, Lopez has found peace and happiness on her own. 

Lopez, 56, described her newest chapter in an upcoming interview with Juju Chang on Nightline - where she adamantly insisted she was in no rush to meet someone new. 

'No! No I'm not! God forbid, I don’t want to ruin anything!' she said when asked if she was 'dating up a storm.'

'It’s so nice right now! I’m so happy! It’s the best. I just feel really good right now,' she said.  'And that was a scary thing for me when I was younger. I didn’t know if I could do that. I was always really afraid to be alone.'

It was only two years earlier a heartbroken Lopez was ending her marriage to Affleck, the man she was once engaged to decades earlier. 

Their romance rekindled during the pandemic and they walked down the aisle shortly there after.

Sadly, it was not meant to be. 

In the thick of the heartbreak, Lopez canceled her This Is Me... Live summer tour and worked through the pain without using work or another person as a crutch. 

'I had to stop everything and I took a year off. I canceled tours and just decided to be home and sit in what had happened without running away from it through work, through another person, through anything. Just sit,' she said. 

Chang reminded Lopez she had said her life 'exploded' that year. 

'It did. It did feel that way. I needed to be home with my kids and that was the priority at that time,' she said. 

'I was just at a point where I was like, what is going on with you? Because I couldn't blame anybody else because I don't think that's where the lesson is,' she said. 'I really wanted to figure myself out.' 

Now Lopez is feeling something she hasn't felt in decades - freedom and independence.   

'I'm in my happy era!' she said. 'For the first time in my life, I feel I'm free, I'm on my own. It feels really good. I didn’t really know what that felt like since I was in my early 20s and even before that, I always had boyfriends. There was always someone in my life, and so many other things that I felt like were out of my control.'

'I’ve gotten to the point where I really trust myself and appreciate myself a little bit more, instead of being so hard on myself all the time and always trying to prove myself.'

Lopez, who has been married a total of four times in her life, is preparing for an empty nest but a full career that includes a new residency in Las Vegas. 

'I am a mom of graduates this year who are going to college,' the star, who shares 18-year-old twins Max and Emme with ex Marc Anthony, said. 'I am a showgirl and an entertainer and an actor. An entrepreneur. And I am happy. I am happy. And I am healthy. And I am grateful.' 

'I am surrounded by love, which is the best part.'