Jennifer Garner offers rare insight into her marriage to Ben Affleck.

Garner spoke to Marie Claire UK about the couple’s public breakup, which took place in 2015, and opened up about the hardest part of the entire process for her.

“You have to be smart about what you can and can’t handle, and I couldn’t handle what was out there” Garner told the magazine.

“But what was out there,” Garner said, “wasn’t what was difficult. The fact is what was difficult. The actual breakup of a family is what was difficult. Losing a true partnership and friendship is what was difficult.”

Garner and Affleck were married from 2005 to 2015, before officially finalizing their divorce in 2018. They share three children: Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel.

The “Argo” director has said before that divorcing Garner was a decision he wishes he could undo.

Despite their divorce, the two actors remain friends.
Despite their divorce, the two actors remain friends.

Jason Merritt via Getty Images

“The biggest regret of my life is this divorce,” the actor told The New York Times in 2020. “Shame is really toxic. There’s no positive byproduct of shame. It’s just brewing into a horrible, toxic feeling of low self-esteem and self-loathing.”

Before marrying Affleck, Garner was married to fellow actor Scott Foley, before divorcing in 2004.

Affleck recently married his ex-fiancee, Jennifer Lopez, in 2022. The two would later finalize their divorce in January 2025.

Affleck has said there was no real drama behind their split.

“There’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue. The truth is that when you talk to someone, ‘Hey, what happened?’ Well, there’s no ‘This is what happened,’” he told GQ last year. “It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships the way we all normally do.”