Jennifer Lopez Says She “Felt Like [She] Was Gonna Die” After Breakup with Ben Affleck

Jennifer Lopez got real about the heartbreak she endured after calling off her engagement to Ben Affleck more than 20 years ago.

In a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, the multi-hyphenate reflected on the 20th anniversary of her groundbreaking third studio album, This Is Me... Then, which documented her epic and highly scrutinized relationship with Affleck, whom she ultimately split from in 2004. Lopez's forthcoming album, This Is Me... Now, once again honors her romance with the Oscar-winning actor, highlighting their reunion and marriage two decades after they broke up.

"That album, This Is Me… Then, really captured a moment in time where I fell in love with the love of my life. It’s all just right there on the record and I didn’t even realize what was happening or what I was doing. It was just every day going from the set to the recording studio, doing the thing, being in love, him coming into the studio," she told Lowe. "When I listen to the lyrics now, I didn't even realize that I was writing some of our story that would happen, which was sick. … I didn't even realize it was kind of prophetic in a way."

Lopez recalled refusing to perform songs from the album after their breakup. "I wouldn't even perform these records," she explained. "It was so painful after we broke up. Once we called off that wedding 20 years ago, it was the biggest heartbreak of my life. And I honestly felt like I was gonna die. It sent me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I … couldn't get it right. But now, 20 years later, it does have a happy ending. It has the most, would-never-happen-in-Hollywood ending. They would be like 'that would never happen so we're not gonna write that because nobody would believe it' ending."

She said Affleck even questioned why she didn't perform songs from This Is Me... Then once the two rekindled their relationship. "It's funny 'cause when me and Ben got back together, he said to me, 'You never performed the songs,'" she said. "It was a part of me then that I had to put away to kind of move on and survive. It was a survival tactic for sure."

The couple initially parted ways due to the external pressure that the media and public placed on their relationship, Lopez said.

"It destroyed us. That was part of what destroyed us, was the outside energy that was coming at us," she said. "We loved each other. It was hard. It felt at times unfair, but neither one of us is that person to be like, 'Woe is me.' So we were like, 'Well, we just gotta dust it off and keep it moving.' And I think, in the weirdest way, that it motivated both of us to then become and do the things that we wound up doing, which is kind of go into hyper gear. He went into hyper gear, and I went into hyper gear, but not together; we had to do it separately."

Lopez told Lowe that she feels most inspired to write and make music when she's happy in love, which is why she returned to the studio to record her latest album upon her reunion with Affleck. "When he came back into my life, again the same thing happened where I felt so inspired and so overtaken with emotion that it was just pouring out of me," she said. "When I feel good, I write music. And I wrote music, and I got in the studio in I think May, and by August, when we got married, it was done."

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