Jennifer Garner got through her divorce with Ben Affleck by avoiding gossip
The couple married in June 2005 and confirmed their split in 2015
By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — Jennifer Garner is fully aware that some people are impressed with how she successfully co-parents with her ex-husband Ben Affleck, but it’s not because she read it in a tabloid.
In a newly published interview with Marie Claire UK, the actress promoted the second series of her Apple hit thriller “The Last Thing He Told Me” and talked about the lessons the past decade taught her.
One thing is that she “protects her peace by refusing to engage with tabloid coverage.”
“It doesn’t serve me to take in gossip about myself or anyone else, much less my kids, so I don’t do it,” Garner said.
She shares three children with Affleck: Violet born in 2005, Seraphina born in 2009, and Samuel born in 2012.
The couple married in June 2005 and confirmed their split in 2015, a day after their 10th wedding anniversary.
More than 20 years later, they continue to make headlines whenever spotted together, including last year, a month after he settled his divorce with Jennifer Lopez and Affleck and Garner reunited for son Samuel’s birthday party.
Affleck is on the same page as Garner about tabloids.
“We used to have a thing, my ex-wife and I, when they would see something on a supermarket stand,” he told GQ last year. “We would say, ‘Well, you know this isn’t always true because if it were, you would have 15 brothers or sisters or whatever the number of stories is where they said that your mom was pregnant.’”
While the former couple are in a good place now, that wasn’t always the case.
“You have to be smart about what you can and can’t handle, and I could not handle what was out there,” she told Marie Claire UK.
But what was out in the public sphere was not the most difficult part, Garner said.
“The fact of it is what was hard,” she said. “The actual breaking up of a family is what was hard. Losing a true partnership and friendship is what was hard.”
The new season of “The Last Thing He Told Me” is scheduled to drop on Apple TV+ on February 20.
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