Jennifer Lopez talks Ben Affleck marriage and blending their families
Lopez said bringing their five children together is "going really well so far."
Jennifer Lopez is opening up about her marriage to Ben Affleck and how they're blending their families together.
The "Jenny from the Block" singer spoke with Vogue for the magazine's December cover story and discussed her decision to legally take the "Argo" director's last name.
"People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez. But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we're joined together," she said. "We're husband and wife. I'm proud of that."
To those who took issue with her taking Affleck's last name, Lopez said that she was "very much in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person."
"I just feel like it's romantic," she added. "It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I'm just that kind of girl."
Lopez also said she never considered having Affleck take her name. "It's not traditional," she said. "It doesn't have any romance to it. It feels like it's a power move, you know what I mean?"
The couple, who dated in the early 2000s, went their separate ways after calling off their engagement in 2004. They rekindled their romance last year before announcing their engagement in April, getting legally married in July and saying "I do" in a stunning wedding ceremony in August.
Lopez said their initial relationship failed because they were "living out loud," which she said "turned out to really bite us." The "Enough" actress also said there were people who didn't want them to be together and didn't think she was right for Affleck, which led to her becoming "very guarded."
As for them giving their relationship another shot, Lopez said she "always felt like there was a real love there, a true love there" and that those close to her knew that Oscar winner Affleck was "a very, very special person in my life."
"When we reconnected, those feelings for me were still very real," she said. "The two of us, we lost each other and found each other. Not to discredit anything in between that happened, because all those things were real too."
The time between allowed both Lopez and Affleck to grow their families: Lopez shares twins Emme and Maximilian with ex-husband Marc Anthony while Affleck shares daughters Violet and Seraphina, as well as son Samuel, with ex-wife Jennifer Garner.
Lopez said the blending of their families is something that "needs to be handled with so much care" and said "it's going really well so far."
"What I hope to cultivate with our family is that his kids have a new ally in me and my kids have a new ally in him, someone who really loves and cares about them but can have a different perspective and help me see things that I can't see with my kids because I'm so emotionally tied up," she said.
Affleck told Vogue that Lopez hasn't changed in his eyes over the years and has always had "a heart that seems boundless with love," adding that she is "my idea of the kind of person I want to be."
"There is something innately, magically kind and good and full of love at the heart of who Jennifer is," he told the magazine. "That's exactly the person I remember from 20 years ago."
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