Ben Affleck Says He'd 'Probably' Still Be Drinking If He And Jennifer Garner Hadn't Divorced

Ben Affleck has admitted that he’d ‘probably’ still be drinking if he and his ex-wife Jennifer Garner hadn’t split. 

The two stars got hitched in 2005 and went on to have three kids: Violet, Seraphina and Samuel. 

But they split in 2015 and eventually divorced in 2018, with Affleck saying the couple grew apart and revealing that he’d most likely still be drinking if they hadn’t made the decision to go their separate ways. 

Alamy

Speaking on The Howard Stern Show, Affleck said: “We’d probably be at each other’s throats.

“I’d probably still be drinking. Part of why I started drinking alcohol was because I felt trapped.”

Affleck said despite being unhappy, the couple stayed together for the sake of their kids, which led to him drinking. 

He said: “I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ And what I did was [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution. 

“But both of us felt like we don’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage.”

Opening up about why the couple decided to get divorced, he said: “The truth was we took our time, we made the decision, we grew apart.

“We had a marriage that didn't work. We tried because we had kids. We did not want it to be the model of marriage for the kids. We did our best. I knew she was a good mom, and I hoped she knew I was a good dad. I had to get sober, and I acknowledge that.”

Alamy

He added: "We did it amicably. We did our best. Did we have moments of tension? Did we have disagreements over custody? Was stuff difficult for us? Did we get angry? Yes, but fundamentally it was always underpinned with a respect."

Affleck went to rehab for his alcoholism in 2018 - during the interview he said the ‘cure for addiction is suffering’. 

“You suffer enough before something inside you goes, ‘That's enough’,” he said.

Affleck, 49, has since rekindled his romance with Jennifer Lopez - 17 years after they first split. 

The couple had been engaged before breaking up in 2004.

Topics: Celebrity

Claire Reid

Claire is a journalist at LADbible who, after dossing around for a few years, went to Liverpool John Moores University. She graduated with a degree in Journalism and a whole load of debt. When not writing words in exchange for money she is usually at home watching serial killer documentaries surrounded by cats. You can contact Claire at [email protected]