Jennifer Lopez Says “My Whole Fucking World Exploded” With Ben Affleck Split

Jennifer Lopez doesn’t have new criteria for what she’s looking for in a romantic partner after her very public, very painful split from Ben Affleck. “There’s no new bar because I’m not looking for anybody,” she told Nikki Glazer in a conversation published in Interview magazine Wednesday. “How’s that?”

“For people who are romantics and love being in relationships and want to grow old with somebody, we think, ‘I have to have that to be whole and happy,’” she said. “And you don’t.” It’s a lesson that she laughingly says “only took 30 years” for her to learn.

Lopez has had quite the year, between the end of her marriage to Affleck, a canceled stadium tour, and now, a role in a buzzy new movie on the festival circuit, Unstoppable. She has nowhere to hide, and isn’t trying to anymore, either. Lopez reflected on her very public recent stumbling blocks and what she’s learned from them.

In short? “It’s fucking mind-blowing what the human spirit can overcome,” she said.

During the interview, Lopez painted a picture of a woman who was riding high after releasing the film and album versions of This Is Me…Now, self-financing a documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told about how great her second-chance romance relationship was, and filming Unstoppable.

“I felt like, whoa, I got here,” she said. “I’m good. I did all the work and look at where I am, and then it was like my whole fucking world exploded.”

Despite the pain of her divorce and canceling her tour, she said she doesn’t have regrets.

“Not one second,” she said of her recent trials. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t almost take me out for good. It almost did. But now, on the other side of it, I think to myself, ‘Fuck, that is exactly what I needed. Thank you, god. I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m sorry that you had to do this to me so many times. I should have learned it two or three times ago. I get it. You had to hit me really hard over the head with a fucking sledgehammer. You dropped the house on me. Don’t have to do it again.’”

Lopez described living her life with perpetual middle child syndrome, attention-seeking and perfectionism from a young age, vying for the love and attention of, first, busy parents, and later, the public and her romantic partners.

“I love my parents, but I do see the effect of who they were and how they were raised, on me,” she said. “You don’t even really know until those things start manifesting in your actual adult relationships. ‘Oh, I’m comfortable with this person ignoring me. I’m comfortable with this person treating me this way or that way.’ That, for me, has been a journey.”

Now, however, she wants to do it for herself and for her inner child.

“I think my whole life I’ve just been trying to say I’m good enough, until where I am now, when I know. I’m giving myself credit,” she said. “I’m telling that little girl that grew up in the Bronx, ‘You’ve done really good for yourself.’ I didn’t do that for so many years. And now I think, with everything that’s happened in my life and in my relationships and even in my career, it’s like, give yourself a bit of comfort and love. We’ve been through a lot of things that nobody knows about, and you’ve persevered and you refuse to give up and to let it get you down. There’s something to be said for that because things can really change your life in a way that you do want to give up and say, ‘Fuck this, this is too hard, I don’t want to do this anymore.’ But I’m not there. I refuse to not give myself everything that little girl deserves.”

Not that she’s always so kind with her self-talk, to be real. She described feeling free and trying not to revert back to her people-pleasing habits with what she takes on. “It’s new territory, so that’s always a little scary, right? And I know that the old Jennifer is still going to try to be like, ‘Wait, don’t we want to do that?’ And it’s like, no, dumb bitch. No.” She clarified after being told to be nicer to herself: “She knows how I talk.”

As for canceling that tour, she was “devastated to let anybody down.”

“I just needed to be with my kids and myself and really dig down deep into things that were happening in my life,” she said. “And I’m glad I did, because it was a really difficult time for me. Probably the hardest time of my life, but it was also the best time because I got to do that work on myself.”

But not to worry: “I’ll be out there entertaining you and shaking my ass sooner than you know.”