Jennifer Garner has spoken candidly about her divorce from Ben Affleck and the toll of co‑parenting, revealing that she was 'consumed' by the 'upheaval' of their split in Los Angeles in 2015, as the former couple tried to reshape their family life around their three children.
Garner and Affleck were married for ten years and share Violet, now 20, Finn, 17, and Samuel, 13. They announced their separation in June 2015, one day after their tenth wedding anniversary, and the Elektra star formally filed for divorce in April 2017.
The pair became a kind of Hollywood case study in 'good' divorce, a joint statement pledging to 'go forward with love and friendship,' regular joint outings with the children, and, at least outwardly, a refusal to turn their private rupture into public spectacle.
Behind that polished front, Jennifer Garner now suggests, the experience was far more destabilising than fans might have guessed. Recalling the years around the separation, she told InStyle in a newly published interview: 'When my kids were little, I worked so little, and then we had such an upheaval in our family, that I really hardly worked for a long time.'
She described the strange double task of rebuilding herself while parenting full‑time. 'You have to raise yourself at the same time. And just be so radically kind to yourself about how imperfect it is,' she said. 'There's no such thing as balance. There's no such thing as doing it right.'
Those comments land as Garner prepares to front The Five Star Weekend, an adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand's 2023 novel. She plays a grieving food blogger who gathers her closest friends for a restorative trip to Nantucket.
Jennifer Garner On Divorce, Co‑Parenting And 'The Love Of My Life'
It can be recalled that in the immediate aftermath of the split, Garner went out of her way to gently frame Affleck.
In a 2016 Vanity Fair profile, she brushed aside the 'movie star' mythology that clings to him. 'I didn't marry the big fat movie star; I married him,' she said. 'And I would go back and remake that decision. I ran down the beach to him, and I would again.'
In that same interview, she called Affleck 'the love of my life' and made clear that divorce had not severed their bond.
'We still have to help each other get through this, he's still the only person who really knows the truth about things. And I'm still the only person that knows some of his truths.'
The years that followed tested that loyalty. Affleck entered rehab several times while confronting alcohol addiction, and his romantic life became tabloid fuel. Yet when he was photographed in August 2018 being driven to a Malibu treatment centre, it was Garner behind the wheel. The picture only entrenched her public image as the ex‑wife who never walked away.
Affleck himself has fed that narrative. On Good Morning America in 2020, he admitted he never wanted to be 'a split family.' 'I didn't want to get divorced,' he said. 'It upset me because it meant I wasn't who I thought I was and that was so painful and so disappointing in myself.' 'Still, he called himself 'very lucky she is the mother of my children' and said both parents believed it was crucial for their children to see them 'respect one another and get along, whether they're together or not.'
He went further in an interview with The New York Times that same year, describing the divorce as 'the biggest regret of my life' and talking about the 'toxic' nature of shame. The effect was to cement the sense that, even amid new relationships, both actors were still looking back at what had broken.
Inside Jennifer Garner's Co‑Parenting Struggle With Ben Affleck
The co‑parenting reality, Garner suggested earlier this year, has been complicated. Appearing on the One Nightstand podcast in 2026, she spoke about the quiet recalibration that happens when children move between two homes.
'When your kids grow up in two separate households, I become mum and dad, and he becomes dad and mum,' she said. 'You kind of can't help it, right? Because you don't have the benefit of both sides, the yin and yang being in the same house.'
There was, she admitted, 'a little bit of loss in that,' but also something gained. Being forced to let go of the illusion of control had changed her. 'You also just learn, it's made me let go and not focus so much on the bringing up,' she said, hinting at a softer, less perfectionist approach to motherhood.
If Affleck's post‑divorce life unfolded in public, an on‑off relationship with Saturday Night Live producer Lindsay Shookus, then a highly documented reunion and 2022 wedding with Jennifer Lopez before another split in 2024 and divorce in 2025, Garner's romantic choices went the other way.
Since 2018, she has been in a low‑profile relationship with businessman John Miller, rarely photographed and almost never seen together on the red carpet. The contrast has been stark, and probably intentional.
The one point at which Affleck dented his halo came during a long, freewheeling conversation on The Howard Stern Show. A subsequent media summary claimed he had essentially said, 'If I had not been divorced, I would still be drinking.'
The implication that marriage to Garner had driven him to alcohol triggered an online backlash. Affleck later insisted this was a distortion. Speaking to Jimmy Kimmel, he said the coverage was 'actually the opposite of what I meant' and that he had been trying to describe the sad calculus of divorce, how people in unhappy situations can end up reaching for unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Garner did not publicly rebuke him, in keeping with a pattern of restraint. If she was furious, she kept it off the record.
Her new remarks suggest a subtle but important shift. Now, she is openly acknowledging the cost of always being the steady one.
'When I work, I don't apologise to my kids for it. I do thank them for being so sweet about it,' she told InStyle. 'But that's part of life. Working hard is part of life, and messing up is, too. Tripping and falling, there's room for all of it.'
