She and Ben reignited their early 2000s relationship in 2021, marrying the following summer. Jennifer filed to end their marriage in August, just two years after their lavish Georgia wedding, listing the reason as irreconcilable differences. She wrote that they had officially separated on April 26.
“The honeymoon phase was very quick for them,” one insider told Entertainment Tonight. “Their differences came out pretty early on in the relationship after they got married, and they were arguing.”
Jennifer discussed their split in a new conversation with Nikki Glaser for Interview Magazine, and while she didn’t get into the specifics of the breakup, she admitted the experience was part of a lesson she’s continually had to learn in life.
“There’s times when I thought I figured it out,” said Jennifer, a self-professed hopeless romantic, “and then life goes, ‘Let’s send you another thing and see if you fall for it. Let’s see if you really have learned that lesson.’ And I hadn’t. I understand that now in a much deeper way, which doesn’t mean that I won’t make mistakes in the future, but again, when your whole house blows up, you’re standing there in the rubble going, ‘How do I not ever let that happen again?’ And then you start examining it little by little saying, ‘Okay, I did this, this was my part in it, this was what I should have seen early on, this is what I didn’t look at.'”
Jennifer said she’s also learned, “You have to be complete, if you want something that’s more complete. You have to be good on your own.”
“I thought I learned that,” she continued, “but I didn’t. And then, this summer, I had to be like, ‘I need to go off and be on my own. I want to prove to myself that I can do that.'”
Jennifer, who spent the summer alone in the Hamptons, admitted it was “fucking hard” being by herself. “It feels lonely, unfamiliar, scary. It feels sad. It feels desperate,” she said. “But when you sit in those feelings and go, ‘These things are not going to kill me,’ it’s like actually, I am capable of joy and happiness all by myself.”
“Being in a relationship doesn’t define me,” she added. “I can’t be looking for happiness in other people. I have to have happiness within myself. I used to say I’m a happy person, but was still looking for something for somebody else to fill, and it’s just like, ‘No, I’m actually good.'”
Now, Jennifer says she’s “excited” to be on her own. “Yes, I’m not looking for anybody, because everything that I’ve done over the past 25, 30 years, being in these different challenging situations, what can I fucking do when it’s just me flying on my own … what if I’m just free?”
Read the rest of the interview here.
