Ben Affleck has spoken out about how he felt ‘trapped’ during his marriage to Jennifer Garner, and how it impacted his drinking.
Affleck has had issues with drink, and said on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show that if he was still married to the actress he’d still be drinking.
He said:
“We probably would’ve ended up at each other’s throats. I probably still would’ve been drinking,”
“Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped.”
The Good Will Hunting star went to rehab in 2018 for alcoholism, and since his life has improved dramatically.
“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.”
“Ultimately, we tried, we tried, we tried because we had kids, but both of us felt like we didn’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage,”
Affleck did go on to say that the media got their break up wrong.
“Everything you read [in the news about the divorce] was bulls–t. The truth was we took our time, we made our decision … We grew apart. We had a marriage that didn’t work. This happens. She’s somebody I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer.”
“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,” he said, adding, “I knew she was a good mom. I always hoped she knew I was a good dad. I knew I was.”
Affleck is now in a relationship with J-Lo, who he engaged to in the early 2000s.