er breaks her silence
yIhadto
eave Ben
T
hey were one of
Hollywood’s most
down-to-earth couples,
so when Jennifer Garner
and Ben Affleck announced their
divorce on June 30 last year – one
day after their tenth wedding
anniversary – it sent shockwaves
through Tinseltown. Now, nine
months after the pair went their
separate ways, and in the wake of
countless rumours, Jen’s broken
her silence on the real reason
she and Ben called it quits.Naughty nanny
In the weeks following their
separation, Ben was accused
of having an affair with nanny
Christine Ouzounian, now 28.
Jen says the ensuing speculation
wasn’t easy, but insists it wasn’t
why they split. “We had been
separated for months before I ever
heard about the nanny. She had
nothing to do with our decisionto divorce. She was not a part of
the equation,” Jen, 43, tellsVanit y
Fair. “Bad judgment? Yes. It’s not
great for your kids for [a nanny] to
disappear from their lives.”
Jen says she and Ben are both
focused on their children, Violet,
10, Seraphina, seven, and
Samuel, four.
“The main
thing is
these kids- and we’re
completely
in line with
what we hope
for them,” she explains.
“Sure, I lost the dream of
dancing with my husband at
my daughter’s wedding. But
you should see their faces when
he walks through the door.
“And if you see your kids love
someone so purely and wholly,
then you’re going to be friends
with that person.”
While the former couple have
been the subject of reconciliation
rumours, Jen confirms that ship
has well and truly sailed.
“When Jen Aniston and Brad
Pitt broke up, I was dying to see
something that said they were
getting back together,” Jen recalls,
before adding
that her
marriage to
Ben will suffer
the same fate.
The actress
remembers
her beachfront
wedding – the couple married in
the Turks and Caicos Islands in
2005 – with sadness. “Of course
this is not what I imagined when
I ran down the beach, but it is
where I am,” she says.
Throughout their marriage,
Oscar-winner Ben, 43, was linked
to a number of women, but Jen’s
doing her best to move on with‘We’d been separated
for months before
I ever heard about
the nanny’
The broken
family still
spend time
together.her life and look to the future.
“No one needs to hate him for
me. I don’t hate him. Certainly
we don’t have to beat the guy
up,” Jen says, before adding,
“Don’t worry – my eyes were
wide open during the marriage.”Two to tango
Rather than blame her ex-
husband for the end of their
marriage, Jen believes she was
equally at fault.
“It’s one of the pains in my life
that something I believe in so
strongly I’ve completely failed
at twice,” Jen says of her two
divorces – she was also married
to actor Scott Foley from 2000
until 2004. “I know that, with
time and some perspective, I’ll
have a clearer sense of where
I let the system down, because
there’s no way I get off in this.”
Jen makes her return to the
screen this year in Miracles From
Heaven, and she’s also open to
the idea of dating again. She’s
looking for an old-fashioned
romance – for a man who buys
her fl owers rather than texts her.
As for Ben, Jen says he’ll always
be the love of her life. “I didn’t
marry the big fat movie star;
I married him. And I would go
back and remake that decision,”
she reveals. “He’s the most brilliant
person in any room, the most
charismatic, the most generous.
He’s just a complicated guy.
“I always say, ‘When his sun
shines on you, you feel it.’ But when
the sun is shining elsewhere, it’s
cold. He can cast quite a shadow.”Pictures: Getty Images, Snapper Media.Happy in
2003
WD 33