Real reason Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez broke up the first time round

Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce from Ben Affleck on their one year wedding anniversary and sent the world into a spiral, but this isn't the first time the pair have gone through a very public break up.

Oh, Bennifer. I don't know about you, but I was rooting for the Hollywood couple this time around, with little nine-year-old me devastated by their first break up.

There were a lot of rumours surrounding Lopez and Affleck's first break up as the pair first started dating in 2002 before getting engaged and breaking up in 2004.

But why exactly did they break up the first time round?

The pair were Hollywood's young dream, but that quickly turned into a nightmare (DOUG KANTER / Stringer / Getty Images)

In Affleck's own words, he divulged on The Howard Stern Show: "I would say [media attention] was about 50 percent [of what destroyed our relationship].

"The idea that people hate you and they hate you together and that being together is poison and ugly and toxic and the thing none of us want to be part of.” The Argo star continued: “And, ‘Who the fu*k would want to have them to dinner?’ And, ‘What the fu*k are they doing together?' I got fu*king hurt and angry, and felt like a fool.”

The famed pair first met back in 2001 on the set of Gigil, and when they rekindled their romance in 2022, fans of the pair could not have been more excited to see that they had made their way back to each other.

When speaking about his 'second chance' with the 'Jenny from the Block' singer, in an interview with WSJ in 2021, he said: “I am very lucky in my life in that I have benefited from second chances, and I am aware that other people don’t even get first chances.

“I’ve had second chances in my career. I’ve had second chances as a human being. Life is difficult, and we are always failing and hopefully learning from those failures.”

J Lo cited 'irreconciable differences' when she filed for divorce on their one year anniversary. (Amy Sussman / Staff / Getty Images)

Sadly, that second chance didn't last as Lopez filed for divorce from the Gone Girl actor on their one year wedding anniversary on 21 August this year.

It later came to light that the reason Lopez cited for her divorce from DC's Batman was 'irreconciable differences', which means 'disagreements between people, especially two married people that cannot be resolved'. It's a common reason for divorce, especially among celebrity couples.

Lopez recently opened up about the divorce in an interview with Nicki Glaser for Interview Magazine, where she said: "There’s times when I thought I figured it out 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'."