Ben Affleck Says He Felt ‘Trapped’ in His Marriage to Jennifer Garner

Ben Affleck candidly opened up about the end of his 10-year marriage to Jennifer Garner and alcohol abuse issues in a recent episode of The Howard Stern Show. 

“I’d probably still be drinking,” Affleck said on the show, per People, referring to if he was still married to Garner. “It’s part of why I started drinking…because I was trapped. 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 drink a bottle of Scotch and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”

“The truth was, we took our time, we made the decision. We grew apart. We had a marriage that didn’t work,” Affleck said, according to ABC News. “This happens.”

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner got married in 2005, and in 2015 announced they were separating. “We did it amicably,” Affleck said. “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.”

Affleck said they tried at first to make their marriage work because of their children. (He and Garner have three children together: Violet, 16, Seraphina, 12, and Samuel, 9.) “We tried. We tried because we had kids,” he said. “And then we said…both of us felt like we don’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage.” 

In the interview on Howard Stern, Affleck also mentioned the hesitation he had about rekindling his relationship with Jennifer Lopez because of his kids. “My responsibility to my children is the highest responsibility I have,” he said. “I’m not doing anything that’s painful or destructive to them if I can help it. That being said, you know, I know that my life affects them.”