Ben Affleck Spotted 1st Time After Jennifer Lopez Files for Divorce

Ben Affleck was spotted for the first time since Jennifer Lopez‘s divorce filing — and he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

Affleck, 52, was seen heading into an office building in Los Angeles on Tuesday, August 20, the same day Lopez, 55, filed to legally end their marriage. He kept it casual in a gray T-shirt, jeans and sunglasses. Amid reports about Lopez and Affleck’s status, they have both taken their wedding rings on and off during various outings. On Tuesday, Affleck’s bare hands were hard to miss.

Us Weekly confirmed on Tuesday that Lopez filed for divorce on the two-year anniversary of her and Affleck’s Georgia wedding ceremony. The actress listed the date of separation as April 26, submitting the filing herself instead of through an attorney.

Earlier this year, a source exclusively told Us that the pair hit a rough patch in their relationship.

“Jen and Ben are having issues in their marriage,” the insider explained in May. “They started having issues a few months ago as Jen had started ramping up work commitments and prepping for her tour.”

According to the source, Lopez was “very focused on work,” adding, “They are on two completely different pages most of the time.”

Affleck and Lopez originally started dating in 2002 after meeting on the set of Gigli. They called off their engagement two years later but reconciled in 2021 after Lopez’s high-profile split from Alex Rodriguez.

The director proposed for a second time in April 2022 and they eloped three months later in Las Vegas. Affleck and Lopez celebrated their wedding again two months later with a ceremony with their friends and family.

Before their split, Affleck and Lopez’s romance was front and center in This Is Me … Now: A Love Story. The highly stylized take on Lopez’s life — which accompanied her most recent album — explored their relationship on screen. Lopez later shared that the project never would have made it off the ground without the encouragement of Affleck.

“I was like, ‘I don’t write, I don’t do this,’” Lopez recalled at a press conference in February, which was the last month her and Affleck made a public appearance together as a couple. “He was like, ‘You do, you write, you direct, you produce, you choreograph, you do all the things. Start stepping into that, start owning a little bit of who you are.’”

Lopez previously gushed over Affleck’s commitment to the project. “We collaborate very well together,” she told Entertainment Tonight in December 2023. “So we were able to kind of sit down and really dig into it, in a way that I don’t think any other writer could’ve done with me.”