Ben Affleck Being JLo's 'Arm Candy' Soured Friendship With Matt Damon, Said Insider: 'Can't Bear...'

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are now getting divorced, but it doesn't come as a huge surprise, given that the couple were reportedly staying in different residences and were only occasionally seen together in public. However, before the public, it seemed as though Affleck's best friend Matt Damon had an inkling that the couple's marriage would be doomed eventually.

"Matt has had serious reservations about Bennifer 2.0 from the beginning," a source told the National Enquirer in December 2023. "He's tried to publicly support Ben, but the fact is he hates the way JLo treats his friend and can no longer bite his tongue." However, "It's no secret that Ben and JLo don't get along, as he always seems to be in the doghouse," the source added. "It's obvious something needs to change, but when Matt started giving Ben advice, everything exploded."

"It feels like history is repeating itself because 20 years ago they stopped talking to each other for the exact same reason," the source claimed. As per Marca, Damon was worried for a while that his honesty would affect their friendship once again. "But Matt can't keep quiet, even if it means influencing Ben."

Apart from this, the source also made scathing comments about the general dynamic between the best friends after Lopez stepped onto the scene. "Seeing his friend posing on a red carpet, totally playing this role as JLo's arm candy, makes Matt nauseous. He can't bear to see her constrain Ben. But after Matt challenged him, Ben started pulling back," the source said before also adding that 'their friendship is strained, to say the least.'

As for what the former couple thought about the issues, things were not as cut and dry as they seemed. "Ben and JLo have very different views on the matter," another source revealed. "JLo is grateful that Ben is sober, and if he needs to smoke to get through the day, it's better than going astray."

As per Hollywood Reporter, in 2015, the Martian actor opened up about Affleck's marriage to Lopez and said that it was 'painful' to watch his friend suffer. “There’s nobody who’s more misunderstood,” he said of the Justice League actor. “Ten years ago, the public image of him could not have been farther apart from who he actually is. It was like he was being cast in a role, that he was a talentless kind of meathead, with his whole relationship with Jennifer Lopez."

Damon further said about his best friend, "He just got cast as this person that he wasn’t. It was just really painful. It was painful to be his friend, because it wasn’t fair, you know? To my mind, nobody really got him at all. And through his work, he climbed from the bottom of the mountain all the way back up to the top and past where either of us had ever been.” Affleck and Damon have been best buddies since school. They continue to be close, managing a production firm together and even sharing a Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, street since Damon moved out of New York in 2013.

As per Today, Damon previously confessed to sharing a great 'partnership' with his best friend, "Between Ben and my wife and Gary White ... Those are the three most significant partnerships in my life. And all those things are going really well," he said. "After my dad passed in 2017 — and Ben was very, very close with him — it changed something in us, I think," he added. "You start to see the end game and you start to feel like, 'I want to make every second count. I don't want to fritter away time anymore.'"

This article was originally published on 06.08.24.