Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner have decided to end their marriage much sooner than fans originally thought.

The end of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s two-year marriage has been fascinating fans for months. Now that Lopez has officially filed for divorce, it’s hard not to notice some inconsistencies in the couple’s other romances before they tied the knot. For example, did you notice that Ben Affleck and his first ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, decided to end their marriage years before they made it public?

Ben Affleck Sets Separation Date From Jennifer Garner As 2013

It seems that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner have not been entirely honest with their fans about their separation and subsequent divorce. The couple ended their relationship years before they announced their separation to the public. According to the paperwork that Ben Affleck filed before his wedding to Jennifer Lopez, Affleck and Garner considered themselves separated in 2013. On his marriage license application, Affleck stated that his first marriage ended in 2013, not 2015. The application requires applicants to provide the date that their previous marriage ended, not the final date of the divorce.

The date struck fans as odd. Affleck and Garner announced their plans to divorce in June 2015, just one day after their 10th wedding anniversary. The duo’s split was largely amicable, with the former couple maintaining a friendly relationship for the sake of Violet, Finn and Samuel Affleck, their three children. Still, the divorce dragged on. It was finalized in 2017.

Reddit users were quick to point out that, in retrospect, there were hints that all was not well between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner before they announced the end of their marriage, pointing to his awkward Oscar speech as evidence that the former couple had clearly fallen out in 2013.

Jennifer Lopez’s separation date coincides with the date she announced her divorce from Marc Anthony

Ben Affleck wasn’t the only one filling out divorce information on the marriage application. Jennifer Lopez was also required to provide the date her previous marriage ended. Her answers match the timeline known to the public. Lopez listed the year of her separation from Marc Anthony as 2011. 2011 was the year she publicly announced the end of her seven-year marriage. Anthony and Lopez finalized their divorce in 2014. They officially filed for divorce in 2012.

Marc Anthony and Lopez have spoken about their marriage and its dissolution over the years. In 2016, Lopez told W Magazine that another divorce was not the “dream” she had hoped for, and that she needed to work on finding forgiveness so that she and Anthony could successfully co-parent their children. Anthony has previously said that the end of their marriage was not “scandalous” and that they mutually decided things were not working. The former couple has twins, Emme and Max Muniz.

Anthony married two more times. He was married to Shannon De Lima from 2014 to 2017. In 2023, he married Nadia Ferreira. Lopez’s marriage to Affleck was her fourth.