Ben Affleck is getting candid about his marriage to Jennifer Garner, saying that he felt "trapped" and would likely not have gotten sober had he stayed.
The pair were married from 2005 to 2018 and the year of their split, Affleck went to rehab for alcoholism. Speaking during an appearance on SiriusXM’s "The Howard Stern Show," the actor revealed that part of the reason he drank was that he was so unhappy.
"We probably would’ve ended up at each other’s throats. I probably still would’ve been drinking," Affleck said, according to Page Six. "Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped."
Affleck said one of the reasons why he stayed in the marriage was because he wanted to make it work for his kids. Affleck and Garner share Violet, 16, Seraphina, 12, and 9-year-old Samuel.
"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 [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution," he said.
"Ultimately, we tried, we tried, we tried because we had kids, but both of us felt like we didn’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage," Affleck continued, adding that their eventual split was misconstrued by the media.
"Everything you read [in the news about the divorce] was bulls**t. The truth was we took our time, we made our decision," he said. "We grew apart. We had a marriage that didn’t work. This happens. She’s somebody I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer."
In a 2020 interview with The New York Times, Affleck admitted his alcohol addiction compounded his marital issues. The former "Batman" star, who has been in and out of rehab over the years, said he was not overdrinking until around 2015, when the cracks in their relationship began to show. That was when Affleck turned increasingly to alcohol to cope.
"People with compulsive behavior, and I am one, have this kind of basic discomfort all the time that they’re trying to make go away," Affleck told the outlet.
"You’re trying to make yourself feel better with eating or drinking or sex or gambling or shopping or whatever. But that ends up making your life worse. Then you do more of it to make that discomfort go away. Then the real pain starts. It becomes a vicious cycle you can’t break."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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