The Moment
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck may be divorced, but the holidays apparently do not care about your relationship status.
Over the weekend, the exes were spotted out together in Brentwood, California, doing some very normal December chaos: last-minute gift shopping and grabbing lunch. With them? His 13-year-old son, Samuel, who Lopez helped raise during their short but intense second run as a married couple.
According to a widely circulated entertainment report that cited an onlooker, Lopez and Affleck met up at the Brentwood Country Mart, popped into several high-end stores, and focused on finding presents for his kids. The source said they “seemed fine” and emphasized that the attention was “mostly on Sam.” They reportedly arrived and left separately.
Photos from the outing show Lopez walking and talking with Samuel in casual holiday mode, Affleck nearby, and the trio looking more like a blended family on a mission than two people sneaking in a rom-com-style rekindling.
The Take
Let me say the quiet part out loud: if your ex-husband and his teenage son invited you holiday shopping a few months after the divorce papers dried, most of us would be “booked and busy.” Yet Lopez shows up with a gift list and questions about what the kids like these days. That is not romance; that is logistics and emotional labor.
The internet, of course, did what it does and immediately started whispering about a Bennifer 3.0 comeback. But from what we know, this looks much closer to co-parenting clean-up than a secret trial reconciliation.
Think of it like this: picture Thanksgiving leftovers. Are there still feelings in the fridge? Absolutely. Is anybody trying to cook a brand-new meal out of them a month later? Probably not. You just want to make sure everyone gets fed and no one starts a fight over the last roll.
Lopez and Affleck’s relationship has never been low-key. Their original early-2000s romance helped invent the modern celebrity couple machine. Their second marriage came with a full-scale media love story, movie tie-ins, and an album rollout. And then, just as loudly, it crashed. By the time the divorce was finalized earlier this year, the public had already picked them apart like it was a group project.
So this outing? I read it as two adults refusing to let their very public breakup turn the kids into emotional collateral damage. A holiday shopping trip with your ex and his son is not exactly the stuff of fantasy; it’s more like the reality show no one volunteers for, but everyone tries to survive.
The detail that Lopez reportedly picked up gifts for Affleck’s kids is telling. That is not a woman plotting Act III of the love story; that is a former stepmom trying to stay kind and consistent with children she helped care for, even as the marriage chapter closes.
Receipts
Let’s separate what is actually known from what’s just wishful group-chat speculation.
Confirmed:
- Lopez and Affleck finalized their divorce earlier in 2025, ending their second marriage, which began in 2022, according to public court records summarized in multiple reports.
- The pair were photographed at Brentwood Country Mart and at a nearby restaurant in Brentwood, California, over the weekend before Christmas, along with Affleck’s son Samuel. The photos show them shopping and walking together.
- An individual described as a source present for the outing told a major entertainment magazine that the focus of the day was Samuel and that Lopez and Affleck “seemed fine” and primarily shopped for gifts for his children.
- The same report noted that Lopez and Affleck arrived and left separately.
- Affleck shares three children – Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel – with his ex-wife, actor Jennifer Garner. Lopez shares teenage twins, Emme and Max, with ex-husband Marc Anthony.
Unverified / Speculation:
- Any claim that Lopez and Affleck are secretly back together or testing out a romantic reunion. Neither has said that publicly, and no official representative has confirmed it.
- Assumptions about tension, arguments, or hidden drama during the shopping trip. The available accounts describe the mood as calm and centered on Samuel.
Backstory (For Casual Readers)
If you checked out of celebrity news sometime around the first iPhone, here’s the quick catch-up. Lopez and Affleck first dated in the early 2000s after meeting on the set of “Gigli” and became one of the original tabloid mega-couples. They got engaged, called off the wedding in 2003, and split in 2004.
Both moved on, had kids, married other people, and then, nearly two decades later, shocked everyone by reuniting. They married in 2022, blended their families, walked every red carpet in coordinated outfits, and turned their rekindled love into art, music, and film projects. By 2025, the fairytale had faded; they quietly worked through a split that eventually became a finalized divorce earlier this year.
Through all of that, their kids – his three with Garner and her twins with Anthony – built lives that crossed over: shared homes, shared events, and, yes, shared holidays. That is the context of this new “reunion” photo set: not a random ex popping back in, but someone who was part of the family structure for several years.
What’s Next
So where does this leave Bennifer, Version Whatever-We’re-On?
In the short term, we are likely to see more of this: parallel lives that sometimes intersect around family milestones. Holiday dinners, graduations, games, maybe the occasional school event. Lopez and Affleck live and work in the same city, share social circles, and clearly have a long, complicated bond.
Professionally, both have plenty going on. Lopez is still deep in music, film, and business ventures; Affleck, as usual, has directing and acting projects lined up. Translation: neither of them needs to manufacture a relationship reunion for attention. They’ve got more than enough career fuel without that.
What I will be watching for is tone. If future sightings show them with the kids, staying low-key, arriving and leaving separately, that supports the picture of two people learning to be exes without being enemies. If, months from now, they start turning up solo together at industry events, that is a different conversation – but we are not there yet, and it is not fair to pretend we are.
For now, the most honest read is this: a holiday outing that looks like thousands of quietly complicated divorced families across the country, just with better lighting, designer shopping bags, and way more long-lens cameras.
Question for you: If you were in Lopez’s shoes, would you keep doing joint outings with an ex for the kids’ sake, or is that a boundary you would draw much more sharply?
Sources
1. A December 24, 2025 celebrity news report detailing Lopez, Affleck, and Samuel’s holiday shopping trip in Brentwood, California, including agency photos from the outing.
2. A widely circulated national entertainment magazine story from the same weekend quoting a source who described the mood of the outing and emphasized that the focus was on Samuel.
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