Jennifer Lopez is ready to live the single life. In a conversation with Nikki Glaser for Interview Magazine, the 55-year-old singer reflected on her impending singledom amid her split from Ben Affleck.
Videos by Suggest
“I’m not looking for anybody,” Lopez said. “… For people who are romantics and love being in relationships and want to grow old with somebody, we think, ‘I have to have that to be whole and happy.’ And you don’t.”
That revelation came after the downfall or her relationship with Affleck, a repeat of history given their broken engagement in the early aughts.
“You have to be complete, if you want something that’s more complete. You have to be good on your own. I thought I learned that, but I didn’t,” she said. “And then, this summer, I had to be like, ‘I need to go off and be on my own. I want to prove to myself that I can do that.'”
Doing that, Lopez noted, was easier said than done. In fact, it was “f**king hard,” she admitted, adding that she felt lonely, scared, sad, and desperate amid the self-work.
“When you sit in those feelings and go, ‘These things are not going to kill me,’ it’s like actually, I am capable of joy and happiness all by myself,” she said. “Being in a relationship doesn’t define me. I can’t be looking for happiness in other people. I have to have happiness within myself.”
Jennifer Lopez Reflects on the Pain of Her and Ben Affleck’s Split
Despite it being “probably the hardest time” of Lopez’s life, she said she doesn’t regret jumping into the coupling again.
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t almost take me out for good. It almost did,” she admitted. “But now, on the other side of it, I think to myself, ‘F**k, that is exactly what I needed. Thank you, god. I’m sorry it took me so long.”
“I’m sorry that you had to do this to me so many times. I should have learned it two or three times ago. I get it. You had to hit me really hard over the head with a f**king sledgehammer. You dropped the house on me. Don’t have to do it again.'”
Jennifer Lopez Has Her Eyes on the Future, Not the Past
While she has “finally got” the lesson she was meant to learn, Lopez said she doesn’t “have everything figured out.” Still, she said, “I’m excited.”
“I’m not looking for anybody, because everything that I’ve done over the past 25, 30 years, being in these different challenging situations, what can I f**king do when it’s just me flying on my own?” she wondered. “What if I’m just free?”
The excitement doesn’t lessen the fear, though.
“It’s new territory, so that’s always a little scary, right? And I know that the old Jennifer is still going to try to be like, ‘Wait, don’t we want to do that?’ And it’s like… ‘No, motherf**ker, no.'”
With that in mind, Lopez is prepared to stand tall with the full-formed knowledge of who she is and what she stands for—being a good person and a good mom.
“I know who my friends are. I know my friends know who I am, my mom, my dad, all that stuff,” she said. “… Even in hard times, I just go, ‘You know the truth.’ Head high. Like they said in Finding Nemo: Keep on swimming.”