Jennifer Garner Reflects on the Dream She Thought She’d Lose After Divorcing Ben Affleck

Jennifer Garner is opening up about her highly-publicized divorce from Ben Affleck.

The 48-year-old actress covers the latest issue of The Hollywood Reporter, and talks about the one dream she thought she’d lose following their split. Garner and Affleck were married from 2005 to 2018, and share three children together — Violet, 15, Seraphina, 12, and Samuel, 9.

“Going through [a divorce] in public is not what’s hard, going through it is what’s hard, A,” Garner admits. “And B, my children’s eyes are on me.”

Garner previously told Vanity Fair in 2016 (shortly after separating from Affleck) that she had “lost the dream of dancing with my husband at my daughter’s wedding.” Now, after establishing solid co-parenting skills and an amicable friendship with Affleck, she doesn’t think that dream is dead.

“When our kids get married, we’ll dance, I know that now,” she tells THR. “We’ll boogaloo and have a great time. I don’t worry about that anymore.”

During another portion of the interview, Garner addresses the many challenges of trying to raise a family in the public eye. She recalls a time when she and Affleck considered moving out of Los Angeles in hopes of a simpler life in upstate New York, Boston or San Francisco.

“It just put so much anxiety in our little family,” Garner says, telling the outlet that no matter where they went “some bobo with a camera” would always come around and start snapping.

Garner reveals that the coronavirus pandemic actually had one nice perk for her and her family. This past summer, due to the anonymity of mask-wearing, for example, she was able to take her kids to the beach to play freely. Garner tells THR that her children at one point asked her why they were never able to do that before.

“I told them, ‘We’d try to go and we’d just get chased away [by the camera],'” Garner recalls. “And you’re not just ruining the experience for your family, you’re ruining it for everybody. It’s like, ‘Who wants to have us around?'”

Earlier this month, Garner also spoke about the challenges of raising children amid a pandemic in an interview with ET.

“This has been such a hard year for moms. We have had to say ‘No, no, no.’ We’ve had to watch our kids be home, miss out on things,” the Yes Day star said. “It is one thing to miss out on something as an adult, but to watch your kids miss something they have looked forward to or just how hard it has been to see them isolated and on Zoom every day…”

“It is not a positive to be me… Someone who people would think, ‘Oh, how cool to have that person as a mom.’ No,” she joked. “But my teenager and my adolescent are both lovely. So I have to say, I have it pretty easy as far as that goes.”