One insider says Lopez and Affleck are supporting each other, and no one on record has confirmed it

An unnamed insider told OK! magazine that Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have been “communicating regularly and providing emotional support for each other,” and The Blast relayed the claim on October 25, 2026. Neither star has confirmed it, and the report cites no representative for either. What is documented is narrower: Affleck lost both parents this year, and Lopez has called her twins' departure for college a “scary time.”

Who said what, and what is on the record

The sentence comes from an unnamed source quoted by OK!, passed on by The Blast, then picked up by SheKnows the same day. The full line reads: “Jen and Ben have been communicating regularly and providing emotional support for each other during an unexpectedly challenging period in both their lives.” The insider adds that Lopez became “particularly attentive” after Affleck lost his parents, and that Affleck is a reassuring presence while Lopez adjusts to being an “empty nester.”

IBTimes UK went back over the story and filed it as unverified. It notes that neither Lopez nor Affleck has publicly confirmed the private exchanges, and that the claims are about private feelings and conversations, not independently confirmed details.

The insider's other line is the one headline writers wanted: “Bennifer could rise again.” A phrase like that costs its source nothing and commits nobody, which is its charm. IBTimes UK points out that it is not an announcement that either star wants to restart the relationship, and that the account offers no timeline, direct message or specific meeting.

Even the insider stops short of a romance. According to IBTimes UK, the source did not say the former couple had decided to try again, and said any future relationship would need clearer boundaries around their private lives.

The two facts that stand on their own

Affleck's mother, Chris Anne Affleck, died on June 2, according to The Blast. His father, Timothy Affleck, died earlier in the year, and Casey Affleck shared the news at the Venice International Film Festival in September. Speaking to People magazine, as The Blast reports, Ben Affleck said the two deaths came “just two months apart, beginning of April and June.”

He described what that does to a person in plain terms: “The bare fact of the very fleeting nature of all of our lives kind of stares you back in the face. And you realize, yeah, we only get so much time.”

Lopez's side is on the record too. In a video on her JLO Beauty Instagram account, she said she had been crying and looking at baby pictures as her twins, Max and Emme, began college, and that she wanted to “revive some old dreams” she had put off. IBTimes UK draws the line carefully: the video confirms what Lopez said about the change at home, and it does not confirm the separate claim that Affleck has been supporting her through it.

A divorce told in two dates, and two quotes

Lopez filed for divorce in August 2024, according to IBTimes UK. A judge approved the settlement on January 6, 2025, but the divorce became effective on February 21, according to the Associated Press, so the January date often given for the end of the marriage compresses two legal steps into one.

Both of them have described the split without a plot. Lopez told Good Morning America in March, “I took a year off,” and said she wanted to sit with what had happened rather than run from it through work or through another person. Affleck told GQ for its April 2025 issue: “There’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue.” He called it a story about “people trying to figure out their lives and relationships.” Tabloid weeks are built on the opposite premise, which may be why this one needed an insider to supply the drama.

Comfort or fixing: what a seven-day study found

None of the reporting says what kind of support is being exchanged, so the useful question is which kind helps. A University of Florida study offers one narrow answer. Researchers Zhongchi Li and Gregory Webster surveyed 84 unmarried couples about their financial and relationship stress. Each person completed a baseline survey, then both partners reported their stress once a day for seven days.

Couples with more financial stress at the start also reported more stress in the relationship, which will surprise nobody who has paid a bill. The team then compared two ways partners coped: emotional support and problem-solving. Li said that “the most important thing is for partners to show more emotional understanding, show care and be supportive of each other, rather than simply giving them solutions to the problem.” In the data, partners who received more emotional support saw less of the money stress spill into the relationship.

The limits sit close to the finding. The study appeared in the journal Personal Relationships and was announced by the university in late September. It covers seven days of diaries from unmarried couples under money pressure, so it says nothing about former spouses or about grief. The university's own summary adds that practical problem-solving may become more useful over longer periods, and Webster said future research could follow couples over months. Webster also said that for people living paycheck to paycheck, a relationship can buffer financial stress or compound it, depending in part on how partners communicate.

The finding is modest, and it fits the report's wording: the insider talks about emotional support, not about solutions.

What thanks does for the person who helps

Giving has a cost, and research on couples keeps returning to what the giver gets back. Psychology Today, in an October 2026 column, summarizes a study by Emily O'Brien and Amanda Forest of the University of Pittsburgh, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Across three studies, a partner's thanks raised people's intention to help again, and the third study added a condition in which the helped partner did not reach the goal. The effect was stronger in lower-quality relationships, though the column notes those were not all that low.

The column also lists the weak points: the first study relied on recalled gratitude and self-report, and the experiments asked participants to imagine a scenario. The authors' conclusion is that thanks can “not only make partners feel appreciated but may also boost their motivation to continue to be instrumental.”

A Swiss study points the same way from the helper's side. PsyPost reported on November 27, 2025 on research in Frontiers in Psychology by Michelle Roth and colleagues at the University of Zurich and Florida State University, using 163 couples in Switzerland whose relationships averaged roughly 30 years. Once gratitude was counted, the direct link between giving support and feeling satisfied largely disappeared. The helper's satisfaction depended on the partner being grateful, whether the thanks was felt or spoken.

That study is cross-sectional, so it cannot show which came first, and its couples were mostly Swiss, educated and in stable long-term relationships. Neither study involved divorced couples, and neither says anything about two people with a shared history like this one.

Friendship after a marriage ends

The idea that former spouses can be friends has its own, older literature. Psychology Today published a May 15, 2025 piece by Ruth Stitt, a licensed professional counselor, who writes that many ex-spouses can build a healthy friendship, though it may take time, patience and a lot of forgiveness. She cites a 1997 paper by C. Masheter in the Journal of Marriage and Family, which looked at hostility, attachment and friendship in the marital bond and how those predict whether a post-divorce friendship is feasible. We did not read the 1997 paper itself, only her account of it.

By that account, people who score higher on healthy attachment and friendship are better able to grow a mutually supportive friendship with an ex-partner. People who score higher on negative preoccupation and hostility connected to the marriage and divorce may be unsuited to ongoing friendship. Stitt lists unrelenting hostility, an insecure and anxious attachment style, and severely narcissistic or addictive behavior as reasons some couples are better off cutting contact.

Her column is a counselor's essay with anecdotes, and it does not give prevalence figures. It sets out conditions, not odds.

Where the reunion talk stands

What remains is a report that rests, in IBTimes UK's words, on an unnamed OK! source relayed by The Blast. Lopez's public comments establish that she has described an emptier home as difficult, and Affleck's public comments establish his losses. What the two of them have said to each other in private is unconfirmed.

IBTimes UK also notes a separate unconfirmed account: Page Six reported on October 19 that Lopez and actor Brett Goldstein were “casually” dating. That report does not verify or disprove The Blast's claims about Affleck, and it too is attributed to a source.

Sources

• Financial stress bleeds into our relationships. But partners who provide emotional support can help., University of Florida, Eric Hamilton, September 28, 2026