On Friday, exes Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner were seen hugging it out in a car in Los Angeles as Garner leaned towards Affleck from the backseat for an affectionate squeeze. Seated beside Affleck was their eldest daughter, Seraphina.
Affleck leaned towards her as well, smiling and saying goodbye as she left in the photos shared by Page Six. The former couple share three children, Seraphina, Violet, and Samuel. The once-married pair now have a friendly co-parenting relationship. They were first wed in 2005 and announced their separation 10 years later.
Since then, both have moved on to new relationships: Garner is currently dating businessman John Miller and Affleck married Jennifer Lopez. Affleck and Lopez dated and were engaged almost two decades earlier, before his marriage to Garner. In that time period, she was married and divorced as well, having her twins Max and Emme with singer Marc Anthony.
Lopez has talked about how she and Affleck work to blend their families together, and spoken positively about how Garner and her husband function as a team as parents. She told Vogue in November 2022 that Garner is “an amazing co-parent, and they work really well together.”
“The transition is a process that needs to be handled with so much care,” she went on. “They have so many feelings. They’re teens. But it’s going really well so far. What I hope to cultivate with our family is that his kids have a new ally in me and my kids have a new ally in him, someone who really loves and cares about them but can have a different perspective and help me see things that I can’t see with my kids because I’m so emotionally tied up.”
She added some details from her own parenting philosophy, saying, “I really wanted to find a better way than having to put the fear in them. It’s like, I can hold a boundary with you but also be your ally. That’s the balance, where they respect you enough because you act in a way that they can look up to. It’s what I feel like I want to do because when I was young that wasn’t what it was.”
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.