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Bennifer (a portmanteau of "Ben" and "Jennifer") were a celebrity supercouple consisting of American actors Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.

Background and courtship
Affleck had an on-off three-year relationship with actress Gwyneth Paltrow from 1997 to late 2000. Soon after their initial breakup in January 1999—while on set for their film Bounce (2000)—the couple started dating again. The couple then eventually broke up for good in October 2000. Lopez's first marriage was to Ojani Noa on February 22, 1997. Following their divorce in January 1998, Lopez had a seventeen-month relationship with hip hop mogul Sean Combs. The couple split in January 2001, after his involvement in a shooting, which turned into a trial. In June 2001, it was reported by various tabloids that Lopez was expecting her first child, which was later deemed to be untrue. Lopez met her second husband, backup dancer Cris Judd, while filming the music video for her single "Love Don't Cost a Thing". The two were married on September 29, 2001 at a home in the L.A. suburbs. The couple announced their split in June 2002. Following her split from Judd, in June 2002 Combs and Lopez were rumored to be back together, which were deemed to be untrue when Lopez and Affleck began publicly dating later that same month.

Affleck and Lopez began dating while on the set of their film Gigli (2003). In July 2002, less than two months after Lopez's split from Judd was announced, Affleck threw Lopez a party for her thirty-third birthday and presented her with a Harry Winston bracelet of yellow and gold diamonds. Lopez's divorce from Judd finalized in January 2003.

Engagement and planned wedding
When Affleck proposed in the fall, he took her to his mother's Boston-area home, which was decorated with rose petals. Lopez's music was playing in the background. He then began to read a letter detailing the reasons why he loved her before getting down on one knee and presenting her with the famous 6 carat (1.2 g), pink-diamond, engagement ring.

The two were scheduled to wed on September 14, 2003 on the California coast, but abruptly canceled their plans just days before the ceremony. Us Weekly reported that the vows and reception would occur at Sotto Il Monte, a private $29 million estate in the Montecito area, near Santa Barbara, California. Guests, including Matt Damon, Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Alec Baldwin, and Britney Spears were set to be shuttled to the wedding from nearby resort hotels. Despite the couple's efforts to keep the wedding under wraps by having vendors sign confidentiality agreements and refusing to tell the 400 guests the location of the event, details of the celebration began to leak at a breakneck pace. As news spread, hotel rooms in and around the usually quiet seaside town of Santa Barbara, California, were sold out as the media moved in.

Four days before the wedding, the couple confirmed they were delaying their nuptials and blamed their decision on the intense media scrutiny. In a joint statement, they said: "Due to the excessive media attention surrounding our wedding, we have decided to postpone the date. When we found ourselves seriously contemplating hiring three separate 'decoy brides' at three different locations, we realized that something was awry. We felt what should have been a joyful and sacred day could be spoiled for us, our family and our friends." Insiders led Entertainment Tonight to believe that Lopez personally made the calls to advise guests, and was said to be very upset and difficult to understand through her tears.

Lopez had plans to change her legal name to Jennifer Affleck upon their marriage.

Break-up and aftermath
Lopez was seen without her ring, and it was later confirmed that the 18-month romance ended on January 20, 2004, just three days after Affleck returned to Los Angeles from the Sundance Film Festival.

According to Us magazine, Lopez was anxious to marry and start a family with the teetotal but hard-partying, gambling-loving Affleck, and was not thrilled when he was snapped on January 10, 2004 with his close friend Matt Damon, surrounded by a group of beautiful women in a German nightclub. A source told the magazine that "she was tired of waiting for him to come around".

Garfleck
After his break-up with Lopez, Affleck subsequently began dating his Daredevil (2003) co-star Jennifer Garner. Relationship rumors began in the fall of 2004, causing a media frenzy, where media outlets thought up multiple names for the new couple. BenJen, Bennifer Redux and Garfleck were among several mentioned; the later in which is most commonly used by the media. The two became engaged after nine months of dating. Affleck and Garner were married on June 29, 2005 in Turks and Caicos, located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The couple have three children: daughters Violet Anne Affleck (born December 1, 2005) and Seraphina Rose Elizabeth Affleck (born January 6, 2009), and son Samuel Garner Affleck (born February 27, 2012).

Influence
The name "Bennifer" was popularized by the director of their second film together Jersey Girl, directed by Kevin Smith.

The term Bennifer itself became popular, and was eventually entered into urban dictionaries or neologism dictionaries as notable, and the name blend started the trend of other celebrity couples being referred to by the combination of each others' first names.

The pairing eventually succumbed to overexposure, however, which caused public interest in their romance to result in less admiration and negatively affected their careers.

In 2007, Affleck stated: "[The romance] was probably bad for my career. What happens is this sort of bleed-over from the tabloids across your movie work. You go to a movie, you only go once. But the tabloids and Internet are everywhere. You can really subsume the public image of somebody. I ended up in an unfortunate crosshair position where I was in a relationship and [the media] mostly lied and inflated a bunch of salacious stuff for the sake of selling magazines. And I paid a certain price for that. Then, in concert with some movies that didn’t work…"