Bennifer is back, but don’t rush to contact your ex, say experts

J Lo and Ben Affleck did it, but experts urge restraint after lockdown prompts ‘rekindled romance’ dating trend

Relationship experts have warned against romanticising the idea of getting back with your ex-partner, after it was confirmed that one of the most famous celebrity couples – Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck – were back together.

“Part of what makes the Bennifer [Jennifer and Ben] story so enticing is that it fills a neat romantic narrative: two people who were in love but things came between them and they find each other again 20 years later,” said the dating coach Hayley Quinn.

“Relationships can work and people can get back together at different stages of time, but it is important not to romanticise getting back with an ex. If 20 years have passed then they will be a different person to the one you met originally,” she added.

Lopez and Affleck are not the only couple to have reunited during the pandemic. Research from the dating site Match found that a quarter of people were contacted by a bored ex or past acquaintance over the first lockdown in 2020.

Quinn said Covid had prompted people to re-evaluate their lives and that there was a “huge dating trend of rekindled romances”. Quinn said the pandemic meant people who were long-term commitment-phobes were turning around and wanting relationships. But she cautioned that returning to a former partner needed to be for the right reasons, not because there was no one else on the horizon. “A good relationship should bring stability to life, not constant turmoil,” she added.

Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist, thinks that going back to a former love can work – but only if you have changed.

“It depends on the maturity of the couple and … how much space and time there was in between splitting up and getting back together. When you’re older it is more likely to work out as you tend to benefit from the lessons of why it went wrong. When we are older we tend to be more reflective rather than impulsive,” she added.

Blair thinks the story of Lopez and Affleck has captured people’s imaginations because the idea of a love lost and found again is romantic. But the moral, she says, is not to jump back in but to take the time to understand why the relationship did not work last time so you can learn lessons and try again.