Los Angeles, February 28 – Hollywood actress Jennifer Garner has discussed the challenges she faced while co-parenting her children with her former husband, Ben Affleck, and said that the former couple has learned how to "be both parents".
The Hollywood actress married Ben in 2005, and they welcomed three children, Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel, but they separated after a decade of marriage in 2015.
During an appearance on Bustle's One Nightstand podcast, Jennifer explained: "When your children grow up in two separate households, I become both mom and dad, and he becomes both dad and mom.
"You kind of can't help it, right? Because you don't have the benefit of having both parents in the same house, so you have to have a bit of both in the way you parent.”
"There's a little bit of loss in that, but there's also something gained in that... You also just learn, it's made me let go and not focus so much on raising them," she added, according to femalefirst.co.uk.
After the divorce, Garner opened up about the couple's relationship, calling Ben the "love of her life" and insisting that they would always feel bonded despite the separation.
She told Vanity Fair magazine in 2016: "I didn't marry the big, famous movie star; I married him. And I would go back and make that decision again. I ran down the beach to him, and I would again. You can't have these three babies and so much of what we had. He's the love of my life.
"We still have to help each other get through this (divorce). He's still the only person who really knows the truth about things. And I'm still the only person that knows some of his truths."
Affleck, who later married and divorced Jennifer Lopez, later said he never wanted to separate from his first wife because he was worried about the effect it would have on the children, but the exes have made it work.
During an appearance on Good Morning America in 2020, he explained: "I didn't want to get divorced, I didn't want to be a divorced person, I really didn't want to have a split family with my children. It upset me because it meant I wasn't who I thought I was, and that was so painful and so disappointing. In myself.
"When you have children with somebody, you're connected to them forever. And I'm very lucky that she (Jennifer) is the mother of my children.
"I'm very grateful and respectful of her. Our marriage didn't work, and that's difficult. Both of us really believe that it's important for kids to see their parents respect one another and get along, whether they're together or not."
