Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck's relationship timeline as divorce finalised

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are officially over for the second time, after their divorce was legally finalised on 6 January.

It was the celebrity romance that gripped fans, spanning more than 20 years, two engagements and one wedding, with other marriages and children for both along the way.

Sadly, it doesn't look like there'll be a fairytale ending for Bennifer with the pair's split now officially confirmed. Their love story has had more twists and turns than any movie the two stars have appeared in - here's how the timeline of their relationship played out.

2002: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck meet

The long-running romance first began back in early 2002, when Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck met on the set of rom-com Gigli.

While the film was mostly panned, the co-stars' chemistry lasted much longer and they began dating shortly after Lopez divorced her second husband, dancer Cris Judd, in 2003.

Unfortunately for the couple, it also coincided with huge tabloid interest in celebrity relationships, something they have said they struggled with as they tried to navigate life in the public eye.

Lopez told People in 2016: "We didn’t try to have a public relationship. We just happened to be together at the birth of the tabloids, and it was like ‘Oh my God.’ It was just a lot of pressure."

She added of meeting Affleck: "I felt like...‘Okay, this is it.' Sometimes I feel like what you think people are and how you see them when you love them is different than when they reveal later."

2002: Bennifer are engaged for the first time

Fans saw Lopez and Affleck poke fun at the tabloid attention in her music video for Jenny From The Block, where Affleck appeared with her on a boat and the video included mocked-up surveillance footage.

However, despite outside pressures, the romance continued and in 2002 the couple got engaged for the first time.

Affleck bought his bride-to-be a 6.1-carat pink diamond from Harry Winston that is said to have cost $2.5 million (£1,994,177).

2003: Wedding one is postponed

The couple went on to appear in more movies together, including rom-com Jersey Girl with Liv Tyler, as they prepared for their September 2003 wedding.

But as the tabloids hunted out any detail of the ceremony they could possibly find, it all became too stressful and they postponed their wedding just a few days before it was set to take place.

In a statement at the time, they explained: "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 began to feel that the spirit of what should have been the happiest day of our lives could be compromised. We felt what should have been a joyful and sacred day could be spoiled for us, our families and our friends."

January 2004: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck split

Unfortunately, the postponement turned into something more permanent as Bennifer struggled to come back from calling off their wedding.

By January 2004, Lopez's reps confirmed their split and while the stars stayed in touch on and off over the years, it would be nearly 20 years before they resumed their romance.

June 2004: Jennifer Lopez marries Marc Anthony

Lopez did marry again, less than a year after postponing her wedding to Affleck. She got together with singer Marc Anthony, who had been a friend for years, and married him in 2004.

The couple welcomed twins Emme and Max in 2008, but had split by 2014 with Lopez later acknowledging their relationship had started at too rocky a time.

In her 2014 book True Love, she wrote: "Ben and I split up at the moment when I thought we were committing to each other forever, it was my first real heartbreak, it felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest. I sought out comfort in another person, tried to find someone who could make me feel loved and wanted in my loneliest hour...Marc came back into my life three days after I should have been at the altar saying ‘I do’ to another man."

She admitted: "Thinking back, maybe deep down I knew that this was a Band-Aid on the cut, that my wound hadn’t been stitched or healed."

2005: Ben Affleck marries Jennifer Garner

Affleck also managed to find love again not long after his relationship with Lopez fell apart.

He married Jennifer Garner in 2005, and during their time together they had three children - daughters Violet and Seraphina, and son Samuel.

Mirroring Lopez' life, the film stars divorced in 2018.

2021: Bennifer are back on

After nearly two decades of Bennifer being confined to the dim and distant past of former celebrity couples, the pair shocked fans in 2021 when rumours began swirling that they were back together.

There were various reports of Lopez and Affleck being spotted at each other's houses and out on dates, while they were said to have spent a week on holiday together in Montana reconnecting.

It quickly became serious as the couple were said to have introduced their five kids and moved in together, while in July Lopez went Instagram official with a birthday photo reel featuring Affleck.

Bennifer made their first rekindled red carpet appearance together in September at the Venice Film Festival.

April 2022: Second engagement

While Bennifer were firmly back on by 2022, it still came as a surprise to many that they had decided to get engaged again in April that year.

Sharing the happy news via her fan newsletter On the J-Lo, Lopez wrote: "Did you ever imagine your biggest dream could come true? Saturday night while at my favorite place on earth (in the bubble bath), my beautiful love got on one knee and proposed.

"I was taken totally off guard and just looked in his eyes smiling and crying at the same time trying hard to get my head around the fact that after 20 years this was happening all over again, I was quite literally speechless and he said, ‘is that a yes?’ I said YES of course that’s a YES."

July 2022: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are finally married

This time, Lopez and Affleck were determined to make it down the aisle - so much so, that they were married twice.

First up, the couple tied the knot in a drive-through wedding in Las Vegas attended by their children on both sides as witnesses.

Lopez shared in her newsletter: "They were right when they said, ‘all you need is love’. We are so grateful to have that in abundance, a new wonderful family of five amazing children and a life that we have never had more reason to look forward to.

"Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in a drive through in Las Vegas at twelve thirty in the morning in the tunnel of love drive through, with your kids and the one you’ll spend forever with. Love is a great thing, maybe the best of things-and worth waiting for."

She added: "It's a beautiful outcome that this has happened in this way at this time in our lives where we can really appreciate and celebrate each other and respect each other. We always did, but we have even more of an appreciation because we know that life can take you in different directions."

The happy couple took their children to Paris on honeymoon, before repeating the whole wedding with friends and family in Georgia in August and then honeymooning in Italy.

Lopez told her fans of their wedding day: "Some old wounds were healed that day and the weight of the past finally lifted off our shoulders. Full-circle — and not at all the way we planned it. Better."

November 2022: Jennifer Lopez opens up on romance

Later that year, Lopez spoke to Apple Music's Zane Lowe about her new album This Is Me...Now, saying it had been inspired by her relationship with Affleck - just like her 2002 album This Is Me...Then had been.

She said of the earlier album: "When I listen to the lyrics now, I didn’t even realise that I was writing some of our story that would happen, which was sick. … I didn’t even realise it was kind of prophetic in a way."

Opening up on their relationship history, she added: "It was so painful after we broke up. Once we called off that wedding 20 years ago, it was the biggest heartbreak of my life. And I honestly felt like I was gonna die. It sent me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I … couldn’t get it right.

"But now, 20 years later, it does have a happy ending. It has the most, would-never-happen-in-Hollywood ending. They would be like, ‘That would never happen so we’re not gonna write that because nobody would believe it’ ending."

February 2024: This Is Me...Now: A Love Story

The album was accompanied by a Prime Video musical film, which Lopez and Affleck had spoken about in an earlier documentary for the streaming service, The Greatest Love Story Never Told.

Confusing viewers and critics, the film made plenty of tongue-in-cheek references to Lopez's own life.

She starred as a character based on herself called "the Artist" whose love life was presided over by a Zodiac love council made up of Jane Fonda, Sofia Vergara, Post Malone, Keke Palmer and a host of other famous faces.

The Artist loses the love of her life in a motorcycle accident and then goes through a series of unsuitable relationships as the Zodiac love council despair at her choice of men. Lopez poked fun at the public view of her love life by featuring three different grooms in one wedding sequence, but eventually she finds love with Ben Affleck in a representation of their real-life love story.

She told Variety: "Everybody thought I was crazy. And by the way, I thought I was crazy."

2024: Split for the second time

Heartbreakingly for Bennifer fans, happy ever after was not to be second time around, either. By early 2024, there were rumours they had split, with Affleck not attending Lopez's 55th birthday party in the summer.

Although Lopez and Affleck were occasionally seen out at family events with each others' children, by August 2024 the news fans had been dreading was confirmed - Lopez had filed for divorce.

She told Interview magazine later in the year that she did not regret giving things another go: "Not one second. That doesn’t mean it didn’t almost take me out for good. It almost did. But now, on the other side of it, I think to myself, ‘F***, that is exactly what I needed. Thank you, god. I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m sorry that you had to do this to me so many times. I should have learned it two or three times ago. I get it. You had to hit me really hard over the head with a f***ing sledgehammer. You dropped the house on me. Don’t have to do it again'."

She added that she would not be looking for another relationship.

January 2025: Divorce finalised

Lopez and Affleck have reportedly begun 2025 with a fresh start as their divorce was said to have been legally finalised on 6 January.

Neither star has yet made an official statement on the divorce.