On December 14, 2021, Ben Affleck apparently woke up and chose violence. While speaking to Howard Stern, Ben opened up about his years as an alcoholic and the years he spent married to Jennifer Garner.
As many of us know, there's some pretty considerable overlap between the two, so to a degree it makes sense that Ben might frame his alcoholism in the context of his marriage. However, the way he chose to do it leaves much to be desired.
Ben decided that he was going to go full throttle with this interview, and he essentially blamed Jennifer Garner for his drinking problem in the first place. As he put it, "Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped. I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ And what I did was [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution."
This admission seems to be at odds with his previous statement from February 2020. While speaking to The New York Times, Ben revealed that his divorce was his biggest regret. He added, "Shame is really toxic. There is no positive byproduct of shame. It’s just stewing in a toxic, hideous feeling of low self-worth and self-loathing."
Fast-forward to December 2021, and it seems Ben has changed his truth, or perhaps many things can be true at one time. Regardless of what he feels and believes, it's hard to argue that admitting this in a public space is in the best interest of his children or his co-parenting relationship with their mother.
Ben continued by adding that those same children are the reason he stopped drinking. "The cure for addiction is suffering. You suffer enough before something inside you goes, ‘That’s enough.’ It was my kids. I’m lucky because I hit that point before I lost the things that were most important. Not my career or money — it was my relationship with my kids, and when I felt as if it impacted them, I recognized it."
It's admirable that Ben wants to be honest about his addiction and recovery, especially as he will have to answer questions from his children about both. What's less than admirable is the way he lays blame at the feet of their mother, as if there was something she could have done to stop him from drinking in the first place.
As for his marriage and subsequent divorce, Ben did try to wrap things up nicely. He explained, "The truth was we took our time, we made the decision, we grew apart. We had a marriage that didn’t work. We tried because we had kids. We did not want it to be the model of marriage for the kids. We did our best. She’s somebody I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer."
