Catherine Zielinski“Bennifer” would be no more. Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck saw their love reborn only to die out again. On August 20, Jennifer Lopez officially filed for divorce. The end of a second attempt at marital bliss. Eighteen years after their first separation, they had defied the past by getting married in Las Vegas. Since then, the couple had become the symbol of the second chance in love.
Both posed as a glamorous showcase for a surprising statistic: 50% of couples would decide to give it another chance after breaking up, according to a study by researchers from the Universities of Utah and Toronto, published at the end of 2021 in the journal “Social Psychological and Personality Science”. How can this be explained? For Camille Rochet, psychologist and couples psychotherapist*, “the current anxiety-provoking context reinforces the idea of the couple as a cocoon value. We understand the nostalgia that some may feel when thinking back to this ex, who they met in more carefree times”. A relationship that would also be tinged with lightness, because it is devoid of the massive stakes of a professional career or parenthood, often already accomplished. Rather tempting, isn’t it? “These reformed couples, the majority of whom are in their forties or fifties, are a beautiful ode to midlife, and prove that everything is still possible. But for this reunion to last, it is important that each person has worked on themselves and analyzed the reasons for the breakup. Accepting that the other person may have changed over time is important. Wanting to find the person from before, or even trying to find yourself from ten or twenty years ago, is a perilous fantasy,” says Camille Rochet. For ELLE, four women and a couple told us their stories. From the first to the second time, between passions and small disappointments.
17 years later, Laëtitia and Jean-Christophe continue their romance
“In 2003, I was 22 and I started an internship in a bookstore in Isère for my literature studies,” says Laëtitia. Jean-Christophe was in charge of the neighboring stationery store, and we talked about our reading. I quickly fell in love with this man twelve years older than me, unfortunately married with two young children. The beginning of an unbearable wait with an unfortunate outcome. JC, paralyzed by the idea of upsetting the balance of his home, could not hold me back when a job opportunity presented itself to me in Paris. We cut ties, and I met my now ex-husband, with whom I have a daughter, 13, and a son, 9.
In 2016, I went to Isère to a symposium on the metabolic disorder that my son suffers from. I was consumed by guilt, as a healthy carrier, for having passed this pathology on to our child, and my marriage was in trouble when I took advantage of this trip to say hello to the bookstore. JC was still there. He divorced a few years ago. He handed me the book he had written. “I would like to have your opinion.” In “L’Injure du temps”, I rediscovered our story. His love for me. His doubts and fears. A book in which we are the heroes but to which I could not be receptive, being then entirely focused on my son’s problems. After my divorce, JC called me back, he had written the second volume, in which he killed me from the first lines! He described me with an accuracy that upset me. For a year, we had a passionate epistolary relationship. One day I jump on a train.
In 2020, seventeen years later, the second part of the book of our story can finally begin. And how different the flavor is! After a few strange months, during which I had to tame the legitimacy of our couple, understand that I was no longer this hidden “other”, I finally gained confidence. It must be said that I am no longer this 20-year-old kid, physically self-conscious and in search of an absent father. My son’s illness pushed me to work on myself which allowed me to approach this second story in a healthy way. Today, we finally have the feeling of being able to live authentically. Because we know our flaws. And if everyday life sometimes shakes us up, I just have to reopen “The Injury of Time” to remind myself that this passing time is a gift for our story.
31 years later, Sylvie forgives William
“I will never forget the day our eyes met for the first time on the wheel of that funfair. Nor the wonderful summer that followed, with our sneaking out of our parents’ house to experience our “first time” together. I was 19, William, 20,” Sylvie confides. “That same summer, William cheated on me with one of my best friends. The hurt was so great that I stayed away from Meudon, where we both lived, for almost three years. In 1985, I was 27, and the day after my engagement, where I was struck down by gastroenteritis, I ran into William again in the waiting room of my GP. While the doctor kept us waiting, he asked me for forgiveness, confessing that he had never forgotten me. “I was sincere,” William assured me, “I kicked myself for it for years.” » Sylvie breaks off her engagement, and the story continues. “It will last six nightmarish months,” she says. Eaten up by resentment, I am unable to forgive and make his life hell. William gives up, leaves for England, and we forget each other for twenty-six years. Years during which my three wonders are born, from a husband as adorable as he is fickle – yes, I know, I had to attract them! – whom I end up leaving, on good terms, at the age of fifty. For his part, William, separated from an English woman with whom he had a daughter, is back in France, and I meet him at a dinner organized by mutual friends. Twenty-six years later, I jump back in time when he starts courting me again. I made him stew for almost five years, dissuaded by my very protective entourage. “A tender relationship in the middle of the friend zone. Is that what they say now?” she laughs. Light years away from the passion we had known in its most toxic form, we have now been living a serene and gentle relationship for eleven years. Like a reward for the work we did on ourselves before finding each other for good. “Third time is a charm”, as the English say?
20 years later, Maud and Rémi face the challenge
“I met Rémi, a friend of my sister, when he was 20, in the heart of our family vacation,” says Maud. “I was 16, and it was love at first sight. The relationship lasted two months, shrouded in a feeling of strangeness that I put down to our age difference. We crossed paths again for twenty years, good friends, a little embarrassed. One evening, a little drunk at a party, he took me in his arms: “You know, it’s always been you.” We were astonished by the obviousness of what happened to us and we got engaged within three weeks. I fell pregnant four months later. While we were enchanted by this passion, made fluid by years of friendship, everything went dark. During my first pregnancy, Rémi, who grew up in Africa and whose unconventional personality made me dream, suddenly lost interest in everything. Thinking he was depressed , we had multiple appointments with a psychologist.
In 2018, I was 40 years old. Exhausted from looking for answers, I had a burnout. In ELLE, I discovered an article about Asperger’s syndrome that made us both understand what no shrink had been able to diagnose in Rémi for five years. All my anger disappeared, but we understood that he was not made for family life or even for life as a couple. We ended up separating. Today, we are trying to move on but remain very close – and not just for the children. I sincerely hope to rebuild my life one day, but he will always remain someone special to me.
19 years later, Sandra and Tomer reprise their most beautiful roles
“In 1997, I was 23 and a waitress at the Cannes Film Festival,” says Sandra. “With Tomer, a budding actor, it was love at first sight and he asked me to marry him a year later. Obsessed with my independence, after being raised by a single mother with demanding values, I got scared and left him. It was too late when I realized I had let the love of my life slip away. The following year, I met my husband, who healed my wounds and gave me the most beautiful gift: our son Dino. A beautiful fifteen-year story, which ended in a painful divorce.
“He whispers in my ear: ‘Are you ready to finish our story?’”
Cannes Film Festival 2016. Now the boss of my communications company, I nearly had a heart attack when Tomer showed up, who had a great career and whom I sometimes thought about. In the middle of the party, I came out of a long coma when he whispered in my ear: “Are you ready to end our story?” It’s been six years since we picked up the thread again. Together, with Dino and Tomer’s two children, we built our invincible club of five, with the awareness, perhaps due to our age and the struggles we experienced separately, of deserving the happiness we experience every day. I sometimes think that having our children together would have changed things, motherhood having upset the balance of my first marriage. I had built a shell for myself that Tomer shattered, and today I have the sweet impression of being this pretty pot glued back together that contains all the charm of the past. Of course, this second part also has its share of setbacks. Like the loss of this little angel who flew from my belly to the sky, three years ago. But, with Tomer, nothing seems insurmountable. And if I had to relive all these pains to arrive in his arms, I would do it.
21 years later, Sébastien finally finds Samantha again
In July 2001, Sébastien flew to Salvador de Bahia to take part in a volleyball tournament. As soon as he arrived, he was captivated by Samantha, a Brazilian translator. Nine days of competition to seduce her. After each match, they remade the world. “I learned that he was a geophysicist, like my father,” says Samantha. “I was 22. He was 28. The ages at which my parents got married. Innocent coincidences that seem full of meaning to me today!” A kiss on the beach, an exchange of emails, and Sébastien returned to Paris. In September, Samantha landed a university exchange in Madrid. Their story began between France and Spain, during romantic weekends. “At Christmas, my mother traveled to spend the holidays with me, and we ended up in Montpellier with Seb’s parents, after five months together! It was natural, obvious to everyone.” In February 2002, Sébastien’s uncle offered Samantha an internship in Paris and they moved in together. “Three months on cloud nine,” she said. But Samantha had to go back to Brazil to finish her studies. Since neither of them could find a job across the Atlantic, love letters were no longer enough. “No arguments. Just a forced renunciation.” Sébastien met his wife. With each romantic disappointment, Samantha thought back to the man with whom everything had been so perfect. In 2012, during a stay in France, she stopped by to say hello to Sébastien, who had just had his second child. They happily reminisced about the past. “But I kept my distance. I felt that seeing her again could be risky,” he said. After my divorce in 2019, I didn’t have the courage to commit to a new relationship when Samantha told me she was being transferred to Rotterdam. When my best friend, Olivier, admitted to me that he had never seen me as happy as with her, I flew to Holland.” Having just moved to the south of France with Sébastien and his children, Samantha concludes: “The evidence that struck us twenty years ago is the same. It is finally up to us to let her live!”
* Author of “5 beliefs that prevent you from being happy as a couple”
Christopher Luu
Benjamin Wallace-Wells
Joy Montgomery