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Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony were married from 2004 to 2014. Here are some of the things J.Lo said about her relationship with her ex-husband.

Jennifer Lopez says Marc Anthony helped her overcome feelings of insecurity

Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony sing during a concert.
Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony | Michael Tran/FilmMagic

During a 2013 interview with Cosmopolitan, Lopez spoke about how Anthony helped her feel secure again. She credits him with giving her the confidence she needed to believe in herself.

“The biggest insecurity I had was my singing,” says Lopez. “Even though I had sold 70 million records, there was this feeling like, I’m not good at this. And while I was married to Marc, he helped me get over it. He kept telling me, ‘You’re the only one holding yourself back from reaching your full potential as a singer. You have to let go.’”

Lopez tells Cosmopolitan that she began to see her worth as an artist. “I was always so insecure,” says Lopez. “Then I grew, little by little, and realized, wait a minute, this is not a fluke. I’m not a mistake—I work my ass off. And I know what I’m doing.”

Jennifer Lopez says her problems with Marc Anthony weren’t about him

Lopez said one of the biggest revelations she had during therapy was about Anthony. She says therapy helped her realize the marital problems she had with him were not about him. She learned she had to do a lot of work within herself. She says she also learned how her issues played a role in some of the conflict they had.

“[The problems] I had weren’t about anyone else—they were about me,” wrote Lopez in her book True Love. “And there were a lot of problems. One, I discovered I had low self-esteem, which I had never pictured myself as having. Two, I worked on learning what integrity meant, which would cause a massive change.”

Jennifer Lopez’s ‘hardest work’ involves co-parenting with Marc Anthony

Lopez and Anthony’s twins, Emme and Max Muñiz, were born in 2008. After the couple divorced, Lopez   says her focus was on co-parenting their children. Lopez says it’s the “hardest work” she does. It was tough at first for her to reach a place of forgiveness after divorcing her second husband. However, she learned to work through things.

“When my marriage ended, it was not easy to find forgiveness,” Lopez tells W magazine in 2016. “It wasn’t the dream that I had hoped for, and it would have been easier to fan the flames of resentment, disappointment, and anger. But Marc is the father of my children, and that’s never going away. So, I have to work to make things right. And that is, by far, the hardest work I do.”

Jennifer Lopez says Marc Anthony made her ‘feel loved’ after the Ben Affleck breakup

In her book, Lopez describes the end of her engagement to Ben Affleck as her “first real heartbreak.” She admits she didn’t want to be alone after their relationship ended, and she felt meeting Anthony wasperfect timing. She says she welcomed a new love into her life because she and Anthony had known each other for years before they became a couple.

Lopez says she had always been fond of Anthony, and she was ready to start a romantic relationship. She described being reunited with him as the “start of her fairy tale.” Lopez says she loved Anthony for making her feel loved when she was going through a low point in her life.

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