Ben Affleck calls Jennifer Garner divorce 'the biggest regret of my life'

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner were married for 13 years and share three children together: Violet, 14, Seraphina, 11, and Sam, 7. However, they announced their split in 2015 following a string of 'marital problems' and their divorce was finalised in 2018.

Garner gave a full interview to Vanity Fair in 2016 detailing the breakdown of the marriage, stating: 'It was a real marriage. It wasn’t for the cameras. And it was a huge priority for me to stay in it. And that did not work.'

Now, in an interview with the New York Times, Affleck has opened up about his divorce, saying: 'People with compulsive behaviour, and I am one, have this kind of basic discomfort all the time that they’re trying to make go away.

'You’re trying to make yourself feel better with eating or drinking or sex or gambling or shopping or whatever. But that ends up making your life worse. Then you do more of it to make that discomfort go away. Then the real pain starts. It becomes a vicious cycle you can’t break. That’s at least what happened to me.'

The Batman actor spoke about his relationship with alcohol, explaining that he drank 'relatively normally for a long time' but turned to the bottle when his marriage 'was falling apart'.

He continued: 'What happened was that I started drinking more and more when my marriage was falling apart. This was 2015, 2016. My drinking, of course, created more marital problems.'

Affleck added: 'The biggest regret of my life is this divorce. 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.

'It’s not particularly healthy for me to obsess over the failures — the relapses — and beat myself up. I have certainly made mistakes. I have certainly done things that I regret. But you’ve got to pick yourself up, learn from it, learn some more, try to move forward.'