Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s birthday European yacht cruise ended over a week ago, with the two of them leaving separately as Ben went off to Paris to meet up with his daughter Violet and JLo returned to LA a few days later. They were not seen together publicly through the week. And then came the weekend, as if they knew we were starting to go into withdrawal and they had a duty to gossip to restore our gossip oxytocin. Gossip-tocin? 

 

Oxytocin, after all, is the “love hormone”, sometimes colloquially referred to as the “love drug”. And Ben and JLo are definitely on it right now – and so are we by extension. 

Here are some shots of Ben visiting his kids and JLo out furniture shopping. The more interesting shots, obviously, are these ones of Bennifer out for dinner on Saturday night in Beverly Hills. He put on a jacket to match her style energy. They spent three hours at the restaurant so, obviously, it was a romantic good time. 

And they weren’t done. Because the next day they hit the beach… and they weren’t alone. TMZ has the photos and as you can see, Matt Damon is with them.

You see what I mean about Bennifer and the “JLo Effect” supercharging my gossip senses? Because just last week, when Matt was getting called out for his comments about using homophobic slurs, I wrote that maybe he could use a little of the Bennifer and “JLo Effect” as a distraction from his own sh-tty headlines, to bounce his negative press off the Bennifer glow. And now here we are… 

 

Ben’s best friend is hanging out with Bennifer. And they all look like they’re having a great time, smiling and relaxed, as Matt walks next to Bennifer holding hands. 

You know what’s curiously coincidental though? They seem to be in the EXACT SAME SPOT as they were EXACTLY A YEAR AGO, only at that time Ben had a different girlfriend. 

I posted about Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas at the beach with Matt and his family back on August 5, 2020 – click here for a refresher. Never mind us, if you told any of these people back then that fast forward exactly twelve months and they’d return to this spot with JLo, they’d tell you to get the f-ck out of here. 

But now here we are. It is Bennifer Summer. It is 2021 and not 2002. And JLo, who was rarely seen with Matt and Ben’s friends in the OG Bennifer era, is now hanging out with Matt. One of the major issues that contributed to Bennifer’s broken engagement was that they couldn’t unite their respective worlds. This time around we’re seeing that their worlds, including children and friends, both his and hers, are intersecting. These two clearly want to make this work beyond Bennifer Summer. Can we believe in a Bennifer Autumn?