The 53-year-old spoke candidly about the couple rekindling their romance after two decades apart with American Vogue

Jennifer Lopez has said she’s “proud” to take husband Ben Affleck’s surname as she detailed her “empowering” marriage in a new cover shoot with American Vogue.

The singer, 53, and Affleck, 50, tied the knot in Las Vegas in July, 20 years after they were originally meant to say, ‘I do’.

The following month the couple, affectionately known as Bennifer, enjoyed another lavish three-day wedding at her new husband’s $8.9 million Georgia estate surrounded by friends and family.

In a new interview, the triple threat performer called taking the actor’s last name “romantic” and explained that she enjoys the tradition that comes with it.

She told the magazine: “People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez. But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we’re joined together. We’re husband and wife. I’m proud of that.

“I don’t think that’s a problem... It’s not traditional. It doesn’t have any romance to it. It feels like it’s a power move, you know what I mean?”

“I’m very much in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person,” she added. “I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that’s okay, too.

“But if you want to know how I feel about it, I just feel like it’s romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I’m just that kind of girl.”

The Hollywood stars first dated in July 2002 and got engaged in November of that year.

They were due to tie the knot in September 2003 but postponed the wedding just days before the ceremony. They ultimately called off their engagement in January 2004.

Following their split, Affleck went on to marry to actress Jennifer Garner, with whom he has three children – Violet, 16, Seraphina, 13, and Samuel, 10.

Meanwhile, Lopez’s other past relationships include her 10-year marriage to singer Marc Anthony, the father of her twins, Max and Emme. The pair divorced in 2014.

Reflecting on their unconventional love story, Lopez said she initially had her doubts about rekindling their relationship, confessing she thought, “Does [love] exist? Is it real?”

However, the Hustlers star explained that there was always a “real love” between them, they just had to go their separate ways to find each other again.

Lopez explained: “Obviously we weren’t trying to go out in public. But I never shied away from the fact that for me, I always felt like there was a real love there, a true love there.

“People in my life know that he was a very, very special person in my life. When we reconnected, those feelings for me were still very real…

The Hustlers star explained that there was always a ‘real love’ between them / Annie Leibovitz
“I don’t know that I recommend this for everybody. Sometimes you outgrow each other, or you just grow differently.

“The two of us, we lost each other and found each other. Not to discredit anything in between that happened, because all those things were real too.

“All we’ve ever wanted was to kind of come to a place of peace in our lives where we really felt that type of love that you feel when you’re very young and wonder if you can have that again.”

AE News