Jennifer Lopez was the celebrity guest on this week’s SmartLess podcast. Will Arnett, Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman were happy to chat with her – Sean was the one who brought her on, because they’ve known each other for years and years (because of Will & Grace). It’s crazy to realize that she’s genuinely the same generation as these guys too – Jennifer is 56, Jason is 57, Sean is 55, Will is 56. They’ve been around each other for decades in the industry, but this is the first time the guys really sat down with J.Lo and talked about her life and career. They got her to talk a little bit about the change she made after her split from Ben Affleck and their eventual divorce as well:

While discussing her past two years of healing following her divorce from Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez reflected on how she’s changed. Lopez called the past five years “a tumult,” while the past two years have been “a healing process from that tumult.”

“I really got to know myself, and the person I am today is so different than the person I was even two years ago,” she told Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett on their podcast SmartLess. Lopez said that the healing process allowed her to appreciate her life and what she created for herself.

“Do you recognize that that can be a real accomplishment for somebody in your position?” Bateman asked Lopez.

“There’s been different times where I felt like — whether people outside knew it or not — my life blew up in my own face,” Lopez said.

“It was because of the choices I made but also because of the fact that I had things that needed to change about myself that I didn’t understand or recognize that was attracting certain things and attracting a certain type of experience into my life,” she added.

Lopez continued, “After my last divorce, I just sat there, and I was like, I canceled my tour, I sat there and I was just like, ‘You need to f‑‑‑ing figure yourself out. What is going on with you? Forget about everybody else. There’s nobody to blame here except yourself in a certain way.'”

She concluded, “Not that people don’t behave in a way that’s not great, but what are you doing? What do you have going on? That was a turning point for me. And that was a couple of years ago now.”

[From EW]

She’s right and I like her perspective right now – taking ownership in the part that she played in the larger Bennifer fiasco, while also acknowledging that Ben checked out yet again and she fell for the same old BS again. Like… we all hoped it would end differently, but as soon as she made an album, a movie and a documentary about their life together, a lot of us knew that it would be a wrap on their marriage. Ben managed to do the thing which no other man had done: he got Jennifer to take a good hard look at herself and her own dysfunctional relationship patterns. She’s been single since the divorce, and now we all want the old J.Lo to come back and date Brett Goldstein (I hope she is, but I don’t know). I think it’s a good sign that we don’t really know if they’re dating, btw.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.