Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (2024)

by Dorje Kirsten

© Dorje Kirsten - published by The Evolving Astrologer, September 2023 / 12.12.2023

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck
Sources: Lopez in 2021: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Affleck in 2017: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

There are a few basic inquiries that comprise an astrologer’s bread and butter. One of the top three questions must be “Is this a good relationship?” Honestly, my eyebrows furrow when I hear this question.

Don’t get me wrong. I am always inquisitive to find the answer and excited to evaluate the charts. The furrow forms because the client usually has an agenda and wants a “Yes.” Unfortunately, the answer may not be what the client wants to hear.

As an astrologer who reads synastry charts, I have a mental list of what makes a good relationship. Identifying good synastry is the easy part. The astrologer’s challenge is how to guide the client.

For a relationship to last, I want to see a Sun/Moon conjunction, sextile, or trine. This ensures lasting harmony and friendship between the natives. When harmonious luminaries aren’t present, look for a hot Venus/Mars conjunction, sextile, or trine: aspects indicating great sex and even better makeup sex. What better glue for a long-term relationship than the pleasure of good sex?

When there are good contacts between the luminaries and between Venus and Mars, I am confident as a Matchmaker. These two people can form a family, stay together long-term, survive, and thrive through the misfortune that life throws at all relationships.

Alas, it is rare to see such a chart combo. When clients come to an astrologer asking if a relationship will work, they are in the pheromonal throws of eros. The client or clients, unless of a strong stoic nature, will not want to hear how the relationship will fail.

Eros typically melts away after one and a half to three years. If the relationship is to last longer than that, it will show up in the synastry chart. The astrologer’s role is to offer guidance that helps the client see the strengths, the challenges, and the strategies that will help them overcome relationship difficulties.

Ben & Jen

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez provide an excellent example of complex relationship astrology. The famous lovers have been together off and on for almost two decades. They almost married, then broke up, had children with other partners, and reunited 20 years later in marriage. Ben and Jennifer lack typically positive synastry aspects, yet they endure.

Ben Affleck was born on Aug 15, 1972, at 2:53 am in Berkeley, California.

His lifelong soulmate, his twin flame, the immaculate Jennifer Lopez, was born July 24, 1969, in New York City. The recorded time is 5:49 am, but her chart is not rated. Unrated charts can be used in synastry, with a focus on how planets and signs interact between the two natal charts.

On a bi-wheel chart, place the confirmed natal chart on the inner wheel and the unrated chart on the outer wheel. The dynamic energy of the planets is more important to show how two people will interact than the Ascendant, marking the individual personality or horoscope.

Imagine that Ben and Jen strolled into your Zoom meeting for a synastry reading 20 years ago with passionate love declarations.

Congratulations!

All astrologers should be so lucky to have elite ultra-wealthy clients.

Now, how to guide them?

In hindsight, you know there are challenges without even looking at the charts, but there is also glue. Could you help them navigate those challenges based on their synastry?

Chart Analysis

What are the aspects between the Sun and Moon?

Synastry between Jennifer and Ben
Inside: Affleck. Outside: Lopez

When an individual’s Sun aspects another’s Moon by conjunction, trine, or sextile, it indicates potential for a lifelong friendship. Harmony between the Sun and Moon shows people harmonizing and synthesizing each other's worldviews.

Ben’s Sun squares Jennifer’s Moon.

Ben’s Moon squares Jennifer’s Sun.

Squares between one person’s Sun and another’s Moon reflect stress between the individual's way of being and their emotional nature. The Sun person will push the emotional boundaries of the Moon person. This causes both to alter who they are, for better or worse, to accommodate what they see as the other person’s needs.

(Further analysis on the luminaries will be forthcoming, because there is a harmony here, and you may have already spotted it.)

What are the aspects between Mars and Venus?

The aspects between Venus and Mars will show if there is a sensual passion that can glue the couple together. The aspect we have in this chart is an inconjunct between JLo’s Mars in Sagittarius and Ben’s Venus in Cancer. JLo’s Mars needs to explore freely and passionately, and Ben’s Venus needs sensual comfort and nurturing.

Ben’s Virgo Mars seeks physical perfection. I guess he found that, but JLo’s Gemini Venus wants to be intellectually stimulated and playful. The Virgo Mars can certainly be intellectual as it too is ruled by Gemini, but Virgo is not known for being playful.

Jennifer Lopez has adventure-seeking humorous planets driving her passions and Ben Affleck has conservative comfort-seeking planets driving his passions. Their sensual compatibility is lacking, and it will not be the glue of this relationship.

Saturn as Karma

The way I look at synastry charts was informed early on by the works of Stephen Arroyo, whom I admire immensely for his psychological insights. In his works, Saturn is an expression of karma and attachment in a relationship. (1) With dual Saturn connections, this superstar couple has serious shared karma. JLo’s Saturn in Taurus opposes Ben’s Moon in Scorpio. In Gemini, his Saturn is conjunct her Venus.

One of Saturn’s gifts is being a container. Saturn sets boundaries by which people must live. Ben’s Saturn creates boundaries for Jennifer’s exploratory Venus. One perspective is that Ben can have a beneficial influence on JLo’s experience by helping to contain her experience of the world. A quality of a relationship that can help it last is if we feel “held” by the other person. This means that we feel protected by their presence. A harmonious Saturn contact with a personal planet can do this, with the result ideally being an enduring bond.

On the downside, a Saturn-Venus conjunction can be expressed as one partner controlling a person’s sensual expression. Even with other aspects being favorable, it is the nature of a Saturn aspect that the native receiving Saturn will at times feel as if their personal experience is being limited, no matter how good the relationship is. Any negative effects from this can be worked through with open communication, mutual understanding, or personal maturity.

Ben’s Moon rules his 1st House, so JLo’s Saturn is opposite his 1st House ruler. If the relationship becomes too stressful and he no longer feels supported, he will feel controlled and limited in his expression by Jennifer. If things go well, this will manifest as her support in setting boundaries with his own self-destructive emotional tendencies that the Scorpio Moon in the 5th House can express.

On closer examination, the Saturn-Venus conjunction in the bi-wheel is strengthened because Mr. Affleck’s Saturn is also on the bends of Mrs. Lopez’s Lunar Nodes. This partnership strikes a note on the instrument of her soul journey to find balanced relationship values. Her Nodes sit on his Midheaven axis propel his sense of purpose in the world. When we engage in the practice of synastry astrology, the Nodes stand out as indicating relationships that are deeply fated.

Ben Affleck has a notoriously difficult time with the attention of the paparazzi press and their unwanted and unneeded eyes and cameras intruding on his private life. With his Saturn in the 12th sitting on her Venus, Ben has publicly confronted, expressed discomfort, and scowled at the media to protect his beloved.

After all, Ben is a Cancer Rising and deeply protective of what he loves. Yet she shines in the spotlight and her legendary beauty is one of her great strengths. One reason their first engagement was called off due to excessive media attention.

What to advise this couple, then? Every astrologer will approach that differently. I approach it as looking at how these two people experience fulfillment as souls together, considering the “karma” and challenges the combo chart pose.

What is it that keeps them coming back to one another? The first time around, Jennifer left her then-husband to be with Ben. This was back in 2002. They worked on a film together called Gigli, and the North Node crossed over their Saturn-Venus conjunction in Gemini during filming. She dropped her second husband like a mangy dog, and soon after, Ben and JLo were kissing in a Bentley for the world to see.

This nodal transit illustrates that the synastry chart can light the fuse for couples (vs. a composite or Davidson chart.) Significant relationships are accompanied by life-changing transits for both people involved in the synastry chart.

The couple was engaged by November 2002 as eros burned fast and furious. Despite a flurry of commitment chatter between the two, things cooled as the transiting Nodes passed over her Saturn and his Moon on the Taurus/Scorpio axis. The couple hurt each other badly, as a hard aspect between Saturn and the Moon might predict.

Ben was accused of having affairs and going to strip clubs while they were engaged. Ben and Jennifer both have Chiron in Aries, so they could both be wounded by unchecked passions. His Gemini Saturn with wandering ways is conjunct her Venus. It must have harmed her Venusian self-image during this time. The public pressure and his wandering eye symbolized by a 5th House Scorpio Moon proved too much, and the wedding was canceled by Spring 2004.

Jennifer’s Chiron is square Ben’s Ascendant. When she called off the wedding and publicly denounced his immaturity, that must have stung, creating a deep wound for him. Her Saturn opposes his Moon, and Saturn teaches boundaries. Meanwhile, his Saturn sits on her Venus and she has since said that she was deeply emotionally hurt by the wedding with the “Love of her life” being called off. (2)

One might think the story ends here. Yes, they separated, married other partners, and had children. C’est la vie. It seemed the synastry could not hold past eros.

Not so fast, my dear reader, for the charts had karmic glue even if the eros had burned out.

These two are both eros-driven and emotional people. Both have the Sun in Leo and the Moon in Scorpio. Ben is a night sect chart, so the Moon takes the throne as the main luminary and drives him with a scorpionic passion that does not want to be controlled. Ben’s Scorpio Moon is trine Venus in his Cancer 1st House. Beauty and sex are his emotional comfort zones, and although Scorpio is fixed, the Moon wanders. It could be described as fixed lust with a wandering eye.

Jennifer’s Scorpio Moon is conjunct with Neptune, indicating high sensitivity and a vulnerability to romantic illusion, disillusion, and deception. With Ben’s Sun square her Moon and Neptune in Scorpio, she surely must captivate his imagination.

In examining the synastry, we see that because these two souls have a similar makeup with matching Sun and Moon signs, in their brief bout with eros, they discovered a kindred spirit in each other. They understand one another.

Both have Mercury and the Sun in Leo, so they communicate in a way that the other understands, and this brings us to the understanding that tight orbs are not necessary when judging harmony when planets are in the same sign in a synastry chart. With Mercury, the Sun, and the Moon placed in the same signs, these two have the essential component for an enduring friendship that one wants to see in a synastry chart.

Each person’s Sun exists in a square to the other’s Moon. They must irritate each other at times, but they do so in a familiar way since both have this square natally.

When Ben and Jennifer reunited as a couple in 2021, they announced that they remained friends all along, despite the dramatic breakup and separate marriages. Now in their 50s, eros is no longer the prime driver. Instead, each seeks a partner who understands them at a deep intimate level, beyond million-dollar wedding rings and star-filled passionate romps.

The reunion occurs as both experience their Chiron return, healing the past relationship wounds they afflicted on themselves and each other. Each has Saturn opposing the natal Sun and square the natal Moon. Saturn's hard aspects to the luminaries can result in a confrontation with mortality and increased maturity. It seems Ben and Jennifer have each tempered their passion in search of greater comfort, with the desire to commit to someone they know and can count on as a friend.

Older and wiser, Jennifer Lopez reportedly seeks a pre-nuptial agreement in case they do not remain together. Her asset-conscious Saturn still seeks individual stability.

Are they meant to be married? There are rumors they may divorce again, but if we examine the chart, we can understand they are meant to be friends and will be for life.

Here then, is the beauty of the synastry chart. Aspects between individuals and the transits to those aspects can explain how relationships come together and fall apart–and sometimes, come back together again. Synastry can also be used to examine what two souls are teaching each other and learning from one another in the relationship process.

As a compassionate and reasonable astrologer, my advice to a couple like Ben and Jennifer, in the throes of early youth, would be as follows:

Try to be a good friend to each other. Forgive one another's passions. Only commit once you are confident you can contain your excess and have the dedication it takes to learn, live, and love one another freely, that is the alchemy of this relationship.

References:
(1) Relationships and Life Cycles, Stephan Arroyo, CRCS Publications, 1993 2nd edition. Pg 110.
(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d8fq0OFxOo

Published in: The Evolving Astrologer, September 2023.

Author:
Dorje Kirsten is a professional astrologer who lives in Portland Oregon, with his wife and four children. He has been reading charts professionally since 2006. Before that time, he spent a blissful 12 years living at Chagdud Gonpa Foundation, a Tibetan Buddhist Retreat center as a full-time volunteer and retreatant. Dorje is also a Tea Master, software engineer, and 32º Mason. He just finished the OPA mentorship course with Kay Taylor and is now avidly studying Evolutionary Astrology. He has a certificate of accomplishment from Bernadette Brady’s Astro Logos medieval astrology school and Greek Astrology with Joseph Crane. His writings can be found at his website www.heartastrology.com and he posts daily horoscopes on Twitter under the handle @dorjepadma.

© 2023 - Dorje Kirsten - The Evolving Astrologer

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