JLo opens up on Ben Affleck love lessons

We all have lessons we'd like to share with our younger selves - and it seems superstars are no different.

While Jennifer Lopez has stayed at the top professionally for over twenty years, when it comes to her love life, there's a few things she now admits she needed to learn.

This week, she told the New York Times that she now knows how important it is in relationships, to 'hold it sacred' and not let the public in on too much.

Famously dating Ben Affleck once again, after their hugely public crash-and-burn love affair and engagement back in 2002-3, JLo is now keen to keep things private between them.

Back then, when the two were in their early thirties and newly famous, their public and private lives often melded - with her 2002 Jenny from The Block video featuring Affleck kissing her derriere in a bright pink wet-look bikini. The two were a red carpet fixture, and happy to talk about their love in interviews.

But when the film they made together, Gigli, was critically panned, media attention intensified - an issue that was blamed for their postponed wedding, and then split.

Watch: Jennifer Lopez goes Instagram official with Ben Affleck

Last year, after 18 years apart, the pair rekindled their romance - both now have children, and while Affleck was married to actor Jennifer Garner between 2005-2015, Lopez ricocheted between partners, including her third husband, singer Marc Anthony, and Drake (rumoured but never confirmed).

Now, they are seemingly back in love, but less loose-lipped, though The New York Times reports them sharing a kiss and a whispered "I love you" as Affleck leaves the room.

Asked whether the couple had 'strategised their relationship' with the press this time around, Lopez said, “I would say we learned our lesson the first time...to hold it sacred.

Read more: Ben Affleck opens up on his ‘beautiful’ reunion with Jennifer Lopez: 'It's a great story'

“You have to do what feels good to you all the time. But at the same time, you learn from the past, you do things better the second time. There’s a part of it that, yes, we’re together. But there’s a part of it that’s not, you know, being so open the way we were when we were so young and in love many years ago.”

When it came to her recent relationships - most recently, four years with basketball star Alex Rodriguez, though she was also open about her life on instagram and in interviews, she said, “When you’re in things, you do what feels right. And I don’t beat myself up over ‘I wish I had done this differently’ or ‘Did I do too much?'

“That’s what was comfortable at the time. I did what I did. He did what he did. And it was fine. The relationship stuff had nothing to do with being public or not being public.”

Read more: Ben Affleck photographed at Tiffany's as Jennifer Lopez engagement rumours swirl

Her latest movie, Marry Me, is a return to the big, glam rom-com for the star. She plays a global singing superstar (no change there) who ends up marrying a hapless singleton maths teacher played by Owen Wilson.

"Like in the movie, you sometimes have to take a leap off a cliff and believe that you're not going fall... you might soar," JLo told an interviewer recently.

"And I believe that too."

She told the New York Times, “You can’t live life and think that things are just mistakes: 'I just messed up there, I messed up there'. No, it’s all lessons.

“It’s really what can you extrapolate from it that is going to help you grow and go to the next level of understanding yourself, finding yourself and being able to be at peace with your life, at peace with who you are.”