Jennifer Lopez Said Her Relationship With Alex Rodriguez Wouldn’t Have Worked When They First Met

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez began dating 12 years after they met for the first time. The pair did not have a close friendship in this over-a-decade period. Instead, they reconnected in 2017 and discovered that they had an incredible amount in common. While they said they were like twins, Lopez admitted the relationship would never have worked out if they had started dating after their first meeting.

Jennifer Lopez said her relationship with Alex Rodriguez wouldn’t have worked when they first met

In 2005, Lopez and then-husband Marc Anthony attended a Yankees game, where they met Rodriguez, a player at the time. Rodriguez was also married, but Lopez admitted to feeling immediate chemistry with him. 

“We shook hands, and it was this weird electricity for, like, three seconds,” she told Sports Illustrated. “Three to five seconds of looking at somebody right in their eyes, and getting stuck.”

Years later, Lopez watched as Rodriguez received a one-year suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs. She said she greatly admired the way he came back from this scandal.

“The most impressive thing to me was how he did pick himself up and take that opportunity to make himself a better person,” she told Vanity Fair. “The hardest times prove who you are. That’s what I love and admire the most about Alex. He doesn’t let anything beat him. He just comes back stronger.”

She said that Rodriguez’s growth was one of the reasons they fit well together. He had taken time to work on himself, which was why their relationship worked. She did the same thing over the years. Because of this, she didn’t think they would have been in the right place to be in a relationship when they first met.

“We had to grow and discover ourselves first,” she explained.

Jennifer Lopez said she had a lot in common with Alex Rodriguez

After years of growth and self-discovery, Rodriguez and Lopez discovered that they had a lot in common. 

“I understand him in a way that I don’t think anyone else could, and he understands me in a way that no one else could ever,” she said. “In his 20s, he came into big success with the biggest baseball contract [at the time]. I had a No. 1 movie and a No. 1 album and made history. We both had ups and downs and challenges in our 30s, and by our 40s we’d both been through so much. And more importantly than anything, we had both done a lot of work on ourselves.”

Rodriguez agreed, adding that their upbringings also helped shape them.

“We are very much twins,” he said. “We’re both Leos; we’re both from New York; we’re both Latino and about 20 other things.”

She once admitted he was easier to be with than Ben Affleck

After Lopez and Rodriguez ended their engagement, she entered into a relationship with Ben Affleck. The couple was together in the early 2000s and called off their engagement due in part to the constant attention on them. She admitted that it was easier to date Rodriguez because they didn’t receive the same level of scrutiny.

“It was actually worse then,” she told InStyle in 2018. “It was just crazy. Now at least I can show you who I am a little bit. Back then you just believed anything you read on the cover of a tabloid. Many times it wasn’t true, or it was like a third of the truth.”