Jennifer Lopez is revisiting one of the most difficult chapters of her personal life—and the moment she says nearly pushed her to walk away from everything.
“It was actually a really tough time,” Lopez said onstage. “I was really about to give up on it all. I mean, I was a single mom with two 3-year-old twins.”
Lopez and Anthony married in 2004 and welcomed twins Max and Emme in 2008. The pair separated in 2011 and finalized their divorce in 2014, ending a relationship that had been both personal and professional. Their split marked Lopez’s third divorce at the time.
During the residency performance, Lopez told fans that advice from late self-help author Louise Hay helped her reframe that difficult period. According to Lopez, Hay asked her to think about her background as a dancer.
“She said to me, ‘Jennifer, you’re a dancer, right?’” Lopez recalled. “When you’re learning a dance and you get the steps wrong, what do you do?”
Lopez said she told Hay that dancers simply keep practicing until the routine is right. Hay responded with a message Lopez says she has carried ever since: “That’s right, Jennifer. Always keep dancing.”
“And I wish the same for each and every one of you,” Lopez told the crowd. “No matter what life throws at you, that you dance and you dance and you dance… again and again and again.”
The comments arrive at a time when Lopez’s personal history has been under renewed scrutiny. She has been married four times, beginning with Cuban actor Ojani Noa in the late 1990s.
Lopez later married dancer Cris Judd in 2001, then divorced him in 2003. Her relationship with Anthony followed soon after, becoming her longest marriage before their eventual split.
Years later, Lopez’s relationship history again returned to the spotlight when she rekindled a romance with Ben Affleck. The two were originally engaged in the early 2000s, then called off their wedding in 2004. They reunited in 2021 and married in July 2022, but Lopez filed for divorce in 2024.
Lopez has recently spoken more openly about how public attention around her relationships has shaped her life. According to People, she recently acknowledged that living “very out loud” contributed to challenges in maintaining long-term partnerships.
