Celebrities' Biggest Relationship Regrets
by Kristen HarrisBuzzFeedBuzzFeed StaffAs a staff writer at BuzzFeed, I write about all things celeb and pop culture.
A relationship ending doesn't change the fact that love was there. Sometimes, two people simply aren't meant to be together — but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt to be apart.
Here are 13 celebrities' most heartbreaking relationship regrets:
1.
THE RELATIONSHIP: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner were married from 2005 to 2018. They met on the set of Pearl Harbor in 2000 and became a couple four years later. However, they announced their plans to divorce shortly after their 10th anniversary. In 2016, she shut down rumors he'd had an affair with their nanny, telling Vanity Fair, "It was a real marriage. It wasn't for the cameras. And it was a huge priority for me to stay in it. And that did not work. ... We had been separated for months before I ever heard about the nanny. She had nothing to do with our decision to divorce. She was not a part of the equation. Bad judgment? Yes. It's not great for your kids for [a nanny] to disappear from their lives."
Christopher Polk / Via Getty
She also said, "I didn't marry the big fat movie star; I married him. And I would go back and remake that decision. I ran down the beach to him, and I would again. You can't have these three babies and so much of what we had. He's the love of my life. What am I going to do about that? He's the most brilliant person in any room, the most charismatic, the most generous. He's just a complicated guy. I always say, 'When his sun shines on you, you feel it.' But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it's cold. He can cast quite a shadow."
THE REGRET: In 2020, Ben told the New York Times, "I drank relatively normally for a long time. What happened was that I started drinking more and more when my marriage was falling apart. This was 2015, 2016. My drinking, of course, created more marital problems. ... The biggest regret of my life is this divorce. Shame is really toxic. There is no positive byproduct of shame. It's just stewing in a toxic, hideous feeling of low self-worth and self-loathing. It's not particularly healthy for me to obsess over the failures — the relapses — and beat myself up. I have certainly made mistakes. I have certainly done things that I regret. But you've got to pick yourself up, learn from it, learn some more, try to move forward."
Jeff Vespa/VF14 / WireImage / Via Getty
2.
THE RELATIONSHIP: Al Pacino and the late Diane Keaton were in an on-and-off relationship for about a decade and a half. After meeting on the set of The Godfather in 1972, they started dating two years later. However, they broke up for good in 1990 because she was ready to get married and gave him an ultimatum. She later told People, "I worked hard on that one. I went about it in not a perfect way."
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THE REGRET: According to Vanity Fair, he reportedly called her the "love of his life" and regretted not marrying her.
Robin Platzer / Getty Images
3.
THE RELATIONSHIP: Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez were in an on-and-off relationship for nearly a decade. After their first date in December 2010, they were together for about two years. They got back together around the end of 2015, but it didn't last long. Then, in the fall of 2017, they seemingly rekindled their relationship, but they broke up for good the following March. Six months later, he married Hailey Bieber.
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THE REGRET: In November 2015, Justin told i-D that they got into a serious relationship too young. He said, "I think with that relationship… I put so much of myself on the line with her, because I was so distant with everyone else. So it's like, you have the world who's loving you, but it's not like they know my heart — they don't know me. So when I found that love, I was just like, 'Woah, I want to hold on to this.' And I just put everything into it, and in reality, there's just no holding back. You're just like, 'This love feels so good.'"
Christopher Polk / Getty Images for ESPN
He continued, "It's, like, magical. There's nothing like it. So I felt that, and I just didn't want to let it go. When it was hard, I was just like, 'I want to stick this out.' So it was on again, off again, on again, off again. We were working out how to be in a relationship, how to be ourselves, who we were, in the middle of having people judge our relationship through the media. I think that really messed my head up, too. Because then, it's like trust and all this other stuff that starts messing with your mind. You're on the road. And there are beautiful women on the road. And you're just getting yourself into trouble."
THE RESPONSE: In January 2016, Selena addressed a recent video of Justin singing to her before an awards show. She told Rolling Stone, "Well, I am sorry, first of all. And honestly, what I would love to be printed is that I am so beyond done with talking about that, and