Gwyneth Paltrow Says Relationship With Ben Affleck Was 'Very Much a Lesson'

Gwyneth Paltrow is spilling the tea about one of her famous exes!

During Sirius XM’s The Howard Stern Show on Wednesday, Paltrow was asked if she was ever in love with Ben Affleck, whom she dated on-and-off between 1997 and 2000.

“How did you know not to marry him? You were never in love with him,” Stern inquired (via E! News).

“It’s interesting, I think there’s certain boyfriends where you are trying to work stuff out, right? Like, you’re trying to heal certain stuff from your childhood and he was very much a lesson in that way,” the 45-year-old actress explained. “I’m not sure exactly what I was trying to heal in that instance, but it was …he was, ya know, it was specific.”

Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck attend the 5th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on March 7, 1999 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California.

Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage

On Stern’s show back in 2015, Paltrow revealed more about her relationship with Affleck, 45.

“I think [my parents] appreciated how he’s super intelligent and he’s really, really talented and so funny, but he was not in a good place in his life to have a girlfriend,” she confessed. “I think they were OK with the two of us not being together.”

Also on this week’s episode of The Howard Stern Show, Paltrow recalled how her ex-fiance, Brad Pitt, once stood up to Harvey Weinstein on her behalf.

Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow

Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow attend ‘The Pallbearer’ New York City premiere on April 28, 1996 at the Tribeca Film Center in New York City.

Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage

“I told [Pitt] right away,” Paltrow said of when Weinstein allegedly made a pass at her prior to filming the 1996 movie Emma. “I was very shaken by the thing and I had signed up to do two movies with [Weinstein].”

“I was afraid, and Brad Pitt, we were at the opening of Hamlet on Broadway… and Harvey was there, and Brad Pitt, it was like the equivalent of throwing him against the wall, energetically,” Paltrow said Pitt, who she dated from 1994 to1997. “It was so fantastic, because what he did was he leveraged his fame and power to protect me at a time when I didn’t have fame or power yet. He’s the best.”

With Affleck and Pitt in the past, Paltrow is now happily engaged to TV producer Brad Falchuk.

“I think that I would like to give it a proper shot … for myself,” Paltrow told Stern about the concept of marriage, after her 2014 split from first husband Chris Martin. “I think there’s something really beautiful about marriage. I think Brad is someone who is really intelligent, he’s very emotionally intelligent. I think he’s a really good person to try this with. He’s very self-aware. He’s got a lot of emotional maturity.”

Back in August, Paltrow also spoke about how her relationship with Falchuk fares against past romances.

“It’s taken me a lot of work to get to the place where I have a good romantic relationship,” Paltrow told host Sophia Amoruso on the Girlboss podcast. “I think without relationships of quality, you are not a successful person. So, if you don’t have a good relationship with your partner, your children, your best friends, then it’s really hard to claim success.”

While marriage is definitely in the future for Paltrow and the 47-year-old producer, kids and a prenup are not. Here’s why:

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