Ben Affleck Gushes About Coparenting With His ‘Wonderful’ Ex-Wife Jennifer Garner: ‘I’m Lucky’

Friendly exes! While recently appearing on the Today show, Ben Affleck candidly revealed that he’s managed to create a great coparenting relationship with his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, because she’s truly an amazing mom to their three kids.

“She’s wonderful,” Ben gushed. “I’m lucky [my kids have] got a great mom, and she helps out a great deal with making sure we coparent in as good a way as possible.” Ben, 46, and Jen, also 46, are proud parents to children Violet Affleck, 13, Seraphina Affleck, 10, and Samuel Affleck, 7, and the Gone Girl actor admitted that having Jen as the mother of his kids makes him respect her a lot more.

“Somebody’s the mother of your kids, they’re going to be the most important, central part of your life, and that’s good,” he said, adding that he tries “very hard” to be a “pretty good dad” to his children. “Dads are so important to kids, and it’s our responsibility to be there for them, and to be present, to be mindful, to be attentive, to be part of their lives, to be as in it as moms. That’s really the central preoccupation in my life,” he confessed. “It’s what makes me happy and the rest of the stuff kind of follows.”

During his sit-down with Today, Ben also opened up about his battle with alcohol addiction and said he’s not afraid to publicly talk about that part of his life after going to rehab three times. “Some people are sort of uncomfortable, [but] it doesn’t really bother me to talk about alcoholism and being an alcoholic,” he admitted. “It’s part of my life. It’s something that I deal with. It doesn’t have to sort of subsume my whole identity and be everything, but it is something that you know you have to work at.”