Jennifer Lopez says that when it came to becoming happy and fulfilled in a relationship, she was a late bloomer.

“I have been in a few challenging ones,” Lopez, 39, said Wednesday at The Women’s Conference in Long Beach, Calif. “I have been in relationships that can make you doubt who you are and what you are capable of, and doubt what you deserve. It took me a bit little longer to get it right.”

The actress, who didn’t single out any of her exes, has been married twice and famously dated Sean %26#34;Diddy%26#34; Combs and Ben Affleck before quietly marrying Marc Anthony, 40, with whom she had twins.

Raising children, she told the conference being attended by 14,000 women and hosted by California First Lady Maria Shriver, “can make you more aware and more loving, and make you aware there’s nothing they don’t deserve. Your eyes open. Your heart opens.”

Source:People.com

Ben Affleck packed in so much time doing good at the Democratic Convention in Denver that it seems he barely had time for the main attraction - indeed, he and wife Jennifer Garner ended up catching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech from their California home Thursday night.

“It’s like a football game,” Affleck, 36, told PEOPLE about the convention. “You go and you can hardly see the person, so you wished you would have watched it on TV.”

As for where the time went in the Rocky Mountains, the actor - who’s sprouting facial hair these days for his role in the movie Extract, with Mike Judge - was packing 25-lb. boxes of food for America’s Second Harvest, as part of a celebrity team that also included National Treasure’s Justin Bartha.

Affleck says he was drawn to Second Harvest two years ago after scouting film locations in a tough Boston neighborhood and discovering people forced to choose between food and housing or medical care.

“This is something people don’t talk much about,” says Affleck, “the 35 million people here in the U.S., including 9 million children, who are hungry.”

Affleck also devoted time to poker - picking up a first-pace plaque in an event with the Poker Players Alliance to raise funds for Paralyzed Vets of America.

Not that his time was solely focused on packing food and poker. Both he and Garner hosted a table at the Impact Film Festival Party at 5 Degrees on Wednesday night, along with Forrest Whitaker, Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Cooper.

Later they moved on to an after-party at EXDO Event Center, where Kanye West played.

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It’s been a week since the birth of his new daughter Gia and what is Matt Damon doing when he’s not on diaper duty?

He’s working his thumbs to the bone to keep his old buddy Ben Affleck up to date on all of the details.

“I’ve kind of been texting him back and forth, and he’s doing great and %26#91;wife%26#93; Lucy is doing great,” Affleck, 36, told PEOPLE on Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention.

Still, Affleck’s mind was not far from his old Cambridge pal, who is fast becoming odd man out in his Miami home, what with the addition of little Gia to his strictly female brood of wife Luciana and their daughters Isabella, 2, and Alexia, 10.

Not that Damon - PEOPLE’s Sexiest Man Alive - has any problem with that.

“Anybody who has a child is excited, I think, no matter what the gender is. They are thrilled,” says Affleck. “The thing that people really want, when you get down to it, is a healthy child.”

Ben Affleck is upping his stake in politics - with poker.

The Oscar winner, 36, will be in Denver this week for the Democratic National Convention, where he’ll be celebrating at more than one political party. Among his official duties: performing at a roundtable event for SeaChange Ideas Forum, packing food for the needy and playing poker to benefit paralyzed veterans.

Colorado first lady Jeannie Ritter, who joins Affleck and Barack Obama’s wife Michelle on Wednesday to box produce for the charity America’s Second Harvest, tells PEOPLE that Affleck’s celebrity, “right or wrong, gives us our traction.” But, while she and her teenage children look forward to meeting the onetime Sexiest Man Alive, Ritter says it “pales in comparison” to being with Michelle Obama.

Then Affleck takes center stage at an ideas forum billed as the “History of Progressive America” on Wednesday afternoon. Along with Josh Brolin, Rosario Dawson, Kerry Washington and musician Lupe Fiasco, Affleck will do live performances of scenes from producer Chris Moore’s film, The People Speak.

Other celebrities expected to attend the week’s festivities: Charlize Theron, Anne Hathaway, Annette Bening, Jessica Alba and Oprah Winfrey.

Expectant couples Ben Affleck %26 Jennifer Garner and Matt Damon %26 wife Luciana turned out for a Miami fundraiser Saturday for Barack Obama.

Garner, sporting a small baby bump, looked radiant in a chic short black cocktail dress and sexy high-heeled sandals. Luciana, very pregnant, was decked out in a long black skirt with a strapless tank top.

The couples attended a private $1,000-per-person VIP reception at club SET to support the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate.

After spending orientation time in The Trophy Room, the four friends headed for SET’s Hip Hop Room to socialize with guests before giving speeches from the stage.

The stars drank bottled water and took pictures with the guests.

“They were all in great moods and very friendly to everyone,” says another source, accompanied by a host who plunked down $5,000 for his group to meet the stars and support Obama.

Damon, who has a house in Miami Beach, told reporters outside of SET why he is supporting Obama: “For a lot of reasons. But mostly because I don’t like the path this country’s on and if McCain is elected we’ll be continuing down that same path.”

Also, Affleck told PEOPLE outside of SET that he doesn’t know if he is going to the Democratic Convention, but “I’d like to.”

The Afflecks and Damons departed in a limo after about 90 minutes and headed for a private party at Anthony Kennedy Shriver’s Miami Beach home.

Shriver is the founder and head of Best Buddies charity and first cousin of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, who is a member of the Obama Vice Presidential Nominating Committee.

Their family is about to grow, and now Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck may be in the market for roomier digs.

“I guess they are looking for a bigger place now,” pal Kevin Smith told PEOPLE at a the Maxim magazine party on Saturday in San Diego where he attended Comic-Con.

The director-actor, who is a longtime friend of Affleck and starred with Garner in 2006’s Catch and Release, also revealed how he learned the news that the couple - who are parents to daughter Violet, 2 - are expecting again.

He added that parenthood comes naturally to both stars. “%26#91;Jen%26#93; is such a Martha Stewart type. She is a perfect mom,” he says. “And %26#91;Ben%26#93; is a great dad, which I found not that surprising, but it’s a side of him that I never thought about before he became a dad. He’s a great father. He loves that kid of his.”

• Reporting by VANESSA DIAZ

With sources confirming Jennifer Garner is four months pregnant with her second child with Ben Affleck, the couple are being praised as loving, attentive parents.

Joey Parsi, owner of the indoor L.A. playground Giggles N’ Hugs, where the actress recently visited with daughter Violet, 2, says Garner, 36, is “the perfect mom, and, trust me, I’ve seen hundreds of mothers in here.”

Affleck, 35, also is “totally insane about Violet,” says one of his longtime friends. “I know how much he enjoys being a parent. He gushes over Violet. He says she’s really smart, she’s really verbal and she’s got a funny personality. He’s happy to be a father and she’s happy to be a mother.”

Additional reporting by EUNICE OH

Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck met up with Matt Damon and his pregnant wife, Luciana, at Nobu Malibu on Saturday night for a two-hour dinner on the patio that included cooked fish and sushi rolls.

“Ben and Matt were entertaining the girls with stories, and they were all laughing a lot,” says an observer of the couples.

When dessert came, the celebratory group toasted - after all, Garner and Affleck’s third wedding anniversary was the following day.

“Jen and Ben were in a great mood, and they left Nobu hand in hand,” says the observer. Also spotted at Nobu Saturday night: Kate Hudson, back in L.A. following last week’s Santa Barbara getaway with Lance Armstrong.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner have gotten married.

“They’re married and they’re expecting their first child,” their reps, Nicole King and Ken Sunshine, said in a statement.

The publicists did not reveal any additional details about the wedding, but the news follows weeks of marriage rumors, including claims that the pair would exchange vows in Garner’s home state of West Virginia.

The couple met on the set of the 2003 comic-book movie Daredevil. They didn’t begin dating until seven months after Affleck broke off his high-profile engagement to Jennifer Lopez, whom he was set to marry in September 2003.

Considering the hoopla that surrounded Bennifer, the courtship of Affleck, 32, and Garner, 33, was surprisingly low-key. Though they were frequently spotted shopping for groceries together in L.A. or getting coffee from Starbucks, they generally steered clear of the spotlight.

“He’s very happy,” an Affleck friend told PEOPLE in April. “Jennifer is very down-to-earth, much more like him. They’re more like-minded. That wasn’t true (with Lopez).”

In early May, a close friend began spreading the news that the two were planning to wed, to the delight of Garner’s parents. “They had their fingers crossed,” a Garner pal told PEOPLE at the time. “They really love Ben.” Soon after, she was sporting a diamond eternity band, though the couple kept mum about their plans. In late May sources said Garner was three months pregnant.

For Affleck, this is his first marriage. It’s Garner’s second marriage; she and actor Scott Foley divorced in 2003.

Meanwhile, Garner’s Alias costar Ron Rifkin, appearing on Live with Regis and Kelly Thursday morning, said Garner’s pregnancy will likely be worked into the show’s storyline. “She’s with child, and I think it’s going to be written in,” he said.

More on this story

• Ben %26 Jen’s Little Girl

His last small-screen appearance was a light-hearted affair - but this time Ben Affleck is tackling far more serious material.

The actor recently traveled to the Congo - where four million people have been killed in the decade-long conflict, according to the International Rescue Committee. And Thursday night, ABC’s Nightline will air a special documentary on his eye-opening journey.

“Congo is in terribly shape,” Affleck (who has traveled to the country three times in the last eight months) says in the segment. “What’s going on here in the this country is a humanitarian disaster.”

Affleck presents the footage as a personal tale, and doesn’t identify himself with any particular relief organization.

“I don’t think people respond particularly well to being hectored, or being made to feel guilty, or being made to feel as though they’re kind of callow or insensitive for the life they’ve been leading up until then,” he told the Associated Press.