Dax Shepard Got Candid About Therapy With Kristen Bell & We're Here For It
There are two types of celebrity couples out there — the ones who pretend maintaining a happy marriage is effortless, and the ones who readily admit to putting in the hard work to make it last. We totally get it — staying together for the long haul isn't easy (whether you're out in Hollywood or not) and there's no shame in asking for a little help from time to time. Dax Shepard & Kristin Bell do couples' therapy and have for a while now. But instead of being all shady and keeping it on the down-low, the pair have actually been pretty vocal about it — and that's exactly why we love them.
The couple tied the knot back in 2013 and have pretty much seemed like total #relationshipgoals ever since. But while the two adorable goofballs give off a super in love, cakewalk-of-a-marriage kind of vibe, Shepard recently copped to the pivotal role therapy plays during an interview with Us Magazine.
“We don’t believe in The One," the ChiPs star explained. "We don’t believe in the fairytale. We don’t believe that you can meet someone and you have a perfectly matching personalities. We are opposites and it has taken a tremendous amount of work and therapy for us to coexist.”
Having someone to stuff your face with apparently helps, too. But seriously, Shepard's words are actually so relatable here, and we love him for keeping it real!
The actor — who clearly knows a good thing when he sees it — then went on to explain one of his fears is that people will look at his marriage to Kristen and think "Oh, I just need to find my Kristen Bell" and then everything else will just fall into place.
"That’s not true," he explained. "You’ll find your Kristen Bell, but guess what? Now the work starts. [Relationships] are labor intensive. If you want them to last, they are labor intensive.”
So true! And obviously keeping a little soft toilet paper in the house never hurt anybody either! And that's totally a double entendre right there that wasn't even planned!
Bell has also been forthcoming about needing couples' therapy. “You do better in the gym with a trainer; you don’t figure out how to cook without reading a recipe,” she once explained to Good Housekeeping. “Therapy is not something to be embarrassed about.”
Makes complete sense. The Bad Moms star also revealed that having the guts to address issues in a marriage as soon as they arise is usually half the battle.
“If something pisses you off, you’ve got to find the balls to bring it up immediately and say it in a way that the other person can hear,” she told the magazine. “If you’re still uncomfortable… you say, ‘I need to have a therapy session with you.’ There may be something that really hurt your feelings that you’re scared to bring up. Go talk about it with a therapist who can mediate. You’ll walk out of the room feeling like you’re [on the same] team.”
Because at the end of the day, isn't teamwork what it's really all about?
Of course, Bell has also admitted in the past to, um, hating on her husband on ocassion.
"We had a couple years of fighting and of growing pains and hating each other, then loving each other and going to couples therapy and we worked it out," she once told Entertainment Tonight. "We earned each other."
Awww — they "earned" each other! It's actually a pretty sweet sentiment, and TBH we're totally catching all the feels.
But it's also an important reminder that it actually takes a lot of hard work to look this carefree and silly — and that ain't nothin' to be ashamed of!
