Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard still have some ‘pretty incredible’ fights – here’s how it affects their marriage.
On paper, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard are pretty much the perfect couple.
Two hysterically funny people! Two star-studded Hollywood careers! Two adorable children! They’re the kind of couple you’d want at your next dinner party, knowing they’d liven things up a bit with great jokes and probably spearheading a round of strip poker.
The couple have always been refreshingly candid about their marriage: the highs, the lows and everything in between.
In the past, Bell has revealed that she believes not enough couples are honest in their marriages. She also explained how they had their first fight because they are both “control freaks”. Plus, she has expertly shut down “marriage problems” rumours in the past.
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Kristen Bell reveals secret to her happy marriage with Dax Shepard
Now, The Good Place actor has revealed she and Shepard fight just like every other couple. “Something happened with Dax and I early on where we decided we were never going to not be asked about our relationship,” Bell said during an interview on Life Is Short With Justin Long. “So if we were going to talk about it, let’s make sure we show the good, the bad and the ugly and how we handle it.”
Bell continued, “Let’s not make it saccharin, and we really try hard to not make it saccharin, and we talk about the fact that we do fight, we do go to therapy, we dislike each other a lot sometimes.”
In particular, Bell recalled a rip-roaring argument she and Shepard had recently. “We had this pretty incredible fight recently. Incredible. I mean like top of the lungs screaming,” she said. “It was about the things around the house that I felt I needed to help with. We have a relationship where you are supposed to be able to say I need your help with this. For those of you listening, I’m telling you this from my perspective. He’s not here, he can’t defend himself.”
Credit: Getty
In Bell’s version, she said she had left Shepard a note asking him to take the two towels in the dryer and fold them, and “then like one other thing”. “At that point, the house [work] was getting to be a lot for me,” she explained. “The keeping up with the mom stuff, the shoes being outgrown, all of that.”
But a couple of days later, Shepard had brought up the note while they were in bed, she said, saying he felt “really controlled”. While Bell had initially responded in a calm way, the argument soon escalated.
“And somehow, then we both backed out and got into a fight and I don’t actually remember what happened but what transpired was a lot of volume, a lot of harsh words being thrown around, and it was an angry, angry fight about how nobody does anything for anybody else,” Bell said. “I grabbed my pillow and stomped down the hall and I sleep in the front room and I’m crying. We don’t talk for three days.
Credit: Getty
Eventually, the couple made up, Bell explained, when she video chatted Shepard from a dog cafe to show him a rescue dog named Frank and he was open to her bringing him home (even though he is allergic to dogs).
“I didn’t get an apology, but I got a dog! This is so much better than an apology. So I bring the dog home, it’s great.”
While the couple had “never talked about that fight, ever”, Bell said things had been different. “Every single thing that I have needed done or thought, ‘I’d want help with this,’ since that fight, he has been ahead of. I couldn’t complain about him if I tried right now.”
It’s nice to know even Hollywood’s elite still fight, everything isn’t perfect and yes, they both still find it hard to say sorry.
And yet, it works.
Image: Getty
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