Dax Shepard on His Marriage to Kristen Bell: 'We Work It Like a Job'
Dax Shepard is sharing the keys to his happy marriage with Kristen Bell.
Speaking with PEOPLE Now on Wednesday, the Parenthood alum candidly admitted that the pair’s relationship may look easy, but assured that it’s “not effortless.”
“We do couple’s therapy. We work it like a job,” he said. “Relationships aren’t just perfect.”
To assure that the duo gets one-to-one time with each other, Shepard, 42, shared that they have to “just commit to things.”
“If I say, ‘Hey, what are you doing Thursday?’ It’s never going to happen. But if I put something on the calendar … it works out,” said Shepard.
He added: “But you do have to take it as seriously as you take your work commitments. It has to be scheduled and you have to prioritize it or it doesn’t happen.”
The CHiPs star also recalled the most romantic thing he’s ever done for his wife, whom he married in 2013 and shares two daughters with: Delta Bell, almost 3, and Lincoln, 4.
“We got into this really crazy one-upmanship of — so she was doing a movie in Alaska and I was shooting Parenthood and I couldn’t go and she was going away for a long time. But then my schedule changed and I didn’t tell her, so I got the seat next to her on the airplane and then I sweet-talked the gate representative to let me on the plane early. So when she went to sit down, I was in her seat reading a newspaper and she kept going, ‘Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir. I think you’re in my seat,’ ” he explained.
“And then she noticed those hands look familiar and then she started bawling when she saw that I was on the flight,” he said. “And then so she did it to me on the way back.”
“They get dangerous” he said of the times that the pair one-upped each other prior to having children.
Earlier this year, Bell, 37, echoed her husband’s comments that therapy is one of the secrets to their happy marriage.
“We have a very healthy marriage and we got there by doing therapy when we needed it, and constantly doing fierce moral inventories,” she told PEOPLE. “We both take responsibility when we are wrong, and I think it is easy to work with him because I married him, because I enjoy spending time with him and I trust him. That is exactly what I want in someone that I work with.”