“We definitely had to work really hard at being a couple because we’re both incredibly, painfully stubborn, and we’re pretty much opposites,” said Dax Shepard.
Kristen Bell has been stealing hearts for years now with her roles in movies like Spartan, Bad Moms, When in Rome and more importantly, the film that has taken the world by storm, Frozen. And with her fame just mounting higher and higher, especially with the release of Frozen II, it seems like she's got her life sorted and that includes her personal life too.
After all, she has a loving husband, director and actor Dax Shepard, and two little girls. However, it's the former that taught her that she "doesn't have it all figured out" and she happens to consider it the greatest gift. But to understand where this sentiment is coming from, we've got to take a trip down their memory lane.
It all started in 2007.
The two first met at a birthday dinner but contrary to what you might believe, it was "not electric" as Bell told Flare. Surprisingly, Shepard shared similar sentiments and revealed that he was wary of her at first. "When I met her and her friends, I was suspicious of their unbridled happiness," he told Good Housekeeping. "I thought, 'Something stinks here; they're in a cult.'"
But two weeks later, they happened to run into each other again while they were out with friends at a hockey game where “the sparks were flying,” and suddenly, the dynamic between them changed, as they told People.
Though there was definitely chemistry between them, their relationship did hit quite a few bumps in the road. The 44-year-old Shepard told Good Housekeeping in 2015, "There were hurdles, things she didn't trust about me, things I didn't trust about her. I just kept going back to 'This person has the thing I want, and I have to figure out how we can exist peacefully.' So we started [seeing a therapist together] right away."
And 39-year-old Bell was okay with that. She told the outlet, "Dax helped me learn that I don't have it all figured out. Sometimes that's the greatest gift someone can give you." Revealing how their fights were "toxic", she knew she had to change.
"When we first met, we fell madly in love and I love the dramatic exit. There is nothing I crave more," she said, according to Insider. "We'd get in a fight because we'd fight a lot, and I'd yell something and then slam the bedroom door, then I'd slam the front door, then I'd get in my car and then I'd skid out the driveway and I would sit around the corner in my car and it felt so good and I realized how incredibly toxic it was only after he pointed it out." The Veronica Mars actress went on to say that "Three months into our relationship he was like: 'You can't leave anymore during fights. I'm not going to do that.'"
Even that was a difficult road for the couple to take. “We definitely had to work really hard at being a couple because we’re both incredibly, painfully stubborn, and we’re pretty much opposites,” Shepard told Huffington Post. He had even broken up with the Forgetting Sarah Marshall actress just a few months into their relationship.
But then things changed. He realized that Bell had “the best personality … ” and he “wanted to be around it when I’m 80, but how?” However, marriage was not on the cards and the actress accepted that. “He has a great argument that the state having a piece of paper doesn’t mean he’s going to be nice to me and by my side for the rest of my life. [Rather], that is going to be evidenced by how we treat each other and the commitment that we make,” Bell said. “I had surrendered, like ‘Okay, well, I’m never going to get any sort of traditional marriage out of this, and that’s okay because I trust him.’”
Despite not wanting to get married, the CHIPS actor could feel his partner's want to get married. So in 2009, he knew that proposing to The Good Place star was more important than how he felt about marriage. “Forget the tradition or history of marriage as a concept, you knowing I was doing something that I didn’t want to do because I loved you was a big sign for you,” Shepard told Bell during their interview.
In 2013, the two broke typical Hollywood star tradition and tied the knot in an intimate courthouse ceremony that cost less than $150, revealed Pop Sugar. "It was just Kristen and I at this lonely courthouse so they brought us this cake afterwards," the father-of-two told TV show host Jimmy Kimmel. And during a recent interview with CBS's Sunday Morning, Bell said their wedding day "is still one of the best days of my life."
The couple is still going strong and they even have two little girls who brighten up their life. “All these movies from the ’80s taught us that it’s love at first sight, and it is supposed to be easy and [that] all you have to do is find that person,” the mother-of-two said. “It took me a while to realize, ‘Oh, that was such a lie,’ because things that you work really, really, really hard for always yield the best results.” And their love is obvious in their eyes when they look at each other. You just can't miss it.
Here's to many more years together!
References:
https://www.flare.com/celebrity/on-set-with-cover-star-kristen-bell/
http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/relationships/a32083/kristen-bell-dax-shepard-marriage/
https://people.com/tv/kristen-bell-dax-shepard-work-really-hard-marriage/
https://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/Kristen-Bell-Talks-About-Dax-Shepard-Sunday-Morning-2016-42067664
