Why Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard Are in Couples Counseling
"We have such different backgrounds," Dax says of the need for therapy.
— -- Kristen Bell couldn't be happier that she's married to the father of her children, Dax Shepard.
But the "Frozen" star added that couples therapy isn't something to be ashamed of, it's something to use as a tool for a better relationship.
“You do better in the gym with a trainer; you don’t figure out how to cook without reading a recipe. Therapy is not something to be embarrassed about," she told Good Housekeeping for its May issue.
Shepard, 40, delved deeper into the need for therapy.
“We have such different backgrounds, it’s comical. Until I was 32, I thought the world was just wolves, that there was no way anyone was acting with any kind of benevolence. When I met her and her friends, I was suspicious of their unbridled happiness," he said. "I thought, 'Something stinks here; they’re in a cult.' But slowly I began to see her positive way of looking at the world. She gives people the benefit of the doubt. 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.”
Shepard doesn't agree with the negative connotation attached to couples therapy.
"In my previous relationship, we went to couples’ therapy at the end, and that’s often too late. You can’t go after nine years and start figuring out what patterns you’re in," he said.
Aside from the benefits of therapy, Bell, 34, opened up to Good Housekeeping about the baby weight she still has to lose from her second child, Delta, who was born in December. She thanks her older daughter Lincoln, 2, for helping her drop the pounds.
"I’ve actually lost weight more quickly this time around," she said, admitting she has 17 pounds to go. "I think it’s because Lincoln keeps me really active. She’s fast, man. She runs, she walks, she sasses me all the time. She’s a wonderful handful."
She added, "I never understood my mom until I had kids. When she would look at me like I was the first drop of water she’d seen at the end of a desert trip and go, 'You will never understand how much I love you,' I would go, 'God, get away! Enough!’ Even in my 20s, I just thought, 'You’re so dramatic and overly sentimental.' Now I look at my kids that way and think, 'Wow, this is a cycle.'"