Dax Shepard Admits He Didn’t Know If He Wanted to Be With Kristen Bell Early On

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell
NBCUniversal

The actor got candid about his attitude toward his romance with Bell in a new interview.

Dax Shepard is getting extremely candid about his marriage to Kristen Bell. The 44-year-old actor opened up on the show Off Camera With Sam Jones about his relationship with his wife, noting that there was a time when he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to be with the 38-year-old actress. 

"I have this very weird mix of not thinking I’m good looking, general low self esteem, chip on my shoulder that I’m dumb because I was dyslexic, all these things, yet unbridled arrogance in relationships,” he explained. "I’ve always been that way.”

The father of two went on to add that early on in their romance, he wasn’t worried about losing Bell. 

"I never ever was like, ‘Oh, I hope I can keep Kristen.' I was going, ‘Do I want to be with a Christian, who has eight people living in her house for free, who has to get out of a car when there’s a dog who doesn’t have a leash and ruin her whole day to rescue this dog?’” he admitted. "That’s great, and she’s good, but that’s not what I want to do. I’m not that good. I don’t want to spend my day finding the owner of a dog. So I wasn’t fearful I would lose her. I wasn’t certain I wanted to be with someone like that." 

He noted that things changed when Bell never expressed a desire to change him as a person, and when he started to see how her actions paid off in the long run. 

"I just slowly over time watched what fruit she bore over the way she moved through life,” he said. "I looked at the results of how she lived, and they’re pretty undeniable... It’s just a better life and I wanted that, so I chose to move more in her direction. She didn’t ask me to. I wanted what she had, and I replicated it."

The couple has been together for more than a decade and officially tied the knot in 2013. They share daughters Lincoln, 5, and Delta, 4. 

Shepard went on to note, "She’s the first person I dated where I made a real conscious decision that I wasn’t going to try to make her into the person I wanted to date. I know what happens when I try to make them the person I want to date. I don’t end up liking that person. So I didn’t do that, and low and behold, she has come the same exact distance toward me that I’ve come toward her.”

Bell didn’t appear to be bothered by the comments. In fact, she shared some videos of herself and Shepard watching the show in bed together on her Instagram Stories. 

For more from the couple, watch the clip below: 

RELATED CONTENT: