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Justin Long, whom we haven’t covered since he used to date Drew Barrymore, has a podcast with his brother, Christian. As someone with a podcast that I methodically edit down to the most interesting parts, it pained me to see the hour and 43 minute runtime of the latest episode with Kristen Bell! I know this is how podcasts are now, but I don’t understand how people have time for that. Do they only listen to part of them? Do they use them to kill time during interminable commutes or at work? I listened to the part where Kristen talked about this horrible screaming fight she had with her husband, Dax Shepard. I’ve seen stories about it so I wanted to hear it to see if I could get a different angle or more information.
Kristen and Dax have been open about the fact that they’re in therapy and that they fought a lot at the beginning of their relationship. It sounds like a lot of work, but like they’re on the other side of it. It’s not something I would want to go through, but it works for them I guess. Here’s what she said and these quotes start at about 22 minutes into the podcast. The fight part is at 26:30. I fast forwarded through a lot of it, but in the beginning she said that showing the sloth video on Ellen was Dax’s idea and that he often helps her with the anecdotes she tells on talk shows. That makes so much sense.
How they work out conflicts
We have thick skin towards each other. The best piece of advice I can give to anyone is make a pact that you’re on the same team and act like it. That means when he says something to me that I think is brutal or rude I don’t jump down his throat. I take a minute to think ‘yeah, he’s on my team, let me think how I can process it.’ Intention is really important. We can say candid things to each other and we don’t get ants in our pants about it.Justin says he finds their couple displays annoying
Yeah, it is. Early on we’re like ‘we’re not going to talk about our relationship.’ There was a time 10 years ago when the paparazzi was swelling and it was getting scary for the people being sought after. There’s something to be said to controlling what you can when things feel out of control. Something happened with Dax and I early on where we decided 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. Let’s not make it saccharine. We talk about the fact that we do fight, we do go to therapy, we dislike each other a lot sometimes.Justin asks ‘do you ever sit with that too long, that not liking each other? I would imagine that dissipates at a certain point’
No [it doesn’t dissipate]. In fact, we had this pretty incredible fight recently. Incredible. Top of the lungs screaming. It was about things around the house that I felt I needed help with. I left at 10 am I wasn’t going to be back until 2:30. I left a note ‘would you mind taking the two towels in the dryer and folding them’ and one other thing. That’s ten minutes of work.I left this note and I came home on Sunday. Monday night we’re laying in bed and he turns over and goes ‘when you leave me notes I feel really controlled’ and he launched into how he felt about it. I said to myself ‘don’t react.’
I said ‘Ok, I hear you, it won’t happen again. If I need something done around the house what is a way that I could do it that you’d be ok with hearing. What’s a better way?’
Then we both blacked out and got into a fight. I don’t remember exactly what transpired was a lot of volume, a lot of harsh words being thrown around and it was an angry fight about how nobody does anything for anybody else. I grabbed my pillow and I sleep in the front room and I’m crying. We don’t talk for three days [about anything other than our kids].
[From Life is Short with Justin Long podcast]
After that Kristen talked about an issue so many of us can relate to, and which Busy Philipps has discussed, division of labor and how hard it is to keep a household running with your partner. Kristen wanted Dax to notice when things needed to be done, but he wasn’t able to do that and he obviously didn’t want to take her suggestions either. As for their huge fight, on day three after it Kristen took their girls to a dog cafe where they have rescue dogs available for adoption. Kristen brought home a senior dog named Frank and that’s how she made up with Dax. She did check with him first as he’s allergic to dogs. She said they never talked about the fight but that “every single thing that I have needed done or thought ‘I need help with this’ he’s been ahead of” since.
I checked Kristen’s Instagram to see when she adopted Frank. She has various dogs in her photos and it’s unclear what they’re all named or which are hers, but she posted last June about a dog named Frank that needed a home. This fight probably happened last summer. I’ve never gone three days without talking to my now-ex husband but we couldn’t constructively discuss our problems either. It seems like that’s all Dax and Kristen talk about, but a lot of people hide their relationship issues from their social group while Kristen and Dax have made a cottage industry out of discussing them.
Update: Michael K at Dlisted found Frank! He was adopted in September, 2019. Not that long ago.
Aw this isn’t Frank but look how cute Triscuit is:
My mother rides the DC Metro to and from work every weekday. Two years ago for her bday, I installed Spotify on her phone, got her earbuds & a portable charger and introduced her to podcasts, haha. So yeah, they are great for commutes. She loves Spittin Chicklettes the best.
Yeah I commute via bus and listen to podcasts but usually shorter ones because the ride is between 30-40 minutes. I tend to listen to long podcasts (and audiobooks) while doing long runs though! It keeps my brain occupied so I don’t focus on how sucky running is while you’re running lol. I do love running…when I’m done.
Yeah, I used to listen on the bus too. These days I listen when I have a long mindless task at work, like data entry or packing boxes. It’s nice to focus your brain on something while your body is doing something else.
Between commuting, walking my dog, going to the gym, and doing household chores, I listen to a LOT of podcasts (I also got my Mom into them! Her commute includes walking through Times Square and she said “Wow, this is the only way I can get through there without wanting to strangle someone”).
Anyway though, unless the content is really strong, I can’t listen to just one rambling conversation for that long. I’ll queue up a few of the half hour or hour long ones that are more tightly edited. The whole “just some folks with a microphone” format is really hard to pull off, I think. But it’s apparently eclipsing the format I like in popularity which stresses me out! The folks who run Gimlet had an episode of Start Up where they talked about the difficulty of creating more expensive podcasts that include reporting and editing now that the pendulum is going the other way.
Good for her re: foster and senior adoptions.
Not touching the rest of the story…
yay for senior adoptions but I’m mortified that any reputable rescue would adopt to someone without confirmation that the spouse who lives with them is onboard with adding to the family. Also, the entire family should meet and interact with a dog to determine if it’s a fit for their family – they need to be as good a fit for the dog as the dog needs to be for them. My rescue’s policy is that the whole family, including resident dogs, needs to meet & interact with the dog to be able to make an informed decision to adopt.
“Sorry for our fight about division of labor. Here’s a new dog to add to the household responsibilities.”
Dax has talked about them fighting on his podcast. He said at the beginning of their relationship she would blow up screaming at him then slam the door and leave. Every time. So he finally said I’m not going to put up with this and if we can’t treat each other with respect then this is over. She sounds like a real brat when she doesn’t get her way. That’s his version at least.
But if hes home and can’t fold 2 towels because he feels “controlled” I mean it’s just as juvenile and stupid. Both need to grow up.
True!
This. And stop over sharing. It’s not healthy for a relationship to hang your private and intimate laundry for all to see and discuss.
Gosh! Who knew she was so friggen needy??? She’s so desperate for attention.
I’m raising my hand lol.
🖐
ok dax
I have a friend whose husband is the same. If she asks him to do something, or tells him not to do something… he has to do the opposite. Because he feels “controlled”. I couldn’t deal with that. My husband leaves me lists, I leave him lists. No one is “controlled” we just share responsibilities and a life together and we depend on each other for help.
Last night i asked him to pick up xyz on his way home, and he did. Today he asked me to organize some office stuff, and I will. No big deal.
You are lucky Eliza to have this. My husband and I don’t share a common language and it’s very difficult at times.
@mirna, same. I love my husband but sometimes it’s like we’re speaking 2 different languages. Lack of Communication is our biggest issue. He won’t open up to me and gets aggravated if I ask questions to try and get him to open up.
To each their own. If this is what makes their relationship work, I would say more power to them — but they have small children. Small children who, if they were present, suffered from a fight between their parents “screaming at the top of their lungs.”
Children need to see and hear their parents having conflict and working through conflict. Maybe they don’t need screaming matches but any asshole who finds a note request for 10 minutes of labor controlling deserves to get his damn head ripped off and his daughters should hear their mother do it, lest they grow up and end up in relationships with similar bs dynamics and think it’s acceptable.
Men do not do enough around their homes, not because they are incapable, but because they refuse. And women suffer the consequences of that bullshit, getting 30 minutes to an hour to themselves in a day and working the equivalent of 98+ hours per week. It’s long past time to rip men’s heads off or make them live in the garage if they won’t contribute equally.
There are scores of articles and studies and relevant writings on the matter. Men who actually pull their weight in their homes are still the exception. Not the rule.
Amen. XO And for anyone who needs to, there are Women’s Studies University and College courses to learn more about this. The frustration is real. And I say that as a very, very lucky person who has a partner who cooks like a wizard. But why, oh why, does he need to leave every kitchen cabinet open after he prepares a meal. Why??????????
Yup, I agree with you 1000++!! You said it VERY well. I can relate to all of that in my marriage.
Thank you for saying this! Sometimes getting angry is the right response.
Omg, yes 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌.
Anger is great for getting out of abusive situations, and not much more. I would use it for its original purpose here, and pack my bags.
This is intense to read about. (Maybe she didn’t mean it so much or was using a joking tone on the podcast?) Blacked out? And they appear to have normalized it, to the point where they share it with others (as a sign of growth? Relatability?) and have brought children into this relationship as well.
I say this as someone having been in a relationship with a screamer. He would scream at me in the middle of a public mall if he got upset, so it was not something I could keep private.
I completely normalized it and excused it. Looking back, I am in disbelief and humiliated.
I chuckled at the “we both blacked out” part because I read it jokingly. I can see how it’s upsetting for someone who was in a verbally abusive relationship though. My husband and I have yelling fights sometimes and also can go days not talking and no it’s not healthy at all and those are usually the times we need to really come together in therapy and figure out what’s really going on. I don’t think they share b/c they think they have it all together I think they actually are just figuring it out as they go and are trying to be honest with the world about the work that can go into marriage. I am envious of posters who say they have it easy with their spouses! Def not the case for everyone.
How often does he say horrible things to her that she has to have a plan for processing it? (And vice versa, but the podcast was with her). I think there have been fewer than five incidents between my husband and me in the 20 years we’ve been together.
He’s immature and she seems like a nagging control freak. This will end in divorce and best-coparents-ever tales.
Some people love high-conflict relationships though, and it sounds like this is what they want. My brother and his wife are like that- they love each other so much but both of them love to argue and fight, and they do it with gusto. I would wilt in that kind of relationship…yelling is NOT my jam and I hate fighting (I’ll have calm discussions after the emotion has passed but I shut down when there is yelling). I mean…I’m not saying their marriage is healthy or that I would want to be in it at ALL, but I am saying that there’s a lid to every pot and I’m glad those two found each other.
mrs. codependant & mr. narcissist classic combo.
These two need to SHUT UP about their personal problems. But then they wouldn’t have “careers” now would they.
As someone who grew up hearing my parents’ shouting matches most nights, I just felt so upset and angry thinking about their daughters overhearing that fight.
Agreed. They sound incompatible. Thank God I learned from watching my parents. I never wanted to live that again and I carefully chose someone I had low drama with- similar religion, politics, family structure, same desire on how many kids and where to live, etc. it might sound cold but I needed to know there weren’t going to be nonstop fights with a hothead. 12 years strong (15 together) and we basically never fight- no reason to! 🙂 and thank goodness my kids see us United, low key, and mostly easygoing. I want that to be their expectation- not like me and my siblings, grouped up behind a bedroom door and waiting for the yelling to stop.
I’m sorry, I don’t know how they can sell screaming matches and not talking for THREE DAYS as some sort of healthy marriage technique. I get that talking through problems is much healthier than keeping it bottled up, but not speaking for three days after having such an intense argument is in no way healthy or mature. I knew a woman who would give her husband the silent treatment for days after fights. It wasn’t her being evolved or stable; it was her being childish lol.
I love that she adopts senior dogs, and fosters dogs too.
Their relationship sounds exhausting to me. I’m not married, so maybe I don’t know how much work goes into it, but it seems like a LOT of work on their part. I do give them credit for talking about the difficulties, but maybe they don’t need to talk about it so much.
Also, if I asked someone to help by folding 2 towels and they held onto a grudge about it for days and then said they felt “controlled”…yeah I’d be screaming too.
How bout her way of making up was bringing home a dog? It’s great that they care for older dogs that need a home but Jesus. Such a non resolution. Just a distraction, yay! A new dog to take care of! (And add to household responsibilities that they are already fighting about)
She did that as a passive aggressive move,now they can argue about who needs to do more work with all of their dogs…🙄
I was thinking the same thing. And he is allergic!!! She asked, but still, seems a bizarre way to make up.
Real talk-is this just a guy thing? My spouse and I have had this same argument. Minus the blackout screaming match and 3 days of silent treatment. Yikes that’s not healthy. And as much as I love dogs-no way would I be okay with just randomly bringing one home.
We both live in the house. We both watch the kids. Don’t complain to me that “I have no clean shirts” when there’s a pile of clean laundry that needs folding. As I’ve said to him, you are just as capable of folding a shirt as I am. *eye roll* I get we have different tolerance levels for what makes a clean floor or a reasonable amount of laundry. I’m not going to try and force another adult to live up to my standard. But I’m not your mom, step it up and do it yourself sometimes. Otherwise managing asking you to do X chore is one more thing. We both help with hey can you grab that or hey can you stop at the store-why is it that kids and cleaning are so fraught?
I guess this argument is very triggering for me. LOL.
My husband does the fun guy trick of doing chores wrong so I won’t ask him again. Nope. If you want your shirts hanging with just one shoulder on the hanger fine, but you help me with the laundry buddy.
I’m a b*tch, my trick for children/ spouse is if they can’t do it right they need to do it more often to learn how to get it right. See how quickly it gets done right next time.
Then again i do mine and the children’s laundry, he’s in charge of his own, and usually does the linens. So we have an odd house. He’s ocd clean and literally has cleaning days on the calendar.
My husband and I don’t have any household chore fights. I know which jobs I consider mine, he knows which are considered his. If I want something done, I tell him and he does it. He honestly never asks me for anything, but that’s probably because I am super Type A and I have my chores done always and on time/early (not that we time it- it’s like, every single day the laundry is put away before bed, etc., because that’s my schedule). I do know this is extremely common to disagree about. But we basically decided (through practice I guess- we never had a formal talk) of what each of us would do and we do it. And it can be flexible. Like, when he was diagnosed with RA and i saw how swollen his hands were (my God he’s only in his 30s, so sad), I took over emptying garbages and dragging them to the curb, vacuuming, etc things I knew hurt him to do.
He felt controlled by being asked to do something that would take ten minutes or less. Yeah I would be yelling as well.
I just wish they would stop talking. I detest them both.
“Her husband, Dax Bell”
LOL 😂
They both seem immature, and horribly alike. But how lucky that they found each other instead of victimizing other innocent partners.
Seriously,this
The interesting part is that he said he felt controlled by her when he’s fully admitted that he is controlling and railroads her on his podcast. Like he assigns negative intent to everything so unless she used flowery language to make him feel like a hero, he was always going to read that note as a nagging demand.
They are perfect for each other – both insufferable over-sharers and desperate for attention.
I always remind myself that we’re on the same team and we have a pretty peaceful relationship without screaming matches or big fights. I try to say things before I get to that angry point. But I do feel her pain as the stupid household chores are the one thing I’m not happy about in my relationship, particulary how often I have to nag about them and how they just won’t get done if I don’t ask him to do them or write a list. And always the asking of what’s for dinner. I’m done with those things taking up my headspace and how he doesn’t take any initiative except for vacuuming and putting the laundry in the washing machine (and then that’s it as far as the laundry is concerned). I married a really nice guy, who seems to want to do things for us and I still have to ask as if things are always a single event for him.
feel ya.
Same Wilma…. it’s pretty crazy that I have been married for 19 years and we STILL have an uneven distribution of household labour. I even work shift work and still this doesn’t even out our childcare / household tasks. Don’t even get me started about all the decision making & planning. I could put cruise line activities director on my CV.
Yes, all the planning! I have told him a couple of times now that I don’t enjoy doing these things and that it would make me very happy if he would share the burden with me. We’ve been together for 19 years, hitting 20 years in March.
My ex didn’t like being told what to do chorewise, but would throw a fit if I did not do what he wanted me to do. It was beyond frustrating and eventually led me to moving out. Some people are too used to living on their own and do not compromise well with someone else.
Nothing to say about Dax and Kristin but just had to chime in about the podcasts. Celebitchy, I appreciate how tightly you edit your podcasts with Kaiser – I agree with you, the long rambling podcasts that aren’t edited drive me nuts. There are some people I really like and I read all of their stuff on celebrities and the movie biz but I couldn’t keep listening to their podcast because it just rambled forever and drove me nuts!
I appreciate any dog lover who adopts rescues.
Screaming matches with my partner would be too stressful. I was in a relationship once where this was normalized. It wasn’t healthy for me. I feel lucky to be with a partner who communicates with me and we don’t have to yell or get into crazy fights.
I know a lot of people find these two annoying, but this type of talk just sounds to me like the phrasing you learn in therapy, which does sound annoying unless you’re the person it’s helping. All this ridiculous therapy-language has really helped me sort through my feelings and motivations, so I’m all for it!
I listen to most podcasts at 1.5x speed and some at 2x speed. So they don’t seem that long haha
I also make use of the “skip ahead 30 seconds” button often if something isn’t interesting to me.
I’m so sick of hearing about this marriage. Dax and Kristen sound like two people who are not actually a great fit forcing a marriage to continue because they’re both super stubborn and they’re drama-addicts. I’m sure they love many things about each other, but hearing about two wealthy, privileged people indulging in screaming fights (that affect their children in some way, of course) over towels is frustrating, not enlightening to me.
All these years of therapy and they’re still interacting with each other like that?! At what point do you just throw up your hands and be done with the Sisyphean task of that marriage.
This is a horrifying story on every level and they should get divorced right away. I can’t believe they put their kids through that. I just came in here to mention I listened to Sophia Bush on his podcast once and I listen to a ton of podcasts, but what made this one stand out was what a mindgame playing sexist he was. Really, black belt level stuff, I rarely see people that slick about it.
They are fighting to the point of screaming over towels and leaving passive aggressive notes about chores? Sorry, but that’s annoying college roommate stuff, not marriage.
How can it be that they have had so much therapy and still can’t get along? I’m married and have not had anything near this experience. We don’t scream over mundane tasks, and in fact, we have fun together about 90 percent of the time. I think Kristen and Dax lack compatibility.