Dax Shepard Admitted He Wasn't All In With Kristen Bell Right Away

Now that they've been married for more than five years (and brought two daughters into the world), it's hard to imagine Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell paired up with anyone else. But apparently, it almost didn't happen. During his appearance on Off Camera With Sam Jones this week, Shepard said he wasn't sure he wanted to be with Bell when they first started dating, and although it's easy to understand his reason, fans of the couple will definitely be relieved that he didn't follow that path.

In the interview, Shepard talked about when he and Bell first started dating after they first met in 2007, and how he wasn't sure if she was the kind of person he wanted to spend his time with at first. According to him, Bell was so different from him that he wasn't sure she was the right person for him, an answer that he said might be "off-putting" to some. According to Shepard himself, he never doubted that Kristen wanted to be with him, but that she might be too nice for him to be with her.

Shepard said:

“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 that doesn’t have a leash and ruin her whole day to rescue this dog? … That’s great and she’s good, but that’s not what I wanna do, I’m not that good, I don’t want to spend my day finding the owner of a dog.’"

But it didn't take long for Shepard to realize that Bell might actually be doing things the right way. He said that she "never, ever said to me, ‘You could be a little better of a person,'" and because of that, he had the opportunity to realize that goods things came to her because of how good she was to other people, even if that left her open to being taken advantage of.

He continued:

"Instead, I just slowly through time watched what fruit she bore out of the way she moved through life. I looked at the results of how she lived. And they’re pretty undeniable. So here’s me who thinks she lets people take advantage of her and live for free off of her and maybe she pays this manager too much or whatever the cynical, protective part of my brain was saying. I could also acknowledge, 'she’s bringing in a lot more money than you. She’s getting ahead. For all these people that are making a fool of her, she’s doing a lot better than you are.'"

Shepard said that was why he chose to "move more in her direction" —because he couldn't deny the success she was having just by being herself. Although he did say that she's learned from him, too (and that he encouraged her to be more open about her struggle with depression), he also had to point out that the evidence of how much she's been able to accomplish was enough to convince him she was doing it right.  

“I just couldn’t deny the reality of how her life unfolds. There’s something charmed about it," he said. "I think it’s charmed because it starts with her being just endlessly generous and loving and giving people the benefit of the doubt and believing in people and believing the world’s a wonderful place and all these things. And then down river it proves to be all those things to her.”

Thanks to the fact that Shepard realized that he not only wanted to be with someone like Bell but wanted to be someone like Bell, their relationship has truly inspired fans, even without knowing this story from the beginning of their time together. Maybe we could all learn something from the way these two approach their lives?