Kristen Bell reveals she ‘cries weekly’ navigating Dax Shepard marriage and two kids in ‘cyclone of puberty’

Kristen Bell got brutally honest about her marriage to Dax Shepard and the reality of raising their girls through their pre-teen and teenaged years.

The Nobody Wants This star, 46, admitted the struggle of navigating marriage and parenting causes her to regularly break down in tears in a new interview with Bustle magazine.

‘It’s hard. Do not think because I am on your television that it is easy for me. It’s brutal. I cry weekly,’ said Bell, who shares daughters Lincoln, 13, and Delta, 11, with Shepard, 51.

‘Oftentimes when you’re in that cyclone of puberty, you could think, My kid is the only one doing this. And that is just simply not a fact.’

The actress and the Without a Paddle star married in October 2013, four months after Bell proposed on X, formerly Twitter. 

She told the outlet she takes counsel from Dr Becky Kennedy and Lisa Damour, PhD on how to relay what she’s going through on social media.

‘I’m a feeler,’ she told Bustle, tearing up at the word. ‘I wish I wasn’t sometimes. But I also know it leads me to a lot of my creative process. And I think creativity is one of the most important things in the world.’

Sharing her children’s lives with the public is ‘always a debate between Kantianism and utilitarianism,’ she said.

‘For the good of the people, we should share our dirty stories, we should share our shame, we should share our hardships. But for the good of the one? My main job in life is to protect those two.’

While she and Shepard had no qualms sharing ‘all the cute things’ when the kids were little, ‘well, now, the equation has changed.’

‘There’s someone else in the mix, and you have to have enough self-awareness and consideration to consider that person. And that person is my daughter, so she’s No. 1.’

For all her pains, Bell got little sympathy from the regular folk, who continued to vent their annoyance on social media.

‘Try doing it living between paychecks,’ another shared, while yet another quipped sarcastically: ‘Well she is the first woman to do it.’

One X follower took a gentler approach, writing: ‘It’s not that difficult, in fact it’s very rewarding to have a family that loves you, while another commended Shepard: ‘Dax is a good dude! She’s got it easy!’

Bell previously spoke to People about her parenting approach, revealing that she and Shepard have a strict rule that anyone who argues in their house has to make up where the others can see them.

‘We always make up in front of them if anyone gets snarky or frustrated or fights, which we all do,’ she insisted.

Meanwhile, Shepard, who hosts the weekly Armchair Expert podcast, previously told Luxury London that becoming a dad has had a dramatic impact on his mental health.

‘For me, personally, it’s helped me get over things that would have normally made me depressed,’ he said.

‘If I’d been working on a movie for two years and it didn’t perform well, I would be miserable for months. 

‘But now I think my kids have no idea I’m in a movie, they don’t care. 

‘They need to be fed and taken on a walk and have a bath.’

He added: ‘My primary identity now is “dad,” as opposed to “writer” or “director” or whatever. It’s been incredibly liberating.’

In the same interview, Bell shared she had some trepidation about becoming a mom in the beginning.

‘I wasn’t even sure that I wanted kids, which is shocking for me to say out loud now given how much I’m addicted to them,’ she admitted, adding: ‘I love them so much, even when I hate them, I love them.’