Dax Shepard’s midlife crisis: Kristen Bell’s ‘weird’ husband is in total ‘meltdown mode’,

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell have a habit of oversharing about their relationship.

Eschewing the desire for privacy favored by many a Hollywood star, the couple has instead talked candidly about the more intimate details of their lives.

But such honesty has now seemingly backfired, and Shepard is paying the price.

The actor’s mental health has taken a blow in recent weeks, according to insiders, who told the Daily Mail he has been in ‘meltdown mode’ after a misconstrued comment from his wife, 46, saw him accused of being ‘controlling’ and ‘abusive.’

Shepard, 51, looked visibly distressed this week as he fought back against the ‘deeply insulting’ accusations during an episode of Fact Checker, a segment of his Armchair Expert podcast.

‘Another round of me being a terrible person was in the media,’ he said during a discussion with his cohost Monica Padman.

‘[The] weird narrative that is surrounding me as like controlling, abusive, now flirting with people in public, which I don’t do… It’s so frustrating.’

The latest controversy to hit the couple started when Bell revealed her husband will pay compliments to people when they’re on a date, something many took as Shepard flirting in front of his wife.

‘If we go to a dinner or something, there’s a couple things Dax does where he doesn’t have to look up and wink at me, but I know that he’s just being the best boy,’ she said on her husband’s podcast.

‘We’ll be at dinner and he’ll say to the waiter [or] waitress, he’ll go: “Wow, you have incredible eyelashes, gorgeous eyes, great job.”‘

When Dax’s co-host Padman made a joke about him flirting with the waitress, Bell explained: ‘That’s flirting with me because he just made someone else feel good.’

But listeners were unconvinced, with one writing on social media: ‘Honey, that’s cheating.’

‘He felt he had to speak up,’ one insider told the Daily Mail. ‘Dax is not abusive, and, if anything, Kristen calls the shots in the marriage and is the leader, there is no way she is abused in any way and people acting like she is made Dax sick.’

Shepard said it was ‘offensive’ to Bell to paint her as a suffering wife with kids, adding: ‘She’s what, she’s sitting in a house with her two daughters and modelling some abusive relationship? Like, it’s very offensive to her.’

He insisted that Bell’s phrasing was ‘easily confused’ as he clarified that he flirts with Bell by ‘tipping people a lot,’ and ‘by complimenting people.’

In other words, Bell is turned on when her hubby plays Good Samaritan.

‘If you think I’m complimenting like hot young waitresses, yeah, you got a problem,’ Shepard added. ‘I’m finding the dude that I don’t thinks had a compliment in a while and tell him I love his shoes. It’s always somebody that I want to make their day.’

Our insider said the confusion could stem from Bell thinking she is funny and as a result failing to properly articulate herself.

‘The whole exchange was bizarre and hard to relate to,’ the insider said. ‘Kristen tries to keep up with Dax by saying weird, irreverent things for laughs or shock or just general intrigue. But often she fails at it because she doesn’t articulate herself well enough.

‘The problem with Dax and Kristen is they just say s** like it is. But they are not clear when they explain things. They are not comics. They can’t deliver a line. They are Weird and Weirder. No wonder people misunderstand them.’

It’s not the first time the divisive couple has found themselves in hot water.

In the debut episode of Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in 2018, for which Bell served as his first guest, the actor admitted he and his wife were ‘bickering’ and ‘being impatient with each other’ throughout the interview.

At one point, Shepard did an impression of Bell nagging at him, to which the actress responded by calling him ‘annoying’ and noting that he was ‘talking over’ her.

Then, back in 2020, Bell described how the pair had an ‘incredible… top of the lungs screaming’ fight so intense that Bell ‘blacked out’ and didn’t talk to her husband for three days.

Quarantining together during the COVID-19 pandemic brought even more issues to the surface, with the pair increasingly ‘at each other’s throats,’ Bell previously told People.

It all kicked off again last year when Shepard found himself name-dropped in a viral essay published by The Cut that critiqued women who ‘normalize’ their husband’s ‘bad behavior.’ It was sparked by Bell after she revealed in an anniversary tribute on Instagram that he once told her: ‘I would never kill you. A lot of men have killed their wives at a certain point. Even though I’m heavily incentivized to kill you, I never would.’

And earlier this year Cher boldly told Shepard that Bell could do better than him during an interview on Armchair Expert. 

‘Dax feels bad because he and his wife get slammed all the time,’ our source said. ‘But sometimes people misunderstand him which makes him feel shame.’

And it seems that shame reached boiling point this week.

‘It got so bad that it was affecting him mentally,’ a second source said of the abuse claims. ‘Kristen can always see when it’s coming. It actually got so stressful for Dax that he’s been in meltdown mode on a pretty regular basis.

‘He said the monsters inside his head were working overtime and it was becoming very unhealthy. The public perception of him was getting worse and worse. He knew he wasn’t coming across well.’

Shepard admitted on his podcast that his family had started to worry about his wellbeing. 

So, he and Bell discussed how to handle the situation before making a ‘joint decision that he needed to try to set the record straight,’ according to our second insider.

‘They want people to know that however it appears, and whatever he says, they’re in a solid marriage.’

Such a position has taken work – something they have both been open about.

After all, the start of their relationship was far from smooth sailing, with Bell admitting to having ‘no chemistry’ when they first met at a mutual friend’s birthday dinner in 2004. But fast forward three years and Bell was ‘absolutely smitten’ when they bumped into each other at a hockey game and Shepard bizarrely took her used chewing gum for himself.

They then briefly broke up before reuniting and getting engaged in 2010. Bell revealed she had gone to therapy with Shepard ‘right off the bat’ – that is, as early as the ‘first six months’ of dating.

‘We went to therapy a lot our first and second year, because we’re both really stubborn,’ she told the Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s podcast in June 2024.

They welcomed their daughter Lincoln, now 13, in March 2013 before tying the knot seven months later at the Beverly Hills courthouse. Their second daughter, Delta, now 11, was born the following December.

Throughout their marriage Shepard has battled demons from his own childhood. He previously claimed he was molested, aged seven, by an 18-year-old neighbor, has talked openly about the abuse his mother suffered at the hands of his first stepfather, as well as exposure to substance abuse which led to his own battles with drug and alcohol addiction later in life. He is now sober. 

‘Kristen’s a huge support system for him,’ our second insider said. ‘He had a problematic childhood and feels he’s been paying for it ever since. He’s not been shy about discussing it on the podcast.’

Such a traumatic past is why he felt so compelled to speak out, telling listeners this week that he has dedicated his life to ‘being the opposite of all that.’

‘He can live with being misunderstood, mocked or criticized for the way he and Kristen conduct their lives, but being publicly characterized as an abuser was something he simply couldn’t let sit,’ said a third source.

‘It wasn’t just about what strangers were saying online anymore. Dax had to think about Kristen hearing these accusations, how they might affect her, and, just as important, what happens now that their children are older and will inevitably encounter hearing these things about their father.

‘He felt he needed to stand up for himself, his wife and his family, and make it clear that this was not something he was going to accept.’

The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for Shepard and Bell for comment.