Dax Shepard Shares Flirty Birthday Tribute to Wife Kristen Bell

To mark Kristen Bell‘s 41st birthday publicly, Dax Shepard shared a candid shot of his wife on Instagram. “Happy Birthday Cowgirl,” Shepard wrote. “Your beauty is only surpassed by your heart and buns. Here’s wishing you another 100 years in the saddle.”

Bell and Shepard have made being transparent about their relationship part of their personal brand, and the Gossip Girl star shared on The Ellen Degeneres Show that therapy is part of how they keep their marriage healthy. “It’s a different recipe every time,” Bell told guest host Chelsea Handler. “At the beginning of the pandemic, we were at each other’s throats, and then all the doors locked in our house, like we had to stay inside, and we were like, ‘Woof, we need to get a handle on the annoyances.’” She explained that their therapist, Harry, suggested that since the two were “so annoyed with each other,” they “brush up” on their “toolbox.” “Relationships take work,” she said. “He suggested we go to therapy separately, kinda so that we could talk s— about each other.”

“And we did, and it’s been great,” Bell continued. “What we’ve been doing the last couple months is, every two weeks or so, I’ll see Harry via Zoom and complain about Dax, and then he’ll give me all the reasons why I’m wrong, and then Dax will do the same. And then by the time we meet up in the evening, we love each other again because our toolboxes are bigger.”

“When you have a third party moderating any disagreement, it’s always a safer place,” she explained. “When two people are talking, defense mechanisms and cortisol and all that stuff, it just messes up the solution.” Handler agreed, “You always need a third party” and joked, “Even if you’re single, you need a third party to mediate between all your personalities.” Bell also shared that her favorite quote from Harry is, “Do something nice today and don’t get caught.”

In January, the actress told PEOPLE that she and Shepard, who share daughters Lincoln, 8, and Delta, 6, needed “a little therapy brush-up” at the beginning of quarantine in 2020. “Every couple of years, we’re like, ‘We’re being very antagonistic towards each other,’ and we don’t want that,” she said. “We go back to therapy and figure out what I’m not doing that’s best for you and what you’re not doing that’s best for me, and how we can serve this team goal better,” she continued. “It’s been incredibly helpful.”