Vanessa Lachey Reveals Quarantine Forced Her and Husband Nick Lachey to Be More ‘Patient’ Together (Exclusive)

With 2020 posing challenges for many families across the country and the world, celebrities are no exception. In an exclusive interview with Vanessa Lachey for our PopCulture @ Home series, the mom of three admitted to PopCulture.com that it’s been a little crazy in the Lachey household with so much up in the air between work and school. However, that’s not the only thing she’s having to navigate. Quarantine has also shown her and her husband Nick Lachey areas they needed to work on in their relationship, revealing they had to learn to “communicate better” and develop “more empathy” for one another.

“I’ve realized that having a 3-, a 5-, and a 7-year-old — while it’s incredible in its own right, and I’m very lucky that I am blessed with three kids — it’s also the hardest time to be in a quarantine situation because they’re still emotionally figuring out how to be and how to handle things and how to cope and how to understand everything,” Lachey detailed, adding she, like many others, has had some “high highs and low lows” throughout this process — but what it’s done for her marriage she’s thankful for.

“And for my marriage, it’s been really incredible in the sense that it’s really forced us to, like, take our marriage and relationship to the next level,” the Love Is Blind host confessed. “We’ve been together for 14 years and we’ve been married for nine, but we really had to communicate better,” she continued. “We had to be patient more. We had to have more empathy with the other person’s feelings and understanding, and it’s just overall been like a learning experience.”

While Lachey is learning to be “kinder” to herself through this process, she’s also making an extra effort for her and the 98 Degrees boy-bander’s children — Phoenix, 3; Brooklyn, 5, and Camden, 7 — as they try and navigate going back to school in such an uncertain time. Recently, she partnered with Rice Krispies Treats for its “Love in Case of” kits that provides parents the opportunity to write their kids a sweet note, but also raise money for No Kid Hungry. “I love that they are encouraging us to not be so overwhelmed […] and to take a deep breath, and to know that we’re all in this together, and we can all use a little extra TLC, especially our children and you can do it through a fun treat, literally!”

Kellogg’s conducted a survey that showed 80% of kids wanted a handwritten note or letter from their parents, and by ordering the kit for $10 at Kelloggstore.com, $20 will be donated to No Kid Hungry. For more on your favorite celebrities, keep it right here at PopCulture.com.