The couple has been together for nearly two decades.
Jessica Alba is spilling the secret to her relationship success. ET's Nischelle Turner spoke with the 42-year-old actress on Tuesday, and she shared what's kept her 19-year relationship and 15-year marriage to Cash Warren strong all these years.
"I think sometimes it's over communication, sometimes it's under communication," she told ET. "Sometimes it's, 'I need my space I'll talk to you [later].' When I need [you, I'll say], 'I miss you, will you come back?' [It's about] always communicating how you feel."
Warren himself spoke on the topic during a recent appearance on Jana Kramer's Whine Down podcast.
"You can go months when your energy is just off. It's not like you're actively fighting over those months, but your energy is off. Just having the patience to know that eventually it starts to come back together and your energy starts to get back aligned," he said of what he and Alba do well in their relationship. "Going through a few of those cycles, I no longer get as nervous and kind of start looking at the door. I no longer get as nervous when you're drifting apart or your energy's off."
"She's aligned there, so when we're going through those times we either give each other the space that we need, we talk it out, we maybe go on a date night," he added. "You try to do things to get it back. Fortunately I've got a partner who's kind of right there lock and step."
It hasn't always been easy for the couple, though. During his podcast interview, Warren recalled a brief breakup between him and Alba four years into their romance.
"When we first started dating, I was really jealous of other guys and the attention that she was getting from other guys. It just wasn't making me feel good," he said. "I was always a pretty confident person, walking my own path and really happy there. Next thing you know I'm looking up and just feeling jealous all the time. I was like, 'I hate feeling like this. It doesn't make me feel good. And I know it doesn't make you feel good.'"
They ended up breaking up because of that jealousy, which Warren said turned him "into an as**hole." During that time apart, Warren promised himself that, if they got back together, he would "channel that in a different way, in a more productive way."
Warren and Alba went on to tie the knot in 2008, and have since welcomed three kids: Honor, 15, Haven, 12, and Hayes, 5.
"I'm her biggest cheerleader. I've never felt jealous of or resentment towards her for working hard," he said. "If anything, when we got together I was like, 'Pursue your passions, pursue your careers, don't make sacrifices because you feel bad for leaving the kids... Eventually they'll grow up and forget the fact that you were gone for these three days, five days. We live, we forgive, we forget.'"
"I high-five her, let her do her thing. I've gotten more comfortable with it over the years. It's something I'll always be working on, she'll always be working on it," Warren added. "We find ways where she can support me and she can uplift me. We really do try to find that balance."
As for Alba, she's applied the lessons she's learned from her marriage to her friendships. That's especially true with Lizzy Mathis, her friend of nearly a decade with whom she's hosting a new renovation series, Honest Renovations.
"For us, when it comes to a conflict, if we see things differently, we just talk it out and we always come to a solution, because we're rational people," Alba said of her and Mathis, before noting, "We both have been married for very long times. We know about compromise. It is an art."
After meeting through their children, the women decided to team up professionally during the COVID pandemic.
"We were like, 'What can we do that's fun? Oh, let's hang out with each other and make content,'" Mathis recalled, before Alba explained the idea behind their show.
"Every three years you have almost a completely different dynamic, but your home stays the same," she said. "Lizzy came up with this idea of what if we help parents with parenting challenges at different stages of life."
"It's something that we had gone through ourselves. Our kids are growing. Kindergarten is much different from middle school than from high school," Mathis said. "... In these different stages your house has to switch with you, whether it be more storage, better organization or just flipping up rooms, and so we really wanted to bring that knowledge that we had into these families' [homes]."
Season 1 of Honest Renovations is now streaming on Roku Channel.
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