Originally appeared on E! Online
Along came growth.
Ben Stiller shed some light on his yearslong breakup from wife Christine Taylor and what ultimately brought them back together as a couple.
"When we separated, it was just having space to see what our relationship was, what my life felt like when we weren’t in that relationship, how much I loved our family unit," Stiller explained of their 2017 split in an interview with The New York Times published Jan. 11. "It was like three or four years that we weren’t together but we always were connected."
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The "Severance" director added that, from his perspective, his separation from Taylor — with whom he shares Ella, 22, and Quinlin, 19 — was never intended to be permanent.
"In my mind, I never didn’t want us to be together," Stiller — who married his Zoolander costar in 2000 — said. "I don’t know where Christine was, you’d have to ask her, but COVID put us all together in the same house."
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The "Dodgeball" actor pointed to being back under the same roof again starting in 2020 as a turning point in their relationship, which offered the then-estranged couple an opportunity to reconnect.
"It was almost a year of living in the same house before we were actually together," Stiller shared. "But I’m so grateful for it, and I think not that many people do come back together when they separate."
"There’s nothing like that, when you come back," he continued. "You have so much more appreciation for what you have, because we know we could not have it."
Taylor had a similar perspective on their separation when she opened up about it a couple of years ago while reflecting on how quickly they moved at the beginning of their relationship over 20 years ago.
"We got married very quickly after meeting each other," she said on "The Drew Barrymore Show" in 2023. "We knew each other six months, got engaged, married within the year and had Ella that next year."
"I think Ben and I both started to grow in different directions," Taylor mused. "And when we made the decision to separate, it was not something we wanted to talk publicly about or took lightly."
"The Brady Bunch Movie" actress added that "during that time apart, [they] got to know who they are" and "needed some time to figure that out," but they "always stayed a family unit and always continued to do things together."
When the pandemic hit and they moved back in with one another, Stiller and Taylor had "so much time to talk" with "no other distractions," which allowed them to lay it all out on the table.
"I feel like when you've lived a lifetime with someone like we have — and we learned as we were going along — there's a freedom in that," she concluded. "There is a freedom in the comfort of this relationship and the commitment."