Nick Lachey doesn’t mind being older than wife Vanessa Lachey — but he’d prefer she didn’t say this one thing about their age difference.
“I tell him all the time, ‘When I was 12, you were 19,’” Vanessa, 44, told E! News on Thursday, February 13, which she confessed makes him cringe. “He’s like, ‘Don’t say that.’”
Nick, who is seven years Vanessa’s senior, noted that when she compares their ages in that way it doesn’t sit well with him.
“That’s when it just sounds creepy,” Nick, 51, admitted in a joint interview.
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While the 98 Degrees singer doesn’t love Vanessa pointing out the gap in teenage years, he doesn’t care about the difference as adults. “Seven years feels like seven months,” Nick said. “When you get to be [at] this point in life, seven years is nothing.”
Vanessa, who married the musician in 2011, couldn’t agree more, saying age “ain’t nothing but a number now.”
The NCIS: Hawai’i alum, however, said she didn’t always feel that way. When they first met, Vanessa was in her 20s and Nick was in his 30s, which she felt like was worlds apart.
“I was still living in New York, working at TRL, wanting to go out,” Vanessa recalled. “And you were like, ‘OK, I’m ready to settle down and have kids.’”
While Vanessa didn’t notice it right away, she soon realized that “everything I wanted was aligned with everything Nick wanted.”
She remembered, “Him being older than me, really put it in front of me in a more direct manner. I was like, ‘Dang, you’re so old and wise.’”
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With that revelation, Vanessa got the push she needed to go all-in with Nick. “If I wanted to settle down and get married and have kids, why was I still going out without him?” she recalled asking herself. “Why was I still, like, living la vida loca in New York City? So, that’s the moment that I made a choice to move to Los Angeles and commit myself to him.”
The couple — who met in 2006 when Vanessa was part of Nick’s “What’s Left of Me” music video — have since welcomed three children. They share sons Camden, 12, and Phoenix, 8, and daughter Brooklyn, 10.
While growing their family, Vanessa and Nick have also grown their careers both together and apart. Their biggest joint ventures have been cohosting Love Is Blind and The Ultimatum.
With such busy schedules, the pair have learned how to prioritize their romantic connection with set days for sexy time.
“He’s like, ‘What, schedule a sex day?’” Vanessa recalled to Brides magazine in an interview published on Tuesday, February 11. “It sounds weird when you say that, so we decided: Wednesday — hump day.”
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Sex isn’t the only thing Vanessa and Nick schedule regularly — they also make time for couples’ therapy.
“It’s nice for them to see that, yes, we’ve been together 19 years, married for 13, and we are seeing a therapist, and we still have problems,” Vanessa told the outlet. “It’s really important to have a third-person perspective that’s an unbiased opinion.”
Nick was in sync with his wife’s sentiments, adding, “Anything that’s worth having takes work.” He revealed, “There’s no perfect person, there’s just your person.”
