If they had tied the knot, longtime loves Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn might not be together.
The two celebrated 41 years together this past Valentine's Day, and now Hawn is speaking about why their relationship works without legal unification.
"People fuse, and fusion is very bad," she told Dax Shepard on his podcast, "Armchair Expert," while discussing the pitfalls of marriage.
"Because once you start losing yourself, engaged in someone else's everything, become too dependent…then there's a loss of respect, there's expectation, and then a lot of people actually shift mentally when they feel tied up," Hawn said.
KURT RUSSELL, GOLDIE HAWN KISS DURING ROMANTIC ASPEN GETAWAY AFTER 40 YEARS TOGETHER
"I always said if I'm in a cage, and I'm a bird, and you leave the door open, I'll probably never fly out," Hawn explained. "If you close the door to the cage, my feathers will be gone, and I won't look like a bird anymore. And I wouldn't survive."
Hawn has two children, Oliver and Kate, from her previous marriage to Bill Hudson. Russell has a son, Boston, from his marriage to Season Hubley. Shepard suggested the couple, who share one biological son together, Wyatt, might not be together if they got married.
"Probably not," Hawn admitted. "Ultimately, when you look back on it, I've never asked that question of myself, because what I like is waking up in the morning, and I've said this many times, and actually making a choice to be with someone."
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"I picked him," she said of Russell. "I like that guy."
"We don't agree on certain things. He was tougher than me as a parent. … But we have a very, very strong family because of it. That was one of the things that gave us things to talk about," she said of why their relationship stuck.
"But I think that if we were married, there probably could have been times, when you go, ‘Oh c’mon. I'm done.'"
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The "Shampoo" actress says to this day, she still meets men, none of whom measure up to Russell.
"I'm really happy I stayed," she noted.
Russell seems to share similar sentiments as Goldie, telling Variety recently, "We constantly got asked, 'When are you going to get married? Why aren't you married?'" referring to the early days of their relationship.
"And we were like, 'Why does anybody care about that?'" he added. "We'd asked our kids if they cared about it. They didn't. We didn't."
