Inside Jason Bateman’s Odds-Defying Love Story With Wife Amanda Anka

Fast-forward 30 years, "If I were to start scratching itches now," he added, "it's not a good look."

And, looking back, Bateman continued, "I did get it out of my system, or at least the curiosity was answered so that I'm not susceptible to any sort of, 'Well, you know, I never did that, let me try that,' and meanwhile I've got to drop my kids off at school."

But he was drawn to Anka, an actress and one of legendary crooner Paul Anka's six children, long before he had sowed all his oats.

"I made a very smart choice with my wife," Bateman told The Independent in 2008. "I didn't marry a 'girlfriend.' I married a 'wife'. I think my gender is known to pick women that make us feel good, and who are kind of subordinate to us. And I was guilty of that for a long time. I didn't really have the balls to be with someone who was my equal and, as a result, a lot of those relationships were short-term."

Eventually he said to himself, "Well, I only want to get married once, so make sure I marry a friend that I'm really attracted to.' She was a very close friend, and it's worked because I don't need to be in a certain mood to like her— she's like a friend who you never tire of."

Bateman and Anka dated for several years before marrying on July 3, 2001. They welcomed their first child, Francesca Nora Bateman, on Oct. 28, 2006, and her sister, Maple Sylvie Bateman, was born Feb. 10, 2012.

And checking off those boxes was way more fulfilling than anything the actor did back in the 1980s.

None of which he takes for granted, as he still had plenty of work to do when he and Anka first got together.

"Amanda and I definitely had a few negotiations about the point at which the [partying] spigot was going to completely turn off," he told The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview. "She’d be like, ‘This drip, drip, drip is annoyingly unpredictable, Jason.'"

Bateman continued, "She didn’t demand that I completely absolve, but that was sort of the back-and-forth, and I was like, well, I feel like my [sobriety] ETA is six months away, but if I could land this plane now, it would alleviate a lot of the tension, so let’s just f--king do it.”

Reader, he f--king did it.

As Bateman explained to Redbook, "Our marriage has defied the odds and works really well. We are really aware of our boundaries. We know how to bug each other and not bug each other. If you don't get along, it's garbage...We learn to fight quickly, or not at all."

He credited Anka for making marriage feel "effortless," he told Australia's Daily Telegraph in 2014. "It gets better every single year."

Moreover, "The transition from non-dad to dad was a very natural one for me," noted Bateman, who started taking Francesca to Dodgers games when she was a toddler to ensure they had something to bond over for life. "It’s another thing I didn’t take on earlier than I should have, and I think because of that it’s been very comfortable and enjoyable."

And remaining keyed into what makes him tick has also been key to his marital dynamic. While Anka described her husband to GQ as "the most sensitive, generous man without being fragile," Bateman admitted that putting himself first (to a certain extent) benefits everyone in his life.