Ryan Gosling's 'Top Priority' Is 'Spending Time' With Partner Eva Mendes and Their 2 Children

After being together for years, Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes seem to have a good thing going when it comes to their relationship.

“Spending time with Eva and the kids was obviously the top priority, but he also needed a break,” explained a source. “Ryan tends to work in big spurts, then takes time off so he can come back to the next challenge with a full tank.”

As OK! previously reported, the pair, who met in 2011 while filming The Place Beyond the Pines, even compromise for another, as Mendes shared she didn't mind giving up her acting career for her longtime lover.

"It was like a no-brainer. I'm so lucky, and I was like, if I can have this time with my children... and I still worked, I just didn't act because acting takes you on locations, it takes you away," the Hitch star said on the Today show in late March. "It was almost just like a non-verbal agreement that it was like, 'Okay he's going to work and I'm going to work, I'm just going to work here.'"

The brunette beauty, who shares daughters Esmeralda Amada, 9, and Amada Lee, 7, with Gosling, said she "pretty much stopped acting" after she appeared in The Place Beyond the Pines alongside her partner.

“I have never experienced anything like that. The way he works, his commitment to his craft, how he wants to make everything as best as it can be, and that means making his co-stars as best as they can be,” Mendes said of the Barbie star.

“But unfortunately — or fortunately — there is only one Ryan!’" she added. “He went and he did his job. He just happens to be really good at his job, and he did it and he came home. Because that’s what it’s about. You go, you do your job the best you can and then you come home.”

For his part, the handsome hunk, who admitted he wasn't "thinking about kids" prior to meeting Mendes, seems happier than ever with his life.

In January, he couldn't stop gushing over his lady. "Most importantly, I got to meet the girl of my dreams, Eva Mendes, and have two dream children," he said at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in early January.

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