During an interview with Howard Stern this week, the Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey revealed why he “organically” made the decision to never date one of his costars on a film.

McConaughey, 50, has shared the screen with some of the most beautiful women in the world, including Kate Hudson, Jennifer Lopez, and Sarah Jessica Parker. However, he has never dated any of them, and he has a good reason for that.

“I’ve always tried to keep it professional and the people I worked with, I must say, did it well,” he explained. “Maybe we had certain crushes on each other at certain times, but we always just kinda kept it professional. Or maybe we were dating somebody seriously outside of ourselves at the time and we both respected that for the other.”

McConaughey also wanted to keep things professional onset so that the movies themselves would be better.

“If you look at the history of films, and you see a couple [who]… did a movie together and later on they get married and they make another movie together, watch the movie! When they’re really good is the movie before it was ever public that they were getting together, when they’re on the approach, where you’re going, ‘Oh, offset they have a little honeymoon happening,'” he said. “But once they get married, you watch that movie, they’re not near as good together… It’s the movie where they met where you go, ‘That’s the one where this thing is sizzling.'”

Entertainment Tonight reported that McConaughey has been married to his wife Camila Alves since 2012, and they have three children together: Livingston, 7, Vida, 10, and Levi, 12. The actor told Stern that for him, his family is “non-negotiable.”

“The non-negotiable things in my life, when I’ve watered their proverbial garden, that’s when my garden grew and I flourished, and I became more me and life felt more vital,” McConaughey said. “… I’ve had trysts along the way in my own life, some people can have them forever and you can Peter Pan your way through the whole thing. Fine. But… the most important thing to me is my family.”