Chase Stokes and Kelsea Ballerini in Austin in 2023. Photo: Jeff Kravitz/Getty

Chase Stokes is lifting the curtain on how he and girlfriend Kelsea Ballerini keep their relationship strong.

In PEOPLE’s September digital cover story, the Outer Banks actor, 31, reveals that he and the country star, also 31, have a rule of “never going more than three weeks” without seeing each other.

“We don’t BS each other. If we need to make the effort to show up when one’s across the country, we do it,” he says. “The amount of effort that we put into our careers, we should be doubling that in our personal lives. It’s about really putting in effort, and it’s not always easy and it’s not always convenient, but having a big, beautiful life didn’t come from convenience or ease.”

Though they typically split their time between Nashville, where Ballerini has a house, and South Carolina, where Stokes shoots Outer Banks, the two have temporarily set up a home base in Los Angeles. Ballerini is currently coaching her first season of The Voice in Universal City, and Stokes has work commitments around Hollywood.

“That was kind of our thing: Let’s just set up shop versus being on planes, for the boys,” he says, talking about his dog Milo and Ballerini’s dog Dibs (who, Ballerini recently announced, has an inoperable heart cancer). “We wanted to set up a sense of real life out here for a little while.”

After work, their evenings together typically involve cooking — Stokes’s go-to is skirt steak with a homemade chimichurri – and bingeing Lost. If they have to be apart for work, there’s “no Lost if we’re not together,” Stokes says. “We have a very hard line in the sand. We tried a couple nights ago to do the one, two, three, go and hit play from afar, and we just could not figure it out. So we ended up watching Gone Girl.”

Chase Stokes and Kelsea Ballerini in August 2023.Victor Boyko/Variety via Getty Images

The couple is savoring their down time as they gear up for a busy fall. Stokes next stars in the Netflix film Uglies, based on the bestselling dystopian 2005 novel, premiering Sept. 13, and Season 4 of Outer Banks premieres on Oct. 10. He’ll also play a tattoo artist with a fiery temper in The Notebook director Nick Cassavetes’ upcoming romance Marked Men and an army captain in the thriller Valiant One in early 2025.

“There really isn’t anything off-limits,” says Stokes, who also has plans to produce. “I’m making sure that I’m really attacking my career with no restraints.”

As for Ballerini, she’s readying to release a new album, Patterns, on Oct. 25, in addition to coaching The Voice. Stokes calls the album “unbelievable.”

“It is a master class in songwriting,” he says. “To watch her on the back porch writing and see what it is now, it is the most fascinating thing. It’s just further proof that Kelsea Ballerini is a force of nature in music.”

With their careers taking them in different directions, that means Ballerini will sometimes “come and hang out on set with me, or I’ll go into the studio with her,” Stokes says. “Or it’s just sitting in the living room and talking through dreams and aspirations and having a safe space with a partner that believes in you. We really are very fortunate that we have big careers and a big world around us, but we like to keep it very simple and very small.”

Chase Stokes and Kelsea Ballerini in April 2023.Bruce Glikas/Getty

Stokes first met Ballerini after she slid into his DMs in December 2022, four months after she filed for divorce from musician Morgan Evans. At the time, Stokes was shooting a movie out of the country.

“We spent a lot of time texting back and forth, but I think there was definitely an immediate moment of, ‘I really like this girl, and I would like to get to know her better,’” he says. “My mom got remarried later in life, and she always said that as you get older, you understand your values and the things that you like and don’t like.”

When they first introduced their dogs, Stokes admits Ballerini “was a little more nervous than I was.”

“She was like, ‘Are they going to click? Dibs is an only child, and he’s got only child syndrome,'” he recalls. “It took maybe two days for them to really start to coexist. She sent me a video this morning and Dibs and Milo are bobbing and weaving in the pool trying to find the ball that sunk. So they’ve adapted.”

As they look to the future, Stokes says, “It’s really about building a life together.”

“In any relationship, you just have to learn to grow together and embrace change,” he says. “It’s understanding that even at 31, almost 32, I’m still growing. I’m still evolving, and so is she. It’s learning to lead with love and a want to grow together.”