Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel have quietly relocated to the East Coast, where they’re looking to inject fresh energy into their careers as well as their marriage, but a source exclusively dishes to In Touch that the move hasn’t worked out too well and thus far they’re struggling to make good friends and finding the big city pace a real challenge to deal with. 

“Justin and Jessica had built a pretty stable and comfortable life in Los Angeles with a beautiful home and an entire staff of people waiting on them hand-and-foot, but that wasn’t enough for them,” says a longtime friend of the family. “Justin’s interests in expanding his business ventures and Jessica’s interests in dipping deeper into the live theatre and fashion scenes on the East Coast put this idea in their heads that they should be a bicoastal couple.” 

While pursuing their individual ventures on the East Coast may eventually be profitable, it’s strange the couple hasn’t been spotted out with one of their best friends, Ryan Reynolds, who is primarily NYC-based these days. Throughout all of 2024, Jessica, 42, hadn’t been seen hanging with her former flame turned good friend.

All of this added together certainly points to something else driving their move, besides business ventures and stage time. As In Touch previously reported, the couple is going through a rough patch, with Justin, 44, being popped for a DWI back in September but ultimately pleading the charge down to a lesser driving while ability impaired (DWAI), and facing renewed scrutiny of his past with ex Britney Spears publishing her memoir, The Woman In Me, causing some tension in their marriage.

The “Sexy Back” singer has been “doing everything he can” to “make up for” the DWAI incident, which apparently horrified and embarrassed his wife, a second source previously told In Touch.

“He’s still very tightly wound and stressed over what happened. Even if he’s on his best behavior, there’s a kind of an awkwardness and attention around him that doesn’t really make for very romantic, sexy nights together,” that source added of their marriage woes.

“He’s got more work to put in to heal their relationship before they can get back to what they once had and prove that he’s grown from this and is genuinely someone she can 100 percent trust. He knows trust takes a lot of time to rebuild, but it’s frustrating for him all the same.” 

Luckily, time is something they seem to have plenty of to share together. The two were first linked back in 2007, but split for a bit in 2011 before getting back together and engaged in December of the same year. They married in October 2012, eventually welcoming two children: Silas, 9, and Phineas, 4.

Now, with the move to NYC, the couple is working on building back their relationship even stronger after the past couple months, though at the cost of their already established social circle in L.A. Even though “they just don’t have the friend group on the East Coast that they have in L.A.,” the first source notes, the people they left behind on the West Coast, especially their non-famous friends who they met through family playdates,” do “miss them terribly.”