Courteney Cox says her partner Johnny McDaid once broke up with her in therapy

By Marianne Garvey, CNN

(CNN) — Courteney Cox’s longtime partner Johnny McDaid once broke up with her in a therapy session.

Cox appeared on the “Minnie Questions with Minnie Driver” podcast, saying it happened about five years ago. The “Friends” star and the Snow Patrol rocker were engaged at the time.

“So three years in, we broke up and it was really intense. We broke up in therapy,” she said. “I didn’t know it was coming, whether I should have or not.”

They were supposed to be discussing boundaries within their relationship, but instead he just broke it off.

“He just broke up within the first minute. And I was like, what? We were engaged and I was so shocked. I was in so much pain,” she said. “He wasn’t trying to surprise me. He was in that much pain in the relationship.”

She continued, “There was that much that needed to be dealt with that he had to protect himself around his heart.”

Cox said she ended up working on herself during the split, saying, she “learned how to reclaim my voice, boundaries. What were my motives in life? Like, what was my part in this?”

She even called McDaid’s decision brave.

“It takes a lot of bravery to end something that has so much passion or end anything,” she said. “Any kind of relationship. It’s so much easier just to stay and ride things out and make excuses and, you know, fear of pain is just too much to handle. But once you are bold enough to make decisions and go through the pain, you can’t go around it.”

Cox now says she’s thankful it happened, because when they reunited as a couple it was better.

“When we got back together, it was a different relationship, but also because it really taught me how I operated in the world,” she said.

“What were the things from my childhood that I needed? Like whether it was to be adored by men or things that I didn’t know how to let go to be in a relationship. To not take things personally, my boundaries,” she said. “I just went into myself and I had a great therapist.”

Cox and McDaid went public as a couple in 2013 and were engaged in nine months.

In late 2015, it was announced they had called off their engagement. In 2016, they reunited as partners.

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