Courteney Cox revealed her longtime boyfriend, Johnny McDaid, dumped her five years ago during their first joint therapy session.
“It was really intense,” the “Friends” star said on the “Minnie Questions” podcast Wednesday. “We broke up in therapy. I didn’t know it was coming.”
Cox, 59, noted that she and the Snow Patrol member, 47, were engaged at the time.
“We went to this therapist to talk about our boundaries — what we could and couldn’t accept about each other,” she shared.
Instead, McDaid broke up with the “Scream” star “within the first minute” of their conversation.
“I was like, ‘What?’” she recalled. “And we were engaged. And I was so shocked. I was in so much pain. I also don’t like surprises!”
Cox defended the musician, calling him “an incredible human being” who “was in that much pain in the relationship” at the time.
“There was that much that needed to be dealt with that he had to protect himself around his heart,” she said.
The “Cougar Town” star insisted she did not react angrily, instead looking inward and doing “the most work” on herself.
“I learned how to reclaim my voice, boundaries, what were my motives in life — like, what was my part in this?” she added.
Cox is now grateful for the brief split because her and McDaid’s relationship was “different” once they got back together.
“It really taught me how I operated in the world, what were the things from my childhood that I needed,” she said, “whether it was to be adored by men, things that I didn’t know how to let go, to be in a relationship, to not take things personally, my boundaries. I just went into myself.”
The actress admitted she returned to the same therapist she “met on the breakup day,” which was “brutal” at first but ultimately “great.”
She added that she is “thankful” the Grammy nominee, whom she is still dating but no longer engaged to, was “so bold and brave because it was life-changing” for them both.
Cox was previously married to David Arquette from 1999 to 2013, and they share a 19-year-old daughter named Coco.
