Courteney Cox Says That Her Boyfriend Broke Up with Her “Within the First Minute” of Attending Couples Therapy Together

In what was likely the opposite intention of going to therapy together, Courteney Cox revealed on fellow actress Minnie Driver’s podcast “Minnie Questions” that her boyfriend, musician Johnny McDaid, dumped her five years ago during their first joint therapy session. (Cox and McDaid were actually engaged at the time, Cox said.)

“It was really intense,” Cox said. “We broke up in therapy. I didn’t know it was coming.” She added, “We went to this therapist to talk about our boundaries—what we could and couldn’t accept about each other.” Instead, McDaid dumped her “within the first minute” of their conversation, she said.

“I was like, ‘What?’” Cox said. “And we were engaged. And I was so shocked. I was in so much pain.”

Cox and McDaid eventually reconciled, and Cox called 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.

Cox said she didn’t react with anger, and instead looked inward and did “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 said.

Cox said, ultimately, she was grateful for the brief split, because their 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, 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,” she said. “I just went into myself.”

Cox admitted that she returned to the same therapist she “met on the breakup day,” which she called “brutal” at first but, ultimately, “great.”

Today Cox and McDaid are dating but no longer engaged, and said she was “thankful” to McDaid for being “so bold and brave, because it was life-changing” for both of them, she said.

Prior to her relationship with McDaid, Cox was married to actor David Arquette from 1999 to 2003; they have a daughter together, Coco, who is now 19. In a different part of her wide-ranging conversation with Driver, Cox said of raising her only child “I wish I’d been a firmer parent.”