Courteney Cox just got incredibly candid about her fiancé Johnny McDaid breaking up with her during couples' therapy.
"So three years in, we broke up and it was really intense," the Friends star shared on the Minnie Questions With Minnie Driver podcast. "We broke up in therapy. I didn't know it was coming, whether I should have or not."
She explained: "We went to this therapist to talk about our boundaries, what we could and couldn't accept about each other — that acceptance. Instead, 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."
Though she was incredibly hurt by Johnny's decision to end the relationship, she understood.
"He was in that much pain in the relationship," she explained. "There was that much that needed to be dealt with that he had to protect himself around his heart."
Instead of getting angry, the actress says she took the opportunity to really introspect.
After that, "I did the most work on myself, by far," she said. "I learned how to reclaim my voice, boundaries. What were my motives in life? Like, what was my part in this?"
Courteney and Johnny eventually got back together, but she says the breakup almost needed to happen for the relationship to be the best it could.
She went as far as to say: "I'm so thankful for that breakup because when we got back together, it was a different relationship, but also because it really taught me how I operated in the world.
"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. I just went into myself and I had a great therapist."
The Cougar Town star and the Snow Patrol musician met and began dating in 2013, and got engaged the following year, then called off the engagement the year after that, in 2015. They eventually got back together in 2016, and have been thriving ever since, according to People.
