ROSIE GREEN We need to talk… about pre-crisis counselling

Couples therapy. Two words that strike dread into my heart, sitting on the angst scale between ‘severe delays’ and ‘cavity search’.

The hours I spent with a marriage guidance counsellor and my ex, trying to salvage our napalmed relationship, are not ones I ever want to repeat. In fact, I’d rather be reincarnated as Trump’s spray tanner than be transported back to the between-session ‘work sheets’, wipe-clean leather sofa and job-lot tissues of that room of doom. So the idea that some happy couples are subjecting themselves to what’s known as ‘pre-crisis counselling’ is, frankly, astounding.

Gwyneth Paltrow and her newish husband Brad Falchuk do it. Of course they do. Their sessions – no doubt costing hundreds of dollars each – are probably conducted while stretched out on Eames chairs in a whitewashed office, with tissues softer than a kitten’s underbelly.

But it’s not only LA luvvies making sure they fix things before they get too badly broken. Former Loose Women presenter Andrea McLean and her husband Nick Feeney told me on my podcast that they are fully signed up to this particular form of therapy. Anna Williamson, the dating coach on the TV show Celebs Go Dating, believes in early intervention, too: she thinks pre-crisis counselling sessions would be great gifts for all newlyweds. Forget the Dualit toaster, the destined-to-gather-dust cake forks or, God forbid, a fondue set – my present to you is multiple hours with a stranger revealing your most embarrassing insecurities and festering peeves.

Williamson, who is happily married herself, says she and her husband have just completed some sessions. Why, why, why?

Is it not asking for trouble and opening a Pandora’s box of resentments? Not to mention the raised eyebrows from friends and relatives who will jump to the conclusion that one of you has been misbehaving.

But on reflection I think these fans of early relationship interventions might have a point: it’s good to nip things in the bud. Think of it as relationship insurance. McLean says, for her, it supplies a series of ‘little signposts’, to what Feeney describes as ‘ugly truths’. You know – the really unsayable things. So, I’m guessing not ‘you don’t ever rinse the cereal bowls’ but more like ‘our sex is seriously underwhelming’.

The nearest most of us get to pre-crisis counselling is with the priest just before the church service. At the time I thought it a major inconvenience – the downside of our decision to get hitched in an aesthetically pleasing location. Why-oh-why did I have to dash away from work to meet an elderly man so he could dig about in our values and offer disappointing biscuits?

Asked about how we made decisions in the relationship, I remember my ex saying something along the lines of, ‘If she wants one thing and I want another, eventually I just agree with her.’ Hmm.

Another friend who did ‘church counselling’ recalls that her husband revealed to the priest that he was about to leave the army and go into banking (despite longing to become a teacher). The priest, quite rightly, asked why. The groom explained that a high income was important to his wife-to-be and that was why he was sacrificing his vocation. She countered that she’d never said or thought anything of the kind.

Reader, he became a teacher – one ten-minute conversation that changed two lives for ever. The power of pre-crisis counselling in action.

So I ask the boyfriend, should we try it? He looks unenthusiastic (understatement). And, truthfully, my eagerness is waning too. I respect Gwynnie and co’s relationship assiduousness, but with zero grievances to air (in fact, I’m nauseatingly happy) I’m going to skip the room of doom and spend the money on dinner à deux instead.

IS IT NOT OPENING A PANDORA’S BOX OF RESENTMENTS?