Candles? Check. Mood music? Check. And, yes, you do have to take your clothes off. But...

Could a spa date really rejuvenate your marriage?

Where do we stand on dressing gowns? I quite like wearing one to breakfast on a chilly winter’s morning. But what about in public? During the afternoon? When you’re not allowed to have anything whatsoever on underneath?

This, I discover, is the rather odd sartorial conundrum that presents itself when you check into a posh hotel spa. Once catering exclusively to ladies of leisure (and the occasional hen party), these places have in recent years begun embracing gender equality, while cashing in on modern man’s obsession with ‘grooming’.

But the dress code doesn’t seem to have caught up. Not when, like me, you’re a middle-aged bloke who knows full well that one poorly-tied towelling cord is all that separates your unmentionables from a roomful of strangers.

Fortunately, I’m making my debut visit to a spa in the company of a chaperone: my long-suffering wife, Katie.

Bitter experience has taught her precisely when I need telling to re-tie my extremely cosy brown velour robe. And she’s equally good at helping navigate the seemingly endless menu of wraps, scrubs and rub-downs.

Today, we’ve come to the Forum Spa, an inviting place deep in the bowels of Celtic Manor resort, which in turn is a vast and somewhat splendid five- star hotel just outside the scenic tourist attraction that is the City of Newport in South Wales.

Less than a mile away, three lanes of traffic are crawling endlessly through Junction 24 of the M4. But inside, everything is utterly Zen. Steam and the scent of candles fills the air. Fountains tinkle and flower petals float in bathtubs. Ceilings are spotted with fairy lights, and relaxing music (I’d describe the genre as ‘eastern mystical’) is piped into the ether.

Stepping inside this cosy, somnolent space feels rather like entering a large womb. With herbal tea and citrus-flavoured water on tap.

Our mission is to experience an exciting trend: the rise and rise of the so called ‘Couple’s Spa’ date.

For the uninitiated, this describes an outing during which a duo, who’ve grown tired of the same old leisure routine of pub suppers and cinema trips, choose instead to be locked away together, inside a candlelit treatment room, for several hours of pampering.

ONCE there, they will be variously kneaded, slapped and rubbed down by a pair of hardworking therapists. In extremis, they might even choose to undergo a few beauty treatments: pedicures, eyebrow plucking, body waxing and such-like.

On the face of things, it all sounds rather terrifying. With three young children ( aged eight, six and three), we’ve largely forgotten how to sit still, let alone switch off.

Oh, and did I tell you that a single treatment lasts the best part of an hour, during which you’re not really meant to talk?

It turns out that we’re having no fewer than three of the things: a Couple’s Signature Deep Tissue Massage, followed by an elemis Superfood Pro-radiance Facial and a visit to the Forum herbal Steam Temple — a sort of Turkish bath where you smear mud over each other’s torso, as if you’re recreating that scene from the film Ghost. Apparently, the exercise mimics an Arab cleansing ritual.

The Forum’s manager, Marie, says I am not alone in viewing the whole thing with scepticism. Quite a lot of couples spa dates start with men being dragged reluctantly along by their wives, only to discover they really rather enjoy the whole thing.

‘There used to be a real stigma attached, that coming to a spa somehow wasn’t a manly thing to do, but that’s no longer the case,’ is how she puts it. People now see it as a great way for a couple to spend quality time together, away from their children, especially on occasions such as Valentine’s Day.

‘ We’re all also much more aware of stress, and well-being, and understand the benefits of leaving phones in a locker and completely switching off for a couple of hours.’

Whatever the benefits, the trend is certainly real. Before Christmas, the Lanserhof Lans, a famous Austrian medical spa, revealed that 45 per cent of its visitors in the past five years were male. And Celtic Manor’s spa turns out to be chockfull of men furtively shuffling around in disposable slippers behind their better halves.

The other day, no less a specimen of masculinity than england rugby legend James haskell told an interviewer that he’s a big fan. ‘It rattles everyone, but I am just very in touch with my feminine side,’ he declared. ‘If I book Chloe [Madeley, his new wife] and I in for a couples spa day, I’ll have a facial too ... but I do draw the line at a back, sack and crack wax.’

I hear you, James! elsewhere, Glamour magazine recently ran an investigation into a somewhat scandalous trend by which spas are building special ‘ private’ therapy rooms, with lockable doors, which allow patrons to lock themselves away for hankypanky after a relaxing massage. ‘ Forget the Mile high club,’ it was headlined. ‘ Are you a member of the Terry robe club?’

Thankfully, Celtic Manor doesn’t go in for such vulgarity. Instead, Katie and I are shown to a cosy room where we are invited to disrobe before lying down under a gargantuan quantity of white towels. I shall not bore you with a minute-by-minute account of what unfolds, except to say that our therapists, Alex and Jane, have magic in their fingers. The afternoon passes in a contented haze, during which we rediscover the lost art of switching off.

In a strange way, as we lie side by side, Katie and I are able to reconnect in a way that recalls our dating years. There is just one moment when I disgrace myself — by falling asleep during a facial. Allegedly, I begin to snore.

Later, I discuss the incident with Suzanne Duckett, the nation’s foremost spa expert (and former editor of the Tatler Spa Guide), who assures me the incident is perfectly commonplace.

She’s a big fan of spa dates, though says punters shouldn’t be afraid to venture ‘off piste’ by choosing treatments from a spa’s equivalent of the a la carte menu, rather than opting for specially marketed ‘ couples therapies’, which often carry a price premium.

‘There is something quite special when you reconnect with each other after a nice relaxing treatment,’ she adds.

I can’t disagree. After a blissful afternoon, we emerge into the evening rush hour, bright- eyed, clear-headed and glowing.

So next Valentine’s Day, when years gone by might have found us being shoehorned into an overcrowded restaurant, I shall instead return to the candlelit bowels of Celtic Manor.

Because I reckon that couples who spa together almost certainly stay together.

49 per cent of spa customers worldwide in 2017 were men