When you’re mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, there’s a fair chance you’ll come across a gushing relationship post.

This might be sweet, or slightly galling, but either way, it’s hard to avoid the impression that the world is full of deliriously happy couples.

And that’s exactly the kind of “compare and despair” effect that presenter Fearne Cotton wants to avoid, in handling her own close relationships.

Earlier this year, Cotton talked openly about a rough patch she and husband Jesse Wood (son of Rolling Stones star Ronnie Wood) were going through, in a column for Red magazine.

Although she’s since confirmed she’s “more in love than ever” with her husband of four years, amid a storm of media coverage that misinterpreted some of her comments, the presenter believes it’s important to have these honest conversations about the ups and downs of a relationship.

“I wrote that article to go ‘what a load of s***,’ [to the illusion of relationship perfection],” Cotton tells The Telegraph in a new interview.

“Every marriage… takes work. It doesn’t dilute our love or make our marriage any weaker, it actually makes it stronger because we’re willing to have those conversations.”

Fearne Cotton on the tool she turns to for relationship honesty