Business owners Michelle Seeto and Soong Chong with their children Jennifer, 2, and Jordan, 6 / Supplied Source: Supplied

Both the marriage and the business the couple ran together were at stake, and with it responsibilities to family and Ever Better Recruitment’s 10 employees.

But just as her husband was about to walk, she convinced him to try counselling – and not just of the marriage variety.

Three years later Ms Seeto and Soong Chong still meet regularly with their business coach – but now it’s with two happy children as they expand their business internationally.

"A lot of [the coaching] was to get complete with whatever issues we had rather than burying it under the carpet," Ms Seeto said.

"I was pregnant, emotional and hormonal and finding it difficult to deal with running a business while having a family. So if he made me upset, I was taught to not just talk about it but to actually deal with it."

For the woman who worked them through it, the coaching was in some ways a replay of her own situation.

After some rocky patches in her marriage, Louise Woodbury and her husband William de Ora decided to write The Invisible Partnership: How to work with your spouse without getting divorced.

The part self-help tome and part autobiography gives tips about how to work with your life partner successfully.

And after 17 years working with start-up businesses, Ms Woodbury said it is the ones run by couples that inevitably have the most difficulty.

"Conversations between couples in business typically skirt around the 'elephant in the living room'," she said.

"Being able to identify the elephant is important, as most couples hide emotional connections or emotional baggage.

"We give our (married) clients a structure and framework to speak openly about their issues and teach them to communicate effectively rather than in the ‘he said, she said’ pattern."

Couples should work out a common goal, identify each other’s strengths and communicate their concerns directly to one another, she said.

With this in mind Ms Seeto and Mr Chong are planning to expand their Sydney-based business to Melbourne and Singapore.

"We still fight and we still argue – that’s only human," Ms Seeto said. "(But we’ve learned) when we are aligned everything works. But when we’re hitting our heads against a brick wall, nothing works."