Gwyneth opens up about 'conscious uncoupling' in new 'Vogue' essay

Gwyneth Paltrow is spilling all kinds of tea on her marriage to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin. In a new essay for British Vogue, the actress reveals she knew their marriage was over years before they called it quits in 2016, that they tried to stay together for the sake of their kids, and that at first she also felt weird about the term “conscious uncoupling.”The 47-year-old Oscar winner recalls knowing in her bones that things were done during a trip to Tuscany for her 38^th birthday. "I don't recall when it happened, exactly. I don't remember which day of the weekend it was or the time of day. But I knew—despite long walks and longer lie-ins, big glasses of Barolo and hands held—my marriage was over," she writes, adding that “it would be years” until they said those words out loud. “That weekend, a dam had cracked just enough to hear the unrelenting trickle of truth. And it grew louder until it was all I could hear."[video_embed id='1750469']RELATED: Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow went on a double date with new partners[/video_embed]In the essay Paltrow reveals that she and Martin always had things in common and were close, but somehow they “never fully settled into being a couple.” She adds that they “didn’t quite fit together” and described the relationship as one full of unease and unrest. “But man, did we love our children,” she writes in reference to Apple Martin and Moses Martin, who are now 16 and 14 years old.Paltrow explains that she and Martin tried everything to make things work because they didn’t want to fail. “We desperately didn’t want to hurt our children. We didn’t want to lose our family. The questions, both philosophical and tactical, seemed unfathomable: Who sleeps where, how does bath time work, what do we say to the kids? I bent myself into every imaginable shape to avoid answering them,” she writes.

 

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Happy Birthday CAJM. This is a special one. We love you so much. #42

A post shared by Gwyneth Paltrow (@gwynethpaltrow) on Mar 2, 2019 at 10:45pm PST

Eventually the actress and Goop founder realized that she was no longer at a fork in the road, but that she had already started down a path. That’s when she and Martin began speaking about “conscious uncoupling:” a phrase from their therapist. “Frankly, the term sounded a bit full of itself, painfully progressive and hard to swallow,” she writes. “It was an idea introduced to us by our therapist, the man who helped us architect our new future. I was intrigued, less by the phrase, but by the sentiment. Was there a world where we could break up and not lose everything? Could we be a family, even though we were not a couple? We decided to try.”According to Paltrow they tried for a year before they announced their split to the world. During that time they had just moved to Los Angeles and were struggling with massive ups and downs. “I felt ruled by fear. I worried about my children integrating into a new life, new school, new family structure. I worried about the world finding out that we were no longer together before we were ready to say it. And how to say it? What to say?” she writes.Eventually Martin and Paltrow shared their decision with the world via a letter on Goop, which Paltrow knew would generate attention. However, as she writes, she was not ready for the way people reacted to the news and the phrase itself. “The public’s surprise gave way quickly to ire and derision. A strange combination of mockery and anger that I had never seen,” she writes. “I was already pretty tattered from what had been a tough year. Frankly, the intensity of the response saw me bury my head in the sand deeper than I ever had in my very public life.”When Paltrow came up she recognized that like other controversial things she has spoken about in the past, conscious uncoupling would eventually help “change for good.” She points to yoga, macrobiotics, gluten-free food and “anything about vaginas” as other examples of topics that at first incited negativity, but then saw a gradual cultural adaptation. “Although at times it has been painful, especially early on, I have come to love this role in the cycle and the curiosity that drives it,” she writes.“Conscious uncoupling/separation/divorce, whatever you want to call it, has now permeated the break-up culture. Instead of people approaching me with, ‘Why did you say that?’ they now approach me with, ‘How do you do that?’”

 

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Happy Father’s Day to all of the dads out there. Sending you all love ❤️

A post shared by Gwyneth Paltrow (@gwynethpaltrow) on Jun 21, 2020 at 9:30pm PDT

Paltrow is now married to Brad Falchuk, the TV producer and frequent Ryan Murphy co-collaborator. Martin meanwhile has been dating Dakota Johnson since 2017. The pair continue to co-parent their children together and are both present for holidays, vacations, birthdays and outings—as per the conscious uncoupling way.“It’s OK to stay in love with the parts of your ex that you were always in love with. In fact, that’s what makes conscious uncoupling work. Love all of those wonderful parts of them. They still exist, they can still make you feel the way you felt for that person,” Paltrow writes. “Rather than shutting them out, lean into the unfamiliarity of those feelings and explore them. We lose all the nuance of life when we make it all bad or all good. Even when they are young, children understand that love takes multiple forms. I know my ex-husband was meant to be the father of my children, and I know my current husband is meant to be the person I grow very old with. Conscious uncoupling lets us recognise those two different loves can coexist and nourish each other.”[video_embed id='1933785']Before you go: Gwyneth Paltrow hints that isolation has made her sexually frustrated[/video_embed]