When you know, you know. Gwyneth Paltrow is reflecting on the moment she realized her marriage to Chris Martin had run its course.
The Oscar winner, 47, opened up about her dissipated relationship with Martin, 43, in an essay she penned for British Vogue’s September 2020 issue. In the personal account, she described how she came to terms with her faded romance over her 38th birthday weekend.
“I don’t recall when it happened, exactly. I don’t remember which day of the weekend it was or the time of day,” the businesswoman wrote. “But I knew — despite long walks and longer lie-ins, big glasses of Barolo and hands held — my marriage was over. What I do remember is that it felt almost involuntary, like the ring of a bell that has sounded and cannot be undone. The inadvertent release of a helium balloon into the sky.”
Paltrow continued, “I tried to quell that knowing, to push it far down. I tried to convince myself it had been a fleeting thought, that marriage is complicated and ebbed and flowed. But I knew it. It was in my bones.”
The Goop founder admitted to “turning the volume down on that knowledge” of where her relationship was heading for a while, but she said that “a dam had cracked just enough to hear the unrelenting trickle of truth” on that particular weekend. Despite the former duo “always” having a close friendship, Paltrow said that they were a mismatched romantic pairing.
“We were close, though we had never fully settled into being a couple. We just didn’t quite fit together,” she explained. “There was always a bit of unease and unrest. But man, did we love our children. Between the day that I knew and the day we finally relented to the truth, we tried everything. We did not want to fail. We didn’t want to let anyone down. We desperately didn’t want to hurt our children. We didn’t want to lose our family.”
Paltrow wed the Coldplay frontman in 2015. Together, the exes share daughter Apple, 16, and son Moses, 14.
In March 2014, Paltrow announced the pair’s split in a post titled “Conscious Uncoupling” via Goop’s website. Their divorce was finalized in 2016.
From there, Paltrow went on to wed producer Brad Falchuk in 2018. Martin, for his part, began dating Dakota Johnson in 2017 after being briefly linked to Jennifer Lawrence.
In her British Vogue essay, Paltrow outlined what makes “conscious uncoupling” work for the former pair as they moved on into different relationships. “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,” she shared.
“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,” she continued. “Conscious uncoupling lets us recognize those two different loves can coexist and nourish each other.”
