Gwyneth Paltrow shares thoughtful method she used to prepare her kids for her divorce

When Gwyneth Paltrow announced she was splitting from Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, the couple inadvertently entered the pop culture lexicon by noting that they were “consciously uncoupling” in their joint public statement. Now, nearly a decade later, the Goop founder is opening up about why it was so important to her to avoid her two children experiencing “divorce as a trauma,” and it’s a sentiment that will resonate with anyone who’s co-parenting with an ex.

In a recent interview with Bustle, Paltrow shared why she was reluctant to separate from Martin in the first place, and it was all due to a desire to protect their two kids, Apple, 19, and Moses, 17.

“I was very burdened by this idea that I can’t get divorced, and it’ll be a failure, and this is not the right thing for the kids and all that,” she said. “It weighed very, very heavily on me.”

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It seems Paltrow was very thoughtful about her kids’ feelings every step of the way. “My kids are great,” she noted. “They’re grounded and grateful and funny. But [Chris Martin] and I both really did not want to have them experience the divorce as a trauma. We knew that it would be hard, of course, but we didn’t want them to ever feel in the middle, or that one of us was slagging off the other one.”

“At that time, I did a very me thing, which was when I knew I wanted to get a divorce, I did this data collection of talking to adults who had been products of a broken home,” she said. “Every single one of them said ‘I didn’t care that my parents got divorced. That wasn’t it. But the fact that they wouldn’t speak to each other, that they couldn’t both sit at a dinner table for my birthday…’ They said that was the most awful thing. You could see they held it with so much hurt and anger. I was like, ‘That’s what I’m never going to do.’ And we really didn’t.”

Paltrow has since remarried, tying the knot with Glee co-creator Brad Falchuk in 2018, but it seems her family unit has remained strong. In fact, Falchuk and Paltrow even included Martin and their two children on her honeymoon.
Of Falchuk, Paltrow gushed to Bustle: “I feel really lucky. He’s a great guy, and he’s my best friend.” And while not every blended family is so amicable, it seems Paltrow knows how fortunate she is that hers is.