Gwyneth Paltrow Explained Why She Used "Conscious Uncoupling" In Her Divorce Statement And Opened Up About The Backlash

    "It felt like a layer of the world turning on us about saying, essentially, 'We just want to be nice to each other and stay a family.' It was brutal."

    Ellie Woodward
    by Ellie Woodward

    BuzzFeed Staff

    Back in 2014, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced that they were divorcing after 10 years of marriage.

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    However, there was one part of the divorce statement that really got people talking — the fact that Gwyneth used the term "consciously uncoupling" to describe the split.

    goop.com

    In fact, the whole thing very swiftly became a big joke, with people ridiculing the fact that Gwyneth had used such a term rather than simply saying the pair were divorcing.

    Rachel Harrison @rachfacelogic

    At first I thought Conscious Uncoupling was going to be the name announcement for their third child.

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    Josh Fjelstad @joshfjelstad

    gwyneth paltrow and chris martin having a 'conscious uncoupling' is the whitest breakup of all time

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    Well, five years on, Gwyneth has finally revealed that she chose to use the term because she felt a "failure" when her marriage broke down, and it softened the blow of facing a divorce.

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    Speaking to Dax Shepard on his podcast, Armchair Expert, Gwyneth explained: "It had been coined in the '70s, I think. It's such a beautiful concept. You're staring down the barrel of a divorce, the worst outcome possible. My parents were married until my dad died. All my best friends, all their parents were married, they all married their college or high school person, they’re still married. I just didn’t come from a world where there was a lot of divorce.”

    She also said the term represented being able to circumvent all the pain and anger of a divorce, allowing her and Chris to become friends quicker.

    goop.com

    She said: “The most common wound that I heard from children of divorce was, ‘My parents couldn’t be in the same room and couldn’t be friends. It took three years, it took 18 years, it took — God forbid — the death of a close family member for them to sit at the same table.' I just thought, ‘I wonder if there’s a way to circumvent that and go directly to the point where we’re friends and we remember what we loved about each other, and constantly acknowledge that we created these incredible human beings together.'”

    And Gwyneth went on to reveal that the backlash to the divorce statement felt "brutal."

    But despite the brutality of the divorce, Gwyneth and Chris achieved their goal of remaining friends. In fact, earlier this month Gwyneth marked International Women's Day with a photo of both her current and former mother-in-law, and posted a tribute to Chris on his 42nd birthday telling him she and their kids "love [him] so much."