If you have to uncouple, this is the way to go, Gwyneth
Paltrow and Martin are doing the right thing by their kids, says Alison Pearson
WHAT on earth is a “conscious uncoupling”? Is it perhaps something Percy does to Gordon in Thomas the Tank Engine? Or is it the splitsecond decision to avoid the wet patch in the bed?
Wrong. It is the hilariously precious term Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin chose to describe the end of their marriage. Cynics might ask how conscious uncoupling differs from unconscious coupling, better known as an extramarital affair, which is what breaks up normal husbands and wives.
From the start, Martin and Paltrow made an odd couple. He was the reserved British public schoolboy and low-key lead singer who cycled everywhere and admitted that he did not lose his virginity until he was 22. Paltrow was his first serious relationship. “From loser to lottery winner,” he joked, dazzled by his own good fortune.
She was the perfect blonde Hollywood A-lister, a gifted actress famous for the most emotionally incontinent Oscar speech in history and an earlier engagement to Brad Pitt.
Martin, who grew up in Devon, prided himself on not being recognised. He was amused when a taxi driver told him: “You look just like that Coldplay bloke.” Paltrow, meanwhile, turned Gwyneth, formerly a blameless name for Welsh librarians, into a global brand.
When the couple got married in 2003, a former school friend remarked that Martin was playing way out of his league. It was a clear case of alpha female picking beta-minus male to be a trusty mate. Gwynnie, he predicted, would eat the Brit for lunch with a side order of scrambled tofu. He gave it five years.
In the end they managed double that and, frankly, all credit to them. In the fickle field of Hollywood relationships, 10 years is a golden wedding anniversary. Paltrow met Martin backstage at a Coldplay concert. She was on the rebound from a great grief: her dad, Bruce, had died just a few months before. In My Father’s Daughter, part recipe book, part memoir, Paltrow celebrates their bond.
And, for a long time, it worked. Their policy was not to be photographed together to avoid the hateful hullabaloo of being a famous couple. Then both vegetarian and teetotal, Martin and Paltrow shared a lifestyle so wholesome it was practically a religion. They even called their daughter Apple. In their uncoupling declaration, the pair says: “We are, however, and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been. We are parents first and foremost to two incredibly wonderful children.”
The break-up is scarcely a shock. In interviews over the past three years, Paltrow has been signalling marital distress like a lighthouse. “Sometimes it’s hard being with someone for a long time,” she told one magazine. “We go through periods that aren’t all rosy. I always say life is long and you never know what’s going to happen. If, God forbid, we were ever not to be together, I respect him so much as the father of my children.”
Hmm. As a general rule, a woman who starts praising her man for being a great dad is no longer having sex with him.
For his part, Martin seemed stunned
Gwynnie, he predicted, would eat the Brit for lunch with a side order of scrambled tofu
to hear his wife quoted as saying: “I know people that I respect and look up to who have had extramarital affairs. If death by virus was a punishment for extramarital affairs, there would be only three dudes left in the world right now.”
Although the New Age daffiness of the pair’s “conscious uncoupling” may provoke mirth, it is still far preferable to the way so many divorcing parents fight like two ferrets in a sack. The children should be of paramount concern rather than collateral damage, and Martin and Paltrow, whatever their private strife, show every sign of acting on that principle: “We have come to the conclusion that, while we love each other very much, we will remain separate,” is about as good an ending as most sundered couples can hope for.