The Agony Of My Divorce

Gwyneth Paltrow was mocked when she ‘consciously uncoupled’ from Chris Martin, but she now reveals the split was anything but easy

- Lavern De Vries

She often comes across as smug, privileged and pretentious as she extols the virtues of everything from psychic-vampire repellent spray to candles that smell like her – well, you know what.

Thanks to Goop, her beloved and oft-derided lifestyle enterprise, Gwyneth Paltrow is the kind of person many people love to hate. So when she and Chris Martin announced their marriage was over, the Coldplay frontman got the lion’s share of the public sympathy, while Gwynnie was ridiculed for calling the split a “conscious uncoupling”.

But perhaps we should spare a thought for the actress-turned-Goop woman too.

In a new essay published in British Vogue magazine, Gwyneth (47) opens up about the pain of her failed marriage and the agony she felt at her family being torn apart. The Oscar winner lifts the lid on deeply personal details of her marriage and how she and Chris (43) tried everything to save it until they realised staying together was impossible.

Though the pair, who wed in 2003 and share daughter Apple (16) and son Moses (14), divorced in 2016, Gwyneth reveals they’d actually split a year earlier.

She realised years before they called time on their marriage that she and the English musician “didn’t quite fit together,” she says. “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. But I knew it. It was in my bones,” she says.

No matter how many glasses of Italian wine they shared on dreamy baecations, “I knew my marriage was over”.