Celebrity divorce: the conscious uncoupling.

The news today is full of the announcement that actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband of over ten years Chris Martin, from Coldplay, are going to divorce; or as they put it, that there will be ‘a conscious uncoupling’. Everyone is trying to figure out just what this means.

The BBC says the phrase is the title of a book by Paltrow’s spiritual advisors, Dr. Sadeghi and Dr. Sami, in which the end of the relationship is not a ‘coming apart’ but a ‘coming back together’. Experts predict that the couple may ‘use collaborative law‘ and sit down together with their respective lawyers to work things out: ‘the nicest way to get divorced’.

The Guardian agrees that it ‘all sounds very amiable’ and suggests it is to do with creating a sense of completing the relationship rather than everything falling apart. Certainly, uncoupling is not negative terminology – it sounds like something that is a planned, deliberate disentangling of their lives, so that, like uncoupled carriages of a train, they can go their separate ways. Idealistic? Not necessarily. People can, and do, separate on amicable terms and manage the co-parenting of their children without a great deal of confrontation.

“It’s hard being married. You go through great times, you go through terrible times. We’re the same as any couple.”

So says Paltrow, according to The Telegraph. Maybe then, as The Guardian suggests, the way that the couple are approaching this ‘family catastrophe’ may be  a ‘template for everyone everywhere facing the failure of their own marriage’. Then again, in the face of the life-changing emotional trauma of a divorce, it may prove to be too difficult. But without a doubt, they will be taking the advice of their solicitors – whether your divorce is amicable or hostile, whether you are a celebrity or not, this is a good place to start that conscious uncoupling,