Gwyneth Paltro and Chris Marti

4 Signs a Marriage is Ready for a “Conscious Uncoupling” via Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop

Divorce, Celebrity, News, Relationships

Divorce is so over according to Gwyneth Paltrow, who announced last Tuesday on her lifestyle blog Goop that she and husband of 10 years Chris Martin were splitting. The A-list actress said she and the Coldplay frontman are instead going through a “conscious uncoupling.”

Gwyneth Paltrow Announces Split From Chris Martin on Goop

Paltrow’s Goop post got so much traffic, her site crashed. In it, a letter signed “Love, Gwyneth & Chris,” explained that “It is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate,” and that the decision to separate came after “working hard for well over a year.”

The rest of the post is an article on the topic of conscious uncoupling by married couple Dr. Habib Sadeghi, an LA-based doctor of integrative health, and Dr. Sherry Sami, a dentist. They believe divorce is a symptom of a bigger problem and that “the high divorce rate might actually be a calling to learn a new way of being in relationships.”

Reactions to the announcement range from praise to ridicule. Tweets bearing the hashtag #ConsciousUncoupling include Time’s remark “What else Gwyneth Paltrow could rebrand now that she’s dubbed divorce ‘conscious uncoupling’.” But the most common reaction to the news seems to be “What the heck is conscious uncoupling?”

So, What is Conscious Uncoupling?

Most people had probably never heard of the term “conscious uncoupling” before Gwyneth Paltrow discussed it, but she did not come up with it. That credit goes to life coach and psychotherapist Katherine Woodward, who created a 5-week Conscious Uncoupling course. Its goal is to help couples go through the separation process in a loving way in order to avoid the hurt and shame of a painful breakup.

Sadeghi and Sami discuss the virtues of such a separation in the Goop post and argue for its necessity. We are living much longer than our ancestors ever did, and staying married for life doesn’t make sense anymore, they say. Having two or three long-term relationships, rather than just one, is becoming more common. So it’s vital to find a way to end those important relationships in a psychologically and spiritually healthy way.

Measuring the success of a relationship based on its length is invalid, they argue. Intimate relationships are intended to help us “evolve a psycho-spiritual spine” and the end of an intimate relationship – even a marriage – should not be filled with guilt and regret, or seen as a personal failure.

Are You Ready for a Conscious Uncoupling? 4 Ways to Tell

1. Your relationship with your partner is filled with negative energy and you’re living in a constant state of anger. “Being trapped inside negative energy like anger and resentment keeps people from moving forward in life because they can only focus on the past,” write Sadeghi and Sami. “Even worse, over time, these powerful emotions often turn into disease in the body.”

2. You and your partner see each other as spiritual teachers, and you have grown as much as you can with each other. “When we understand that both are actually partners in each other’s spiritual progress, animosity dissolves much quicker and a new paradigm for conscious uncoupling emerges, replacing the traditional, contentious divorce.”

3. You and your partner have children and want to split but still want to raise your children in a loving way. A couple that goes through a conscious uncoupling to split, rather than a typical divorce filled with anger and sadness, will approach the process differently. “It’s only under these circumstances that loving co-parenting can happen.”

4. You want to focus on yourself and your spiritual health during your split, whether your partner wants to or not. “By choosing to handle your uncoupling in a conscious way, regardless of what’s happening with your spouse, you’ll see that although it looks like everything is coming apart; it’s actually all coming back together.”

Despite wanting to focus on the spiritual aspect of the split, the actress and singer will still have to go through a traditional divorce and decide how to divide their reported $280 million assets.

Photo credit:

Christ Martin: Mr Pics / Shutterstock.com

Gwyneth Paltro: DFree/ Shutterstock.com