Gwyneth Paltrow's blog post announcing her separation to Chris Martin used the phrase 'conscious uncoupling'. Photos / Getty Images
Gwyneth Paltrow's blog post announcing her separation to Chris Martin used the phrase 'conscious uncoupling'. Photos / Getty Images
It’s the divorce strategy that launched a thousand headlines, and plenty of scorn besides. But is the woman behind the concept — famously adopted by Gwyneth Paltrow — proof that it can work asks Anna Maxted.
Gwyneth Paltrow's announcement of her separation from Chris Martin, made via a blog post on her Goop website last March, referred neither to divorce nor dispute. Instead, the pair were "consciously uncoupling". We were also informed that, "We are and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we ever have been."
Within the hour, psychotherapist Katherine Woodward Thomas, who coined this curious and unfamiliar term, was tracked down by the media (she was on a retreat in the jungles of Costa Rica) to explain to a baffled world what on earth conscious uncoupling was.
Ending a marriage was, surely, more about rending asunder? Even Gwyneth has now distanced herself from the term, saying in an interview last month that it was an editor at Goop who titled her post "Consciously Uncoupling", and that she herself hadn't heard of the phrase.
Seventeen months after Woodward Thomas' Californian-sounding approach was thrust into our lexicon, we meet, via Skype. Elegant and fresh-faced, she sips coffee in her white, airy, LA apartment. She's wearing a pink sleeveless top and is wreathed in smiles. Her voice is soft, but the accent is distinctly New York.
"Gwyneth wasn't aware that I existed," nods Woodward Thomas. Even so, she insists that the actress "is living by those principles. To see people be warm, respectful and inclusive, to go out of their way to create a sense of family - that's important. I have a lot of respect for her." As for the ensuing ridicule that greeted the term, "I never felt offended. 'Conscious uncoupling' does sound a little California-ish. I can laugh at myself. I also think the phrase opened up a new way of ending a union that fascinated everybody - and that's what I'm more interested in. I felt really grateful. It was a great blessing; it brought a lot of visibility."
Katherine Woodward Thomas. Photo / Supplied
Woodward Thomas was born in 1957 in Niagara Falls - where, she says, "No-fault divorce didn't exist. If you were going to get divorced, you had to attack your spouse. That's what got my parents off on the wrong footing. My father accused my mother of being an unfit parent to try to get custody, [and] she was accusing him ... It created this deep animosity."
The book she was working on in the jungle decades later, Conscious Uncoupling, comes out next week. It is a warm, wise, incisive guide to negotiating the end of a romantic relationship with goodwill and respect in a way that enriches rather than wrecks lives.
It is a self-help version of the process she had developed and taught to thousands since 2009. And, given her personal history, it has deep roots. But as Woodward Thomas frankly admits on page two, "I did not want to be writing this ... any more than you want to be reading it."
The concept was forged as her own cherished 10-year marriage floundered. As Woodward Thomas notes, when a significant relationship ends, the grief of lost love is intensified by the sense of public shame and failure; of having your union judged and belittled. (Not to mention that loved ones take sides, and disparage your ex-partner to show loyalty. "You literally have to train people to not do that," she says.) For Woodward Thomas, it was even worse: she was the best-selling author of a manual on how to attract true love, Calling In 'The One' - of which her now ex-husband, Mark Austin Thomas, was the star.
Woodward Thomas met Mark, a news director and broadcaster - who was divorced, with a daughter - through friends in 1992. She knew he was interested, but they didn't get together for more than six years. She, meanwhile, turned 40, joining the legions of what she calls the "never-marrieds". Even when she finally acknowledged and shed a lifelong habit of choosing unavailable men, she hesitated to call Mark. Instead, she searched an online dating site for love. From a quarter of a million profiles, she narrowed it down: one (unnamed) profile particularly appealed. It was Mark. Eight weeks later, they were engaged.
When her relationship with Mark began to break down, she was "horrified. It was overwhelming, very humbling," she says. And yet, "I had embraced a philosophy that my life was about becoming a more mature, more loving person. So the decision to get 'unmarried' had to be brought back to that: how do I get unmarried in a loving way? There wasn't a lot of modelling for it in our culture." Nor in her own past: her parents' divorce when she was 2 adhered to the scorched-earth policy, and she retains a child's visceral sense of the agony that an acrimonious separation creates.
"It's not just about getting caught in the middle, it's psychologically much deeper; a confusion about where you belong in life, a certain fragility to relationships. In all the anger between my parents, my father became so alienated from me, eventually he just gave me up for adoption to my mother's new husband. I was deeply confused: who am I? Where do I belong?"
To compound matters, her mother and stepfather later split, fragmenting the family once again. As Woodward Thomas says, "Even adult children feel the impact of a hostile divorce." When she and Mark parted, their daughter, Alexandria, was 11.
"A delicate age," Woodward Thomas says. "I didn't want to hurt her in the way I'd been hurt." The parting couple promised their daughter that her greatest fear, that she'd lose one parent, wouldn't happen. "She calmed down. It was important to present a united front."
One strength of Conscious Uncoupling is that its author walks the walk. Woodward Thomas' serenity is hard-earned. She has endured her share of wretched flailing after break-ups: the despair, the misery, the eating-peanut-butter-straight-from-the-jar. After one relationship ended, her hair fell out; while another lover haunted her dreams for decades.
Without denying the rage that is, she notes, a primal response to rejection, she was resolute in acting generously after her marriage ended. Even if you privately grit your teeth, write a rant-filled diary or exercise out your fury, always, she advises, consider the long-term consequences of your public behaviour.
While she and Mark - "my 'wasband', I fondly call him" - were working out their finances, he became unemployed. Woodward Thomas agreed he could contribute less until he found work, and she worked extra hours to make up the shortfall. (After a previous break-up with an ex, her insistence on keeping an ornate piece of furniture permanently soured the relationship - and eventually she sold it for $25.) She was fortunate, she knows, in that both she and Mark strived towards "something larger than the knee-jerk fear that would tell me to hoard my possessions - the instinct to go to war.
"Do not attack the other person," she insists. "Get out of the minutiae. Pull the lens of the camera back, to two years from now, five, 10, 20..." She laughs, adding that it's never too late to learn. This was proven in her own family: 25 years after splitting from her stepfather, her mother made peace with him after witnessing the wholly different way her daughter handled divorce. ("You don't have to lose Mark as your son-in-law," she told her mother, "I'm just not going to be married to him any more.") But until then, says Woodward Thomas, "the repercussions of their war were very severe, in terms of having a divided, fragmented family".
Woodward Thomas is both a romantic and a realist; an enduring fan of marriage and love, who takes great pains to explore the possibility that couples who seek her guidance in ending their relationship might actually stay together. But equally, she argues that the ideal of lifelong monogamy is antiquated: she researched the "happy-ever-after myth", and discovered that it emerged 400 years ago and "had a lot to do with the life conditions of the time - many people died before the age of 40".
Conscious uncoupling can be achieved together, or alone. The goal, says Woodward Thomas, is not to be spiritually superior to those mere mortals painfully entrenched in litigation, or who magically side-step pain - impossible. Rather, it is to behave decently, find freedom; to "process" the trauma and rediscover your autonomy. "When Mark and I separated, I don't know that I would have called him my friend. We had a friendly atmosphere."
But, she says, "Even an amicable divorce does not mean you operate as one family system. It means we have two families, and the children go back and forth. And maybe they eat fast-food in one, organic in the other and never the twain shall meet. Even if the parents are civil, it puts the children in a state of constant loss. It's asking them to be mature about something I don't think it's their job to be mature about. It's our responsibility as grown-ups to behave in ways that generate cohesion."
Despite its higher ideals, conscious uncoupling doesn't mean letting yourself be taken advantage of. Woodward Thomas employed a mediator: "Divorce is a legal process, it's important to have [someone] who can explain your rights, who has an ethic, who aspires to a more peaceful, solution-orientated divorce as opposed to an attorney who is primed for war." But she says that dignity is an option, no matter how the other person behaves. "Nobody else has the power, ever, to determine who we are going to be." That means not playing the victim (even if your spouse was 97 per cent responsible, she says, "own" your 3 per cent).
While Paltrow may have been an unwitting publicist for the book, Alanis Morissette is quoted on Woodward Thomas' website, thanking her for her inspiration. "Alanis is one of my dearest friends - she loves conscious uncoupling, despite being 'very happily married'." Morrisette writes: "I assure you this makes sense; as Katherine suggests, it could make you a better partner."
It would certainly seem to make you a better former partner. Woodward Thomas and Mark now live in the same apartment building: "He's on the fourth floor, I'm on the ninth." Alexandria, now 14, goes between them. The idea is, "you're still one family".
Woodward Thomas learned her lesson early in marriage after forbidding Mark's first wife to attend Thanksgiving, meaning that his daughter Sarah decided not to come either, as she didn't want her mother to be alone. "It was an opportunity for me to examine my own stinginess and fear, the fact that I would put my own comfort above my kid, and somehow justify that."
These days, special occasions for Woodward Thomas include "my mother, my former husband, his brother, his first wife, both girls - that's our routine; it creates a very warm sense of extended, expanded family."
Not that it's easy. Conscious uncoupling is, she says, "Like sailing a boat. You set a target and you're a little to the left, a little to the right, you're always bringing it back. I don't know anyone who's done it perfectly.
'For me, to bring this programme to the world so that people can find their way, find a sense of peace and cohesion, create a less damaging atmosphere during a break-up ... it's exhilarating."
The perfect uncouples
Gwyneth and Chris may have put a label on it, but they're far from the only exes friendly in public.
Courteney Cox and David Arquette. Photo / Getty Images
Courteney Cox and David Arquette divorced in 2013 after 14 years of marriage. They co-parent 11-year-old daughter Coco and are co-executive producers of a TV game show pilot, Identity Crisis.
Miranda Kerr and Orlando Bloom
Miranda Kerr and Orlando Bloom. Photo / AFP
Miranda Kerr and Orlando Bloom split in 2013 after three years of marriage. They now live across the road from each other in LA for the sake of their 4-year-old son and are often seen together as a family.
Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant
Actress Elizabeth Hurley and actor Hugh Grant. Photo / Getty Images
Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant split in 2000 after a 13-year relationship. They now live next door to each other in London and Hurley describes Grant as her "best friend". They are godparents to each other's children.
Conscious Uncoupling by Katherine Woodward Thomas (Yellow Kite/Hachette $39.99) is released on Tuesday.
