Gwyneth Paltrow once opened up on the moment she knew her marriage to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin was done and dusted.
The couple had tied the knot in 2003 but over a decade later in 2014 they announced a 'conscious uncoupling', which was a somewhat convoluted way of saying they were separating.
While that was the moment the relationship was officially over, Paltrow explained in her own words that the actual moment her marriage to Chris Martin was over came before that.
Writing in British Vogue, Paltrow said that the moment came on her 38th birthday when she and Martin were holidaying in Tuscany.
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Paltrow described being in a 'cosy cottage' with the 'kitchen table overflowing with spoils from the farm nearby' and the leaves just starting to turn for autumn when the thought entered her head.
She wrote: "I don’t remember which day of the weekend it was or the time of day. But I knew – despite long walks and longer lie-ins, big glasses of Barolo and hands held – my marriage was over.
"What I do remember is that it felt almost involuntary, like the ring of a bell that has sounded and cannot be undone. The inadvertent release of a helium balloon into the sky. 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 and ebbed and flowed. But I knew it. It was in my bones."
She said she initially tried 'turning down the volume on that knowledge' and wrote that it would be several years before she said out loud that the relationship was over.
However, she said that birthday weekend 'a dam had cracked just enough' and things grew until she could no longer ignore them.
Paltrow wrote that she and Martin 'tried everything' as they 'did not want to fail' or let anyone down but they were on a road with only one destination.
It turns out the 'conscious uncoupling' phrase came from her therapist, with Paltrow saying it initially sounded 'a bit full of itself' when she first heard it.
However, she was drawn to the sentiment and said she found she could 'stay in love with the parts of your ex you were always in love with' even if they were no longer together.
For a year before they announced it to everyone else they tried to live with 'conscious uncoupling' as they figured out how to be parents to their children and still in each other's lives even if their marriage was over.
Topics: Celebrity, Coldplay, Sex and Relationships, Gwyneth Paltrow
Joe Harker