Living happily ever after – after conscious uncoupling

Breaking up can be devastating, but there are ways to limit the damage. Elizabeth Day hears from an expert

Katherine Woodward Thomas was on a yoga retreat last March in Costa Rica, trying to get away from it all to work on a new book proposal. What she didn't know was that, thousands of miles across the globe, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin were in the process of announcing their divorce. As Woodward Thomas was perfecting her downward dog, a statement was being posted on Paltrow's Goop website outlining the couple's decision. It was headed "Conscious Uncoupling".

Woodward Thomas, a psychologist based in Los Angeles, had never met Paltrow or Martin, but she had coined that same term some years earlier when the experience of going through her own divorce had led her to examine the ways in which separation could be made as amicable as possible.