Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin "never fully settled into being a couple"

Writing in the September issue of British Vogue, Gwyneth said: "My ex and I had always been friends. We laughed at the same things, shared a funny bones humour, impressions, utter silliness. We were moved by the same qualities in music: beautiful chords, innovation, harmonies. Peter Gabriel, Chopin, Sigur Rós - though I listened for pleasure and he like he was studying for an exam. We loved walking to and from Osteria Basilico through the park for pizza, especially on those British summer nights when the sun doesn't ever seem to set. We loved road trips to the New Forest or to the seaside. But most of all, we loved our children. We were close, though we had never fully settled into being a couple. We just didn't quite fit together. There was always a bit of unease and unrest. But man, did we love our children."

Gwyneth and Chris, 43, have children Apple, 16 and Moses, 14, together and Gwyneth insisted they tried everything they could to make their marriage work.

She said: "Between the day that I knew and the day we finally relented to the truth, we tried everything. We did not want to fail. We didn't want to let anyone down. We desperately didn't want to hurt our children. We didn't want to lose our family. The questions both philosophical and tactical, seemed unfathomable: who sleeps where, how does bath time work, what do we say to the kids? I bent myself into every imaginable shape to avoid answering them. But one day, despite all our efforts, I found that I was not at a fork in the road. I was well down a path. Almost without realising it, we had diverged. We'd never find ourselves together in that way again.

"I had never heard of the phrase 'conscious uncoupling'. Frankly, the term sounded a bit full of itself, painfully progressive and hard to swallow. It was an idea introduced to us by our therapist, the man who helped us architect our new future. I was intrigued, less by the phrase, but by the sentiment. Was there a world where we could break up and not lose everything? Could we be a family, even though we were not a couple?"

And Gwyneth - who is now married to second husband Brad Falchuk - admitted that public reaction to her split from Chris took her completely by surprise.

She said: "The public's surprise gave way quickly to ire and derision. A strange combination of mockery and anger that I had never seen. I was already pretty tattered from what had been a tough year. Frankly, the intensity of the response saw me bury my head in the sand deeper than I ever had in my very public life."

Read the full feature in the September issue of British Vogue available via digital download and on newsstands Friday 7th August or go to https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/gwyneth-paltrow-conscious-uncoupling