Conscious Uncoupling… what?

It’s a term that was originally coined by Gwyneth Paltrow when her and Chris Martin divorced, at least known publicly. I remember hearing a lot of negative feedback about the idea. It wasn’t until I was in the situation myself, or something similar, to where I knew and understood what it meant.

My STBX (soon to be ex) and I have been together for over 13 years; married for about 9.5 at this point. We’ve had quite a bit of trauma and hardships during our marriage. All of those had led slowly to the place we are at now. Uncoupling.

I noticed I was unhappy and wanted a change about 6 years ago.
The idea of divorce was on my mind about 4 years ago.
We’ve been married for 9.5 years.
Over half of our marriage was spent with me unhappy.

We tried counseling. A lot of counseling. Off and on for our entire marriage. We tried a total of 5 different counselors. A few of them said that not all marriages should stay together.

I was on a business trip last October when a meme came across my Facebook page. It read “I can’t settle for just anything, my daughter is watching me.” It’s true. She was. She is. I would not want her to live in an unhappy marriage. Especially because she is doing it in fear of what others will say/do/judge her for. (all true for me). Now, many people have said those things to me, but for some reason it was that meme that opened my eyes.

I knew something had to change. I was unhappy. No amount of therapy, discussions, sex, warnings, threats, etc. was going to help. I’ve tried for years. One of my therapists told me that most people think about divorce for 4-6 years before they actually go through with it. Wow! I fell exactly into that statistic. Ugh.

The dynamic in my household was that we were roommates raising 3 kids. We both loved the kids fiercely. But the love between us was just not there. We were roommates. We got along well. Of course we fought; but for the most part, we got along. We had a system. I’d work late and he’d do dinner. We’d chat a bit when I first got home. We had shows we would watch together. We had a routine.

What we didn’t have was a romantic relationship. No touching – definitely no kissing. One would clean up dinner and the other would help kids with homework (usually me – I’m a stickler for education). I would handle school stuff and then bedtime stuff. Kids would go to bed, he would go to work, I’d be left alone on the couch. In retrospect, I see the issues, anyone could.

We weren’t a couple. We weren’t in a romantic place. Looking back, we were already uncoupling. We shared finances, house, activities (they were all based around the kids), hobbies (we didn’t have any). But we weren’t a couple. We didn’t have the connection. No intimacy – even a kiss, a hug, holding hands, none. (Roommates don’t do that – of course!)

Once the discussion of separation and divorce came about, we started the uncoupling part. We wanted to take a conscious approach to it in an effort to remain cordial with each other. We began by separating finances. Then we started spending separate time with the kids, in addition to family time. I no longer told him when I was considering a purchase or a trip. He was no longer my person to speak to about everything. Making those decisions by myself was both invigorating and isolating.

Conscious uncoupling.