My parents got divorced when I was like 13/14. Half of my friends growing up had divorced parents. Almost everyone I know has some personal experience with divorce, whether they themselves have gotten a divorce, or their parents, or a sibling, or whatever. My point? Divorce really isn’t that noteworthy at this point. I’m not saying divorce isn’t devastating, or that everyone is utterly blasé about it at this point. I’m just saying that culturally, in the developed world, divorce is pretty commonplace. It’s commonplace in my conservative, Southern town, and I would imagine it’s even more commonplace in NYC and LA and London. But apparently Gwyneth Paltrow – a resident of London, LA and NYC – was absolutely flabbergasted to find herself in need of a good divorce lawyer last year. She never thought “divorce” could happen to her because she had no experience with “the culture of divorce.”

While Chris Martin was telling Australian radio show hosts Rove & Sam that the divorce left him “happy to be alive” on Sunday, Gwyneth Paltrow was half-a-world away in Los Angeles, giving her own take on the demise of their 12-year marriage to a live audience at a Pearl xChange Q&A hosted by Nicole Ritchie. The 43-year-old Oscar winner launched into her monologue when an audience member at the Sheraton Universal Grand Ballroom asked her to name something in life that didn’t turn out the way she’d planned.

“My marriage,” Paltrow candidly answered. “I am from a tribe of people who stay married. My parents stayed married until my dad died. I really don’t come from a culture of divorce at all and I had very high hopes for what my life could be like,” she said, adding that almost everyone in her family and most of her friends, dating back to high school, have remained married.

“I think that it was very difficult for me that I couldn’t do that and that I wasn’t able to be married to the father of my children for the rest of my life,” Paltrow lamented. “It was very challenging for me in terms of having to re-assess what that said about me, ideas that I had about that kind of failure. Luckily my ex-husband is an incredibly good ex-husband and an amazing dad.”

[From The NYDN]

See… this is why some people have issues with Gwyneth. It’s the way she frames issues, the sort of oblivious, self-centered, that-doesn’t-make-any-sense attitude. Granted, her parents had a legendarily strong marriage. Good for them. But did she honestly not realize that her parents were the exception, and that’s why they were held up as such a wonderful example of a Hollywood marriage that worked? And I absolutely do not believe that Gwyneth has constantly been surrounded by people who have simply never divorced. This is patently false. Again, I’m not saying that I don’t believe that Gwyneth wasn’t legitimately devastated when her marriage went to hell (although she seems to be more concerned with how she looked like a “failure”), I’m questioning her premise, that she never thought divorce could happen to her because no one around her has ever gotten a divorce.

Also: you know how Chris Martin got over his sad-sack divorce by diving into poetry/Jennifer Lawrence? Well, LaineyGossip had an interesting story about Amy Schumer and her new BFF Jennifer Lawrence, and how Schumer has added several new Gwyneth Paltrow jokes to her routine. I’d be willing to bet that there are some hard feelings between Gwyneth and J-Law, mostly because Gwyneth tried to do everything she could to get Chris and Jennifer to break up.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.

Gwyneth Paltrow: ‘I really don’t come from a culture of divorce at all’

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Gwyneth Paltrow: ‘I really don’t come from a culture of divorce at all’

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