Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has spoken candidly about his break-up from Gwyneth Paltrow, describing it as a "weird" but "wonderful separation-divorce". Speaking to the Sunday Times Magazine, the star admitted that the split triggered a "year of depression", adding: "I still wake up down a lot of days. But now I feel like I've been given the tools to turn it around."
Chris and Gwyneth ended their ten-year marriage in March 2014. The former couple have remained close and still go on holiday together with their two children, Apple, 11, and nine-year-old Moses. "It's always out there in the media, but I have a very wonderful separation-divorce," he said. "It's a divorce, but it's a weird one."
"It's funny. I don't think about that word very often - divorce. I don't see it that way. I see it more like you meet someone, you have some time together and things just move through."
Devon-born Chris, who lives in Malibu, said he believes there are two approaches to the end of a marriage. "You can come at it very aggressively and blame and blame," commented the 39-year-old. "Or you can put yourself in the garage, so to speak. Take yourself apart and clean off the bits. Reassemble."
The singer said he read literature in the wake of the split; The Guest House, a 13th century work by the Persian poet Rumi, and Man's Search for Meaning, a Holocaust memoir and psychotherapeutic manual by the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Victor Frankl.
"That one Rumi poem changes everything," he said. "It says that even when you're unhappy, it's good for you. I was like, 'What?!' It took me about a year to get it." Chris said that he felt "a little calmer" and "more grateful" since the end of his marriage, adding: "I've lived a lot of life since then."