Gwyneth Paltrow Recalls ‘Heartbreak’ After Daughter Left for College MGG

Her new normal. Gwyneth Paltrow candidly addressed the challenges that came with sending her daughter off to college.

“It’s been a major transition. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it would be hard because Apple and I are so close and were together all the time,” Paltrow, 50, exclusively shared with Us Weekly on Wednesday, October 19, about her 18-year-old daughter while promoting her Gwyneth Paltrow x Copper Fit collection. “But I had no idea. It was like the worst heartbreak I’ve ever [felt].”

The Goop founder recalled struggling to come to terms with the shift. “I felt like the love of my life broke up with me for weeks,” she added. “It was terrible. Now, I’m getting more used to it and it also helps to see her happy and well-adjusted. That makes a huge difference. And she just came home for October break, so that was good. I’ll see her for Thanksgiving.”

Paltrow, who shares Apple and son Moses, 16, with ex-husband Chris Martin, opened up about how her youngest child has dealt with the change, saying, “I think he’s sort of feeling a new world without a sister in the house. But he’s adjusting well. He’s such a great kid.”

With Apple being gone, the Oscar winner has felt a “noticeable” difference being the only woman at home. “I always try to embrace every transition that comes with a degree of openness and even if they’re painful sometimes, there’s always beauty somewhere on the other side of it,” Paltrow, who is married to Brad Falchuk, shared with Us.

The California native first became a mom in 2004, one year after exchanging vows with Martin, now 45. The former couple were married for more than a decade before calling it quits in 2014, and their divorce was finalized in 2016. The Academy Award winner later reflected on getting to a place of amicable coparenting with the Coldplay musician.

“He’s really like my brother,” she said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in 2018. “We’re very familiar. It’s nice. I think we genuinely wanted our kids to be as unscathed as possible. And we thought, if we could really maintain the family even though we weren’t a couple, that was kind of the goal. So that’s what we’ve tried to do.”

After previously referring to their split as a “conscious uncoupling,” Paltrow discussed the ups and downs that come with staying in contact with her ex-husband.

“It’s a lifelong commitment to constantly reinvent your relationship with your ex, which you do presumably because you have children together,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2020. “We put all the hard work in at the beginning. I would say very rarely is it difficult now. We’ve learned how to communicate with each other. We love each other. We laugh. We have the best of each other. It’s really nice. It makes you feel like you don’t have to lose.”

The Politician alum moved on with Falchuk, 51, in 2014 after they met on the set of Glee years prior. (Martin, for his part, began dating Dakota Johnson in 2017.)

Since exchanging vows with the producer in 2018, Paltrow revealed that she does “believe” in the concept of soulmates. “I mean, I think that there can be more than one,” she told Us on Wednesday. “But I do believe that there’s that person that can feel so right. And I think you do know. You know pretty early when it’s the right person.”

When it comes to her professional life, the Iron Man star praised Copper Fit’s wellness products for offering “stress relief” amid her busy schedule. “I like the idea of women seeking support when they exercise and are getting older and need support for joints,” she explained about her exclusive capsule for the brand. “I broke my knee, [and now] I use the Copper Fit sleeve all the time. Understanding that our bodies need support — that’s OK. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

With reporting by Hannah Kahn