Earlier this week, yet another Hollywood golden couple broke a million hearts, by deciding to go their separate ways. However, the way in which A-list actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her rocker husband Chris Martin announced their separation, made people sit up and take notice.

Gwyneth and Chris announced the sad news of them going to splitsville on her website, claiming they were now “consciously uncoupling”. The word, of course, took the celebrity-crazy world by storm, and was met with varied reactions all over the world.Some treated the term with utmost disdain, with social media reacting snarkily to the term itself. Janice Min, Editor of the Hollywood Reporter most famously quipped, “I’ve never hear it, but it sounds like a phrase used by marriage counsellors in Malibu.”

She wasn’t so far off the mark, actually, since the term was coined by a Los Angeles therapist and author, Katherine Woodward Thomas. According to Thomas, the term “Conscious Uncoupling” is a process, to “release the trauma of a breakup, reclaim your power and reinvent your life.”

The timing of the release of the news too was pretty cleverly done, considering news of Paltrow and Martin’s separation broke late on Tuesday, long after U.S. magazines published their weekly entertainment issues. By the time the next week would roll around, the news would be stale and something else would in most likelihood dominate the front pages.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin have been married for more than a decade, and have two beautiful children together: Apple and Moses. At this time, it is unclear who will get the custody of the kids.