After commenting on motherhood in a New York Times article published this week, Gwyneth Paltrow is continuing to open up about her personal life — this time in an intimate conversation on her Goop podcast with friend and fellow actress Sarah Jessica Parker.
The 45-year-old star and wellness guru, who revealed in January her engagement to TV writer-producer Brad Falchuck, told Parker in the podcast's July 25 episode that she's "a little scared," but "optimistic" about marrying for a second time. (Paltrow was previously married to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin from 2003 until "consciously uncoupling" in 2014; their divorce was finalized in 2016.)
"The only reason I feel you should be optimistic is because you're a grown-up woman and you're making a choice for entirely different reasons," the former "Sex and the City" star responded. "Perspective and life experience is everything, it informs everything. The value of you being a sophisticated woman and choosing marriage is promising, don't you think?"
Paltrow added that marriage can be a "crazy game of chance."
"Who knows if you're going to grow in parallel or if you're paths are going to diverge," she said, before asking Parker, who has been married to actor Matthew Broderick since 1997, if she has observations about what makes a successful partnership.
"What I've observed — not that I'm always able or capable of remembering this in the moment when it matters most — is to realize and settle that the things that don't matter, don't matter," Parker said.
The conversation pivoted to the value in failing and feeling disappointed, and how those feelings inform future relationships.
"I think it's great to have been wrong in love and been destroyed and heartbroken," Parker said. "I think it makes you a more empathetic person. It's better for all of us to have disappointments in love, in profession, in friendships, in business. It means more when it works."
Paltrow said she'd keep that sentiment in mind in the context of parenting her children with Martin — daughter Apple, 14, and son Moses, 12 — who are entering those woeful teenage years. Parker agreed, adding she's already had tough conversations with her 15-year-old son, James Wilkie, after he'd experienced a letdown.
"First of all, I tell him that I think he's really lucky that his nature is resilience," she said. "A lot of teenagers are disappointed or heartbroken or feel marginalized or not heard or seen, and they are quietly in the saddle of sadness, disappointment, loneliness. It feels acute when you're a teenager. And I think James Wilkie has felt those things, and ... he feels it and he can kind of rally. I tell him, 'Yeah, it should feel awful, and it is awful and it is disappointing. I'm sorry she didn't see in you what you saw in her or couldn't see in you what I see in you now. But you will recover."