Charley Gallay/Getty ImagesIs Gwyneth Paltrow having second thoughts about her and husband Chris Martin's breakup?
The 42-year-old actress, who shares two children with the 37-year-old Coldplay singer, has continued to ponder their decision to separate after more than 10 years of marriage, which they dubbed an "conscious uncoupling" in an announcement made on her Goop blog in March. No divorce papers have been filed.
"Of course, there are times when I think it would have been better if we had stayed married, which is always what your children want," she told Harper's Bazaar U.K. in an interview published in the magazine's February 2015 issue and posted online on Wednesday, New Year's Eve. "But we have been able to solidify this friendship, so that we're really close."
"It's painful, it's difficult, it might be easier to say, 'I never want to see you again,' but what good does that do anyone?" she said. "We've made a lot of mistakes, and we've had good days and bad days, but I have to say, I'm proud of us for working through so much stuff together—and not blaming and shaming."
Gwyneth and Martin have remained friends during their separation, during which Martin dated actress Jennifer Lawrence over the summer and fall, while Paltrow was spotted on multiple dates with Glee co-creator Brad Falchuk.
In October, Gwyneth and Martin were seen grabbing dinner together at a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles. In November, he and their son Moses, 8, attended the actress' Goop pop up store book signing in Dallas, Texas.
Gwyneth and Martin wed in a secret ceremony at the Santa Barbara courthouse in 2003, when Gwyneth was several months pregnant with their eldest child, daughter Apple, who is now 10.
Paltrow has also continued to sing the praises of her ex, who had met her backstage at a Coldplay concert in 2002, three weeks after her father, Bruce Paltrow, died at age 58 after battling throat cancer.
"I feel like I would have died somehow if I hadn't met him at that time," Gwyneth told Harper's Bazaar U.K. "I felt like I was going to die of grief. I remember waking up, on one particular night, where I felt like I was having a heart attack and I couldn't breathe...I lay on the floor of my apartment in London and I thought, 'I'm not going to survive this.' And he just picked me up and he was so loving and patient through all my grieving."
"He's really great in a crisis. He has incredible empathy when it comes to somebody's pain," she told the magazine, citing how Martin had recently spent time with a child of a friend who had had brain surgery.
"And before that, we had a friend in London whose son had a very bad head injury," she added. "And every night Chris was at the hospital sitting with the parents. He just has an extraordinary capacity in that way."