And, as the Goop description would suggest, what remained at the end of the night were two people filled with gratitiude to have found this sort of relationship at this point in their lives.
“I am so grateful,” Paltrow mused weeks later to Glamour U.K. “It’s different to be in your mid-40s; do it again and bring all your experience, your pain, your happiness, suffering—everything. It’s actually very heartening. I feel very optimistic!”
Having each been through the commitment of marriage and the disappointment of separation (“Divorce is terrible, even when it’s the right thing to do,” Falchuk noted to the Wall Street Journal), it meant even more to dive back into the fray.
“I think that marriage is a really beautiful, noble and worthwhile institution, pursuit and endeavor,” Paltrow explained in Marie Claire U.K.‘s November 2018 issue. “Because I don’t think you get married and that’s it—I think it’s the beginning. You create this third entity, this third being that you have to nourish and look after. For a while, I thought, I don’t know if I’d ever do it again. I have my kids—what’s the point? And then I met this incredible man, who made me think, no, this person is worth making this commitment to. I’m very much the marrying kind.”