Remember all those photos of Madonna palling around with fellow American-with-fake-Brit-accent Gwyneth Paltrow this summer? Well, they weren’t just bonding over their love of yoga and money. Apparently, Gwyneth was counseling her friend Madge to work on her marriage to Guy Ritchie instead of throwing in the towel.
Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow spent the past few months desperately trying to convince her best friend Madonna not to separate from Guy Ritchie, MailOnline can reveal.
The 36-year-old believes Madonna and Guy, who announced the end of their nearly eight-year marriage today, should remain together for the sake of their three children.
Gwyneth is said to have advised her friend to think long and hard about the effects a divorce from the film director will have on Rocco, eight, adopted David Banda, two, and Lourdes, Madonna’s 12-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.
A source told MailOnline: ‘Gwyneth begged Madonna all summer not to be an idiot and let this marriage fall apart.’
Like Madonna, the Shakespeare In Love star is an American married to an Englishman, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and alternates her time between her homes in London and New York.
Gwyneth is also said to have developed a soft spot for toddler David and would be devastated to lose regular contact with him as well as with her best friend.
The source said: ‘Gwyneth is in love with that little boy and sees him several times a week while she’s in London, and she has as much at stake as anyone in seeing his parents stay together.
‘She just doesn’t think it’s possible that Madonna and Guy would hurt their children by splitting up, and says she has actively advised both of them to put their problems and their egos aside for the sake of the children.
‘But Madonna can be very hard-headed and treats Gwyneth like a younger sister. If Madonna goes through with a divorce it’s going to break Gwyneth’s heart and affect their friendship permanently.’
I don’t think I could ever advise anyone to stay together ‘for the sake of the kids.’ If it wasn’t working, the kids aren’t going to benefit from their parents sticking together and making everyone miserable. Anyway, it looks like all that begging and advising didn’t work. Like anyone could tell Madonna what to do in the first place. Something tells me Gwyneth will be there for Madonna no matter what.
In other Madonna divorce news, speculation is already starting about what will happen to the children she and Guy share. Sources are reporting that her oldest child, Lourdes, 12, wants to spend more time with her father, Carlos Leon, in NYC. Carlos is reportedly redecorating Madonna’s NYC apartment- possibly to prepare for Madonna’s return to the states. But where does that leave Rocco, 8, and David, 3? It’s still too soon to say for sure, but I can’t imagine that Madonna will want to separate her sons from their father at such a vulnerable time. Even someone as selfish as Madge would surely do what’s best for them…right?
Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna are pictured heading to the gym together in London in April 2008. Gwyneth is shown below looking scruffy out in London yesterday, 10/15/08. Photo credit: Bauergriffin.
Yeah I really don’t get the ‘stay together for the children’ thing. I can imagine what arguments with Madonna must be like, and ‘horrendous’ comes to mind. I really doubt that’s a good atmosphere for the children. I think Lourdes would be better off with her father!
gwynneth was actually giving solid advice. extensive, long-term studies have shown that children fare better when their parents remain together throughout their childhood and adolescence, even in acrimonious situations, than do children whose parents divorce. the statistics are out there for anyone who cares to put aside his/her prejudices and read them. divorce shatters children in a way that nothing else does.
Can you point to the studies showing that staying married only for the sake of the kids even in acrimonious situations is better than splitting up? Divorce, while not the best outcome for the kids, is not the worst that can happen. BAD divorces, filled with mutual hate and contempt, parental alienation on the part of one parent (Kim Basinger/Alec Baldwin), horrendous marriages filled with arguments or violence.. that’s what’s really bad for kids. Abandonment by one parent is also far worse than divorce itself. Many kids of divorce do well as long as their parents can put their kids’ interest above their own egos and act in a civil and adult manner for the sake of their kids. I don’t believe in staying in a bad marriage ONLY for the kids (and holding it over their heads for the rest of their lives). I think that Madonna has shown to be a good, responsible mother and she will continue to do so even when she divorces.
When I was 4 I heard the word ‘divorce’ for the first time. When I asked my mom and she told me what it meant, I knew that that’s what would happen. They didn’t separate until I was 11 and I was waiting, miserably, for the ball to drop the entire time. It ruined my childhood. When it finally happened the relief was enormous, and we moved into a phase of being a functional, albeit separated, family.
So, I too, would like to see those studies, because children know when their parents are unhappy, and it’s not conducive to an emotionally healthy upbringing.
I agree, wif. My kids actually see more of their dad now than when we were married – because when we were married he was a workaholic who was drinking, staying out all night and having affairs. Now, he has set times where he HAS to see them and spend time with them. The kids are relieved to know that every other weekend, they will see him for sure and they don’t have to worry about, is he coming home?, why is mommy crying? etc. Divorce is definitely not ideal, but in some cases it’s better than the alternative of seeing parents fighting and unhappy all the time. If the love isn’t there, better to have the kids divide their time between to happy, calm households than one tense, dysfunctional one.
Oh please. It’s not like it’s the first couple with children to get divorced. Yeah it sucks in the beginning but children learn to adjust. They will be fine.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that they announced this on Lourdes’s birthday. Maybe it doesn’t matter since apparently they’ve been separated for a while now anyway, but still. Seems such a horrible thing to do.
quite the cavalier attitude there, smit33.
for anyone who’s interested, the research on the impact of divorce on children is out there and is as close as the press of a few letter keys. i’m not going to gather the findings and present them here just to have them shot down with anecdotal evidence from people who say their experience with divorce has been positive for their children. there are always variations from the mean. however, the stats are what they are. you don’t have to like them nor do they have to be your personal experience. however, they tell the objective story of the impact divorce has on children.
Ewwww yuck, MSat. I’m sorry you got such a dud in the partner department. Hopefully you’ve found someone since who really appreciates you and knows to either come home to where he’s really wanted or take you out cavorting with him. Or both 🙂
Perhaps Madonna didn’t follow Dame Gwyneth’s advice because she said it in that snotty, know-it-all voice. 🙄
During their marriage, didn’t Guy basically drop his career to take care of the kids and Madonna’s financial interests? That would be a powerful argument in court to grant him generous visitation rights.
My guess is that the kids, not money, are going to be the sticky point in the divorce. Madonna is a control freak and will definitely want custody.
I’ve seen the research Tiki is referring to – it was made into a book, which I read when my ex and I were splitting up. The problem is that the research was done in the 60s and 70s when the idea of divorce was still very taboo. I’d like to see some more recent research.
All this research did was make me feel even more guilty and like a bad parent – and there really was no way I could stay in a marriage with someone like that.
I really still can’t believe there was something between her and Arod. (I mean, WHY? just WHY?) Anyway, I would hope that after this Madonna can take time to regroup and refocus. I would love to see her embrace her age and class herself up a bit.
Well, I guess we all now know the truth about Gwennie’s marriage like it’s a big surprise. Getting hitched in a hotel room when you’re preggers and your in-laws dislike you certainly doesn’t bode well for long term romance.
“…I can’t imagine that Madonna will want to separate her sons from their father at such a vulnerable time.”
Aren’t the brood on tour with Madge right now?
Would anyone who was from the US and moved and lived in the UK and picked up a little of the accent be considered being fake or just these two?
I’m concerned, lol, because when I’m there I make a conscious effort not to pick any accent up and this last time, I’d been there two weeks and my husband asked me if I wanted some milk and without thinking, I said I’d like a “hawf” a “glaws”. 😆
It was the best thing my parents could have done with their marriage for brother and I that they got divorced. I would have been as miserable as my friends who were growing up with parents who didn’t love each other otherwise.
Why is Madonna ‘selfish’? She can be called a lot of things, but I really don’t think selfish can be one of them. That’s just wrong.
Qraig: Did you just join us from another planet?
Give me a child/adult who was a product of these so-called, “acrimonious situations” and tell me (edit) that their lives were better off for it. Geesh, the f****** nerve of some people. Oh, you’re right, abusive situations are soooo much better than divorce. yeesh.
Sometimes parents just can’t stay together no matter how hard they try. It’s not the divorce that screws a kid up, it’s how the parents handle it. Once the parents start using their children as pawns in their fight to hurt one another that’s where more anger and bitterness and feelings of revenge come into play and it’s only the children that suffer. Becoming friends or at the least civil to each other doesn’t happen overnight, but not using your children as pawns or a trophy can. No matter how much you hate the fact your ex has your child on a holiday deal with it…it’s not about you. It’s about giving your child a normal childhood whether you’re together or apart.
Wow, Gwyneth must be listening to too much Dr Laura.
Yeah right. Next we will be hearing that fishsticks is dumping her husband too. There has already been rumours and you know its monkey see monkey do. She will not want to stay in England if Madonna has moved back to New York.
oh yeah, so when your parents hate each other and can’t stand the sight of each other – but stick with it “for you” and remind you of that fact whenever things are shitty . . . yeah, that’s a BRILLIANT solution. genius. no f’ed up kids there – they’re all the better for it! what sheer and utter nonsense.
To Tiki: Sorry if my attitude sounds cavalier. It’s like you said about personal experience. My parent’s divorced when I was about 10. And it didn’t have this huge negative effect on me or my sister. But, yes I can’t speak for other people or their children.
Oh my goodness .I assume Gwenneth was giving the girl some good advice. Advice based on what she knew about them.Madonna is a narcissist. And the false self she constructed to marry and have a marriage is getting old. Plus she just had her 50th birthday. Time to self indulge in a new false self. It got old for her to pretend she cared about anyone but herself. So Gweneth was just trying to tell her friend that she really has no reason to damage the kids. But Gwenneth doesn’t know the fact that they have a narcissist for a mother is damaging in and of itself. And divorce should be for people in abusive relationships. I believe Guy was severely abused by Madonna and all he asked her for was to stop working out 4 to six hours a day and support him a little,
How long will it be before she kicks Gwen to the curb like she did Rosie and Sandra before her.
Mind your own business Gwynnie. You might be next.
what a fabulous coat on that gwennie character
Tiki, very recent research (2000 and beyond) demonstrates that it’s better for children to live in happy single parent homes than in hostile two parent homes. I’m a PhD graduate student in psychology; believe me, I read waaaaaay too many academic journal articles.
I am an American, who was married to a Brit, and I had to come back stateside when we split. I took our young daughter with me but it’s posed some problems in custody.
It’s too much for a 3 year old to travel several times a year between NY and LDN but I have to say that if two parents put the child’s interest ahead of their own agendas, they can make it work for the kid without losing a relationship.
Anyway – I’m sure Madonna and Guy will love their kids and keep them out of harms way. It would be a shame to do anything else. 🙂
Sorry guys, but can you enlighten me on how come western society has got such a high % of divorce (I read USA is near to 50%)?
I live in southest asia where we still think that divorce is a big no no and so you tend to lower both your egos to make the marriage work. I’ve been married for 12 years and we still feel like it was only yesterday we tied the knot. AND I’ve yet to encounter a divorcee amongst my wide circle of family and friends!
I was raised in a family where my father resented us, often despised us, for hampering his “freedom” (unless we were praising him like a god endlessly, which is how one brother got his great education and private trust fund.) Of course, my mother typed and edited all his papers, she put food on the table every night, raised us by herself (badly) and wouldn’t leave him for all the tea in China.
Dear ol’ Dad got a slave and 4 excuses for all his problems. His latest rant is “don’t blame ME if you never marry!” Nice guy. Hell of a great influence on my childhood.
If mom had left him, maybe we would have felt loved and important to her, at least. But no, we all suffer from crippling cases of “I’m Sorry!” to the whole world for being alive.
These kinds of surveys make me seethe. Believe me, you’d never find our pain, loneliness, deep unhappiness, addiction, lost years, medical bills or anger on any survey. We know how to cover our tracks and make everything perfect for strangers. We know how to lie better than crackheads and sex offenders. Your wonderful (Xtian?) survey would hold us up as perfect examples of a happy, 2 parent, home.
Cahaya, I’ve had Indian colleagues in arranged marriages ask me the same question – why do Americans divorce so often?
Really, the discussion often goes on for hours because the lives of these women, and their marriages, are so alien to my own.
One aspect in their marriages, which is gone from ours, is how involved both families are in the arranging and the sustaining of each marriage. If a husband goes out drinking all night, you can bet his family finds out and chastises him within hours in order to save face with her family. Both partners are expected to live up to a standard for the sake of the families which brought them together in the first place.
2nd, the children become the total center of their lives – no private vacations or nights out with the “girls”. If you can’t take your kids along, then YOU shouldn’t be there. I’ve always been impressed with how Indian fathers (actually fathers in Germany, France and Spain, too) are so involved with their kids – no escaping after work for relaxation activities. They want to go home and be with their families, it relaxes them – SHOCKING from the US perspective. And they don’t veg out in front of the TV all night in a stupor either.
It’s far more complex than this, of course, but those are just a couple of the things I’ve noticed living in foreign countries.
Cahaya, it depends on how low your ego has to go to make it work.
In my country most divorces are initiated by women. In my case, the hubby told me every other day that he was just waiting for the other woman’s marriage to crumble to elope with her. I kept doing my best to make it work for about 1 1/2 year, for the sake of the 3 kids. I had no ego left back then, that’s for sure. I even let him invite the woman (with her unsuspecting husband and 3 kids) in our home for new year’s eve 2006 (though I didn’t let her near my youngest one, 9-months-old at the time).
Then when my baby hit 2 and the hubby was still ranting about his regret of the other woman, while fiercely maintaining his so-called “private life” was none of my business, going out late most of the week because he needed to “have fun”, and sleeping in another room, I decided that was it.
I hear in Southeast Asia a grown up will listen to his parents when there is trouble in his/her marriage, so maybe there is a way his/her ego can be lowered and the marriage saved. Here in the West parents have no influence on grown ups (often already none on teens) and anyway his mothers’ advice was for a divorce – since she didn’t want him being unhappy with me.
Hope it helps you understand the West…
Codzilla: Actually, I have been following Madonna’s career for a long time. She is highly involved with many charities where she donates a lot of her time, money and energy. She also lends her name to many more. I’d say that is pretty unselfish. But, I am sure you will probably say she is just doing it all for the attention.
I doubt the charities and people she helps are bothered by her ‘selfishness.’
Now, I must return to my planet where my kind judge people on their merits and not on how the media tells us to judge them. Zooooooom!!!!!!!!!!
flying in the face of a hedonistic, self absorbed society:
1. love is choice not a feeling that is beyond our control … we decide to love someone and we decide when we don’t want to anymore. Attraction is chemical but real love is a choice. “I couldn’t help it …” is for immature people who try and blame cupid or fate or some other such nonsense on their own selfish decisions..
2. staying together for the sake of the children does not mean “I hate you and hate being forced to live with you because of the kids so I am going to be bitter and snipey for as long as we are punished with cohabitation”. It means “You are now someone I would not choose to love, but we have children who need a stable, loving home so I will find whatever good or attractive thing there is about you and build on it so that on a hourly, daily, weekly,yearly basis we can enjoy something about each other and the time we are spending together raising these beautiful children we created. If after they’ve grown and left the nest we cannot find anything we want to base the rest of our lives on, then I will wish you well and move on – but until then I will make the best of our relationship and know that it’s a very good and loving thing we’re doing for our kids.”
Those faux Britons really stick together.
I Agree with vdantev. Wait til she moves permanently to New York. Her accent will change and she’ll try to pass herself off as a real New Yorker. Jeez, what a phony!I predict we’ll also be seeing more of her on American tv soon.(Sigh) Lucky us, we get her back!
please…. no matter where you live…when a marriage does not work , you either get out or suffer silently. Divorce rates in south-east Asia has been steadly climbing. Previously the woman had to stay with the husband becoz many of them did not work or chose to give up their career when they got married. Nowadays a lot more women has choosen to work due to the economy or simply they want to so if the marriage did not work they could choose to leave.
Plot : what you say is true…my husband (and lots of others I know) do spend a lot of his free time with the kids. Though, it helps having servants and babysitters (most households here would have a live-in servant and babysitters)so we can still go out just a couple and leave the kids at home.
Sissou : Not just your parents..your whole big family is involved if something goes wrong. My own wedding was kinda like the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it costs the earth (imagine the budget of having 1000 guests!) so you at least owe it to both your family to make it work, right?
TM : Yes, divorce rate is slowly rising but maybe this only applies to large metropolitan cities? It’s good that women are more independent now but I think many would still think 1000 times before the word divorce exits their lips….
Tiki is correct in that divorce does more damage to kids than staying together in an unhappy marriage. Think about it; almost every marriage has crises. What married person doesn’t get to a point where they wonder if they made the right decision marrying this person…etc.
The thing is, when a couple decides to stay together NO MATTER WHAT (see, that’s what commitment is), they tend to realize that hey…I’m stuck with this person, so I’d better figure out how to make it work. The usual end result is a couple that has worked hard to make a marriage work, and they wind up eventually having a much higher level of happiness in their marriage. They teach their children, by example, lessons about true commitment, compromise and how to problem-solve.
Much better than teaching your kids that when you get bored it’s time to bail out, which sadly happens way too much.
Of course Madonna wouldn’t listen to GP — would you listen to someone who is capable of nothing aside from imitating you? They even have exactly the same shade of blonde for god’s sake.