Gwyneth Paltrow hoped to 'reinvent' divorce after Chris Martin split

March 18 (UPI) -- Gwyneth Paltrow aspired to "reinvent" divorce following her split from Chris Martin.

The 46-year-old actress explained on Monday's episode of the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard why she remained close friends with Martin after they ended their marriage.

"I just thought, 'I wonder if there's a way to circumvent that and just go directly to the point where we're friends,'" she recalled. "We're family, that's it. We can pretend we're not, and hate each other ... or, let's try to reinvent this for ourselves."

Paltrow announced her "conscious uncoupling" from Martin in March 2014 after 10 years of marriage. She said public backlash to her approach added to the "pain" she was already feeling.

"I was in a lot of pain. It was so difficult. It felt like such a failure to me. It was so hard and I was so worried about my kids," the star said of her divorce. "Then there was this whole other layer of the world turning on us."

"Sometimes I've said things and it's been too early in the culture, or whatever," she speculated. "The other thing I didn't think about at the time ... I think [I] triggered a lot of people who were the sons and daughters of acrimonious divorces, or people in the middle of acrimonious divorces."

Paltrow previously discussed public perception in an interview with Today last week. She gives lifestyle and wellness advice through her lifestyle brand, Goop, but said she doesn't consider herself perfect.

"That's been, actually, the opposite of my intention. I always feel like I'm very open about my learnings, my shortcomings, my mistakes," the actress said.

"I think we're all in process, and we're all starting at different places," she explained. "I think I'm actually a person who tries to look for ways to really support people and offer solutions and ideas."