People like Katherine Woodward Thomas

Conscious Uncoupling is a neologism used in the 21st century to refer to a relatively amicable marital divorce. The term was created by Katherine Woodward Thomas in 2009 as a five-step process to support the conscious completion of an intimate relationship and popularized by Gwyneth Paltrow in 2014, who used the phrase to describe her then-recent divorce.

Starting in the early 1940s the word "uncoupling" became a term for divorce.

Sociologist Diane Vaughan proposed an "uncoupling theory" in 1976. Vaughan saw the process where a relationship reaches a crossroads, when both parties realize that "everything went dead inside". It usually is followed by lengthy phase, during which one of the partners (the "respondent") holds on to the failing relationship, in spite of unconsciously knowing that it's coming to the end.