“Sherlock’s” Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington have split and are handling it in the best way

There are literally eight days left to go of 2016, but this year isn’t done with heartbreak yet: Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington — best known *together* as Sherlock duo John Watson and Mary Watson (née Morstan) — have announced their separation after 15 years together.

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The two met back in 2000 on the set of a UK movie, Men Only, and have been together ever since. Though they never married (nothing wrong with that!!), they have two children together, Joe (who is 10) and Grace (who is 8). They also now have a baby on Sherlock, along with man-child Sherlock, but that is neither here nor there right now.

The news of their separation came up almost by accident, and that goes along with the very-private Hollywood-free life Martin and Amanda have led over the years. They actually split-up two weeks before they returned to the set of Sherlock to film Season 4, and have kept this news quiet ever since. It was only recently, while Martin was talking to Financial Times, that Amanda happened to come up and that’s when he revealed:

“I’m not with Amanda any more. It’s very, very amicable — I’ll always love Amanda.

In a separate interview with UK’s The Telegraph,  Amanda also commented on the split, mentioning that it was “entirely amicable.”

“Martin and I remain best friends and love each other, and it was entirely amicable, she explained.  “There was no hostility, really, we just said that we couldn’t live together anymore, so we put everything in place, he moved out to a flat in north London, I stayed at home and we’ve started a new chapter."

Though this is horribly sad, and we’re going to be weeping over this for a while, Amanda and Martin are handling it in such a super-adult way, and are mainly focused on their kids — as they should be!

"We’ve been really lucky to make it such a clean break, especially for the kids," Amanda continued. "It is sad and it is upsetting, because you think you’re going to be with someone forever, but you either do that or you break up, and we both came to the decision that splitting was best for us."

Amanda has also taken to Twitter to thank everyone for the outpour of love and support, and to reassure fans that right now everyone is doing a-okay. false false

We’re wishing nothing but the best for them, and their two kids (and Sherlock) during this tough time xoxo.