John Mulaney’s Ex Wife Anna Marie Tendler Gets Candid About Her “Mental Health Breakdown” During Her Divorce
In 2021 John Mulaney seemed to have undergone a complete overhaul of his life, ushering in newfound sobriety, a relationship with Olivia Munn, and a baby. This came after he kicked his ex-wife, multimedia artist and Swiftie enemy Anna Marie Tendler, to the curb. Now, in an essay about her dog Petunia’s passing for Elle Magazine, Anna Marie shared how the Frenchie helped her overcome the darkest period of her life. Cause while the sky was seemingly the limit for John, she reached rock bottom after suffering from a mental breakdown and hospitalization for “depression, self-harm, and severe suicidal ideation.”
The piece begins with Anna Marie writing about Petunia’s backstory of having an innate fixation on resource guarding, a habit some rescue dogs tend to have that involves aggressive behavior when someone tries to approach something they find valuable. So to fix the issue, Anna Marie did the totally reasonable thing that anyone would do in that situation and hired an “animal communicator” to ask Petunia to stop. Completely rational! Petunia turned down that communicator’s reasonable request and continued safeguarding when John left Anna Marie and went on to impregnate Olivia Munn while the ink on their divorce papers had yet to dry. Anna Marie writes that Petunia never left her side during this dark period, forming what she calls a “symbiotic relationship,” and in a way, safeguarding her human. (I’m not crying, you’re crying!) Here’s an excerpt from the essay:
Petunia and I moved to Connecticut in December 2020, in the wake of my severe mental health breakdown and what appeared to be the impending end of my marriage. We fused even more deeply together in an attuned and totally symbiotic relationship. She never let me out of her sight. In fact, she watched me intently, as if I was the thing she now needed to guard, though, where guarding once incited her primal rage, she would now guard me with the deepest kind of love I had ever known.
My mental health hinged wholly on my dog. When I was hospitalized for depression, self-harm, and severe suicidal ideation in the first two weeks of 2021, the doctors asked me to make a list of my reasons for living. Petunia was the one and only thing on that list.
Two years after John left Anna Marie high and dry, Petunia passed on to the great dog park in the sky as her human held her in her. Anna Marie writes, “I promised her that I was okay and that I would be okay without her; crushed, lonely, but okay. I thanked her for staying with me—for guarding me—until I was strong enough to survive without her.” John paid tribute to Petunia when she died, but it’s safe to say he was not invited to the funeral!
Pics: Instagram