Anna Marie Tendler has spoken out about suffering a “severe mental health breakdown” in the midst of her split from ex-husband John Mulaney.
The 37-year-old makeup artist wrote about her ex, who filed for divorce from her in 2021, in an op-ed published by Elle on 6 June. She opened up about how difficult it was to say goodbye to her dog Petunia, who died in April, and how the pet was by her side during her breakup.
“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,” she wrote. “We fused even more deeply together in an attuned and totally symbiotic relationship. She never let me out of her sight.”
Tendler noted that throughout this time, her dog would “watch [her] intently,” as if she “was the thing [that Petunia] now needed to guard”.
She went on to detail some of the mental health challenges that she was facing in January 2021 and how this ultimately impacted her pet. This was months before Mulaney officially filed for divorce after seven years of marriage.
“My mental health hinged wholly on my dog,” she wrote. “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.”
Tendler noted that when she returned home, her dog cared for her owner and “took [this] job very seriously”.
“She mellowed, almost overnight,” the artist added. “Except for an errant sock theft here and there, she stopped resource guarding. She sat at my feet at every meal. She followed me around my property without a leash, never straying more than 20 feet and always galloping back to me when she did.”
Mulaney and Tendler, who married in 2014, first announced that they were separating in May 2021. At the time, Page Six reported that Mulaney had asked for the divorce three months prior. Their separation came shortly after Mulaney completed 60 days in rehab for drug and alcohol abuse, having checked himself into a centre in December 2020.
During the same month that he announced his breakup, the actor confirmed that he was in a relationship with actress Olivia Munn. The couple welcomed their first child, Malcolm, in December 2021.
In her Elle essay, Tendler emphasised how Petunia helped her through the divorce.
“She was my constant through marriage, four moves, graduate school, a career change (or two), a mental health crisis, a divorce, and finally a reinvention,” she wrote in the op-ed.
Tendler previously spoke out about the divorce in January 2022. “Everything that has transpired has been totally shocking and I think surreal,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “In a way, I feel like, well, it can only go up from here, because I reached the depth of where I could go.”
She noted that while her breakup had been heartbreaking, she was excited for her future.
“I feel lucky that I get to be standing on the precipice of all of these new things, that I get to possibly experience, and who knows how they will go? And there is certainly something exciting about that,” she added.
Tendler also said that she planned on freezing her eggs, since the split allowed her to contemplate the idea of having children again.
“There were things I never even thought about before because that was just a closed door. So now that it feels like not as much of a closed door, it’s something that I ruminate on a lot,” she explained.
