Mandy Moore Lost Her "Sense of Self" and Felt Lonely in Her Abusive Marriage | "I Was Living My Life for Him"

"It was dark. It was confusing," says singer and actress Mandy Moore. "It was lonely."

That was what life had become when she married the man she thought was right for her.

It was in 2009 that a young 23-year-old Moore tied the knot with singer-songwriter, Ryan Adams. And that was the beginning of a marriage that put her through emotional and psychological abuse allegedly at the hands of her husband. The very man she loved was the man who made her feel lonely and miserable.

Just 23 at the time, Moore was an "impressionable young woman" when they met and was smitten from the very beginning. They were married by the time she was 24 and eventually, his overdependent nature started affecting her personal and professional life because she was always worried about taking care of him.

"I was living my life for him," she said on the WTF With Marc Maron podcast, as quoted by Today. "Yeah, I was taking care (of him), being the mother... It was an entirely unhealthy dynamic."

Feeling like her life was becoming completely about him, she recalled, "I had no sense of self... I was so small in my own world... My co-dependency fed into his codependency... I felt like I was drowning... I knew that this wasn’t the person I was supposed to be with."

Every time she tried to do things to salvage her career, she would fail because her thoughts were constantly invaded by Adams in an unhealthy way. "I would do things here or there, but it became abundantly clear while I was working, things would completely fall apart at home," she said. "I couldn’t do my job because there was just a constant stream of trying to pay attention to this person who needed me and wouldn’t let me do anything else."

Moore told The New York Times about his "controlling behavior" and the ways he would put her down. He would dismiss her accomplishments to praise his own. "He would always tell me, 'You’re not a real musician, because you don’t play an instrument,'" she said. There were times when they wrote songs together and Adams would book a studio for them but later make other female artists sing in her place. Moore added that he would even lash out in ways that she now sees as psychologically abusive.

Adams later came out to say that the New York Times article, which included accounts from different women who accused Adams, pictured him incorrectly and he denied the claims. The article also had accusations against him for having inappropriate conversations with someone underage.

While Adams didn't agree to anything said about him, Moore remembers her marriage as a dark phase of her life. Her entire world shrunk so much that "it was heavy. It was dark. It was confusing. It was lonely. There was no room for me. There was no room for me to have anything else in my life," she told Bustle.

After years of enduring his manipulative behavior, the star of This is Us separated from Adams in 2015. Despite the trauma she took away from the relationship, she didn't let it taint her belief in love. Even before she met her present husband, musician Taylor Goldsmith, there wasn't a doubt in her mind about falling in love again.

"I knew that past situations didn’t define me and didn’t even define what love or marriage or relationships or any of that had to be. My experiences in the past were singular to that," she told Michigan Avenue. "I knew, even before I met Taylor, I would love again, and I would get married again, and I would have a family... Not to say that I didn’t have my own grief and pain and trauma to tend to, deal with, overcome and heal from, but it never affected how I feel about love."

Goldsmith, who is also a singer-songwriter, was someone the actress could lean on through the challenges she was going through at the time. "I was still dealing with the trauma of my divorce when we started dating," she told Glamour. "Taylor was steadfast in his support—that was a huge sign for me."

After dating for about two years, the two of them got engaged in 2017 and married in 2018, according to Daily Mail.

Finally having the loving marriage that she deserves, Moore revealed that she would go through all those difficult years of her past if it meant that she would have her happy ending by living the rest of her life with Goldsmith.

"He makes me melt. I can imagine no better partner," she told Glamour. "He’s going to be the most tremendous father. I view the past as a stepping-stone to get me where I am today. I would gladly weather all of that a million times over if it brought me to Taylor again."

References:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mandy-moore-ryan-adams-marriage-wtf-with-marc-maron-796269/
https://www.today.com/popculture/mandy-moore-describes-marriage-ryan-adams-i-felt-i-was-t149067
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/arts/music/ryan-adams-women-sex.html?auth=login-facebook
https://michiganavemag.com/mandy-moore-michigan-avenue-may-june-cover-story
https://people.com/tv/mandy-moore-happier-than-ever/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7699833/Mandy-Moore-gushes-husband-Taylor-Goldsmith-wedding-anniversary.html
https://www.glamour.com/story/mandy-moore-november-2018-cover-story