Mandy Moore Felt ‘Hollow, Empty, Isolated’ in Marriage to Ryan Adams

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | February 7, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | February 7, 2024 |

In a recent episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinners on Me podcast, Mandy Moore opened up about her marriage to singer Ryan Adams, whom she married in 2009 at the age of 24, and divorced in 2016.

“Looking back, I think it was a direct response to my own parents splitting up … I found myself in a relationship with somebody that I believed I could make a family with this person, for this person,” she said, adding, “I was ready to power everything down… It seemed like a perfectly appropriate time to get married and focus on this very personal, quiet chapter in my life.” But that quietness just left her in a “hollow, empty, isolated place.”

“It’s so weird because I think back to that chapter and it almost feels like it was someone else entirely that it happened to, because I’m in such a different place in my life…and it’s almost like, ‘How did I ever do that? How did I ever find myself in that place where I allowed myself to be treated that way, that I viewed myself that way?’”

She reflected on “belittling yourself or making yourself as small as possible to make others around you feel as comfortable as possible” as something she learned in childhood that she carried into her marriage. She said Adams made the divorce as “trying and challenging and awful” as he could and subtly reiterated her previous claims of controlling and abusive behavior in the relationship.

“I’m so grateful for that experience. I’m grateful for all it taught me and where it brought me,” she concluded.