On August 13, 2024, artist Anna Marie Tendler released her first book, a memoir titled, Men Have Called Her Crazy. On August 13, 2024, I purchased Tendler’s book. On August 16th, the book arrived in the mail and it was on the 17th that I began reading. A month later, I finished the book.Â
In all honesty, I learned about Tendler through her marriage to comedian and actor, John Mulaney. I watched Mulaney’s Netflix specials in high school and still quote from them today. Mulaney and Tendler were married in 2014. Their relationship trickled into Mulaney’s stand-up sets, with comments about how lucky he was to have Tendler as his wife. Then, the couple announced their split in 2021 after Mulaney checked himself into a rehabilitation program and Tendler visited a mental health facility. There is a lot of history there, not to mention Mulaney’s path after their divorce (getting remarried and having two children with actress Olivia Munn), so I was surprised that Tendler hardly mentions her ex-husband in her book.Â
Tendler’s story conflates her struggles with self-harm, ED, anxiety, and depression as they relate to her romantic relationships with men. Every other chapter goes through the history of her love life before bouncing back to her time in the hospital and the following years as she tries to cope with the death of her beloved French bulldog, the COVID-19 pandemic, and career insecurity.Â
Her stories are unapologetic, honest and angry. She speaks eloquently and unabashedly about her feelings towards men and how they contributed to her mental health crises. I feel that many people would not have the courage to write so honestly out of risk of invoking anger. But while reading, I’ve found that Tendler does not care about the thoughts and opinions of men, for she spent too much of her life obsessing over them. And I cannot blame her for that.Â
Tendler writes about flings, boyfriends, remissions of self-harm, etc but never explicitly mentions John Mulaney. She hardly even mentions being married. Tendler went to the mental health facility in 2020 meaning they were still married at the book’s beginning. If Tendler’s book is about her challenges with men, why would she skip over such a large part of her life?Â
I admit, I was motivated to buy the book based on my nosiness. I wanted to know why their marriage ended and what it was like for Tendler to struggle with her mental health while being married to a celebrity and addict. After some thought, I realized that if she had mentioned her marriage, the book would be branded by her relationship with him. Headlines would read “Mulaney’s ex-wife strikes back”, “she reveals the truth behind their marriage” and blah, blah, blah. It’s no longer her story as a survivor and a woman struggling but rather a story about being a wife. It takes the spotlight off of her experience and focuses on a single relationship.Â
Therefore, one can look at this gap in the book as an intentional, radical choice on Tendler’s part. She’s choosing herself and claiming the story as her own. Even so, her lack of mentioning Mulaney still felt like a chasm in the middle of the book. A permanent question mark. Perhaps Tendler is saving her relationship with Mulaney for her next memoir.Â
Men aren’t so much the cause of Tendler’s mental illness but they are the fuel for the ongoing voice in her head. The voice that second-guesses her choices, her beliefs, her reactions, and her inhibitions. It’s a negative and demeaning voice, one that many women have heard before and will hear again. It is a powerful story that refuses to apologize for the space it takes up, similar to the way Tendler grows throughout the book — a woman no longer confined or defined by men.Â