Neil Gaiman’s Failed Marriages and Open Relationship With Ex-wife Amanda Palmer

Neil Gaiman is a well-known author who gained popularity for his best-selling novels, comics, and film and television adaptations. His notable works include The Sandman, Stardust, and more. In the last few months, Gaiman has been consecutively accused of s*xual assaults by different women at different timelines. Even though the author denied all the allegations, the reports have tarnished his reputation.

As Gaiman’s career flourished, people’s curiosity about his relationship history grew more. In fact, the author’s private life, from past marriages to open relationships, has always garnered the public’s attention. So, let’s look at his failed marriages and open-romantic relationship with his ex-wife, Amanda Palmer.

Neil Gaiman’s first marriage with Mary McGrath and romantic relationship with Amanda Palmer

Before getting romantically involved with Amanda Palmer, The Sandman writer, Neil Gaiman was previously married to Mary McGrath. The couple had exchanged vows in 1985 after she gave birth to their first son. Gaiman and McGrath met while she was studying Scientology at a house that his father owned.

The couple further became parents to two more daughters. In 2008, they got divorced and the author was no longer involved with Scientology. He met Palmer through their mutual friends, and it ignited something between them. While he was an author, she was a musician. She had even asked him to write for her book Who Killed Amanda Palmer, and the Stardust writer had accompanied her in writing it. They began dating as soon as he got out of his first marriage of 20 years.

Two years after dating each other, the couple got married but decided they would have an ‘open relationship’. They have often talked about their open marriage situation and in an interview with The Times, they shared, “We were fascinated by one another, and fascination is much stronger than physical attraction, which we both do have now, incidentally.”

However, in 2015, Palmer and Gaiman became parents to their son, Anthony ‘Ash’ Palmer. When Ash was born and was growing up, they reportedly decided to ‘shut down’ their arrangement for the sake of their son and focus on their family.

Neil Gaiman’s second marriage with Amanda Palmer ended in divorce

When they had put a pause on their open marriage arrangement, the couple started to face difficulties in their relationship. In one interview as mentioned in the ONTD live journal, the Good Omens author said,

The thing I hate most about our relationship is our respective calendars, we can never quite sync them up. We’re always traveling. Things can get stressful, more so now we’re parents. Once, we would just go off on our separate travels, do our things, and then come back to one another, but now that we have Ash, one of us is always at home with him.”

During that time, in another interview (via IBT), Palmer opened up about her past life with Gaiman and stated that they have “shattered one another’s hearts occasionally through bad choices” but eventually their relationship could get over it. Further explaining how monogamy felt terrifying to her, she added,

There are lots of varieties of open relationships… We’re not interested in having big, multiple relationships; we’re just sl*tty, but compassionately so.

However, soon their relationship started to hit rough patches, and in November 2022, they announced their divorce. Palmer and Gaiman called it a “difficult decision” and stated to stay committed to a co-parenting situation for their son, Ash.

So, here’s a detailed report on Neil Gaiman’s past marriages and open relationship with ex-wife, Palmer. However, now, the author has been getting entangled with several s*xual allegations.