Last week, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer revealed that they are splitting up. Palmer revealed this via a post on her Patreon account. Gaiman responded with a post on Twitter. Now the back-and-forth has moved to Goodreads, the social media site based on books and reading habits. Gaiman’s long-dormant account updated to say that he was reading the book Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder by Randi Kreger and Bill Eddy. Some fans who saw the update took this as a subtle jab at Palmer, who is known for her eccentric personality and musical persona.
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Gaiman must have been alerted to the update after it started going around on Twitter and other social media sites. He later pulled down the update and replaced it with another message saying that the account had been hacked. The post is titled “Whoa” and reads, “Someone with a dark sense of humour just hacked this account. (I supposed that’s what I get for leaving it here and not doing anything for a long time.)
Gaiman and Palmer married in 2010 via a flash mob that Palmer out together for Gaiman’s 50th birthday. They made the marriage legal in 2011. The two have confirmed in the past that their relationship was an open marriage, going as far as to label it as “on-again, off-again” in a 2010 Sunday Times profile. “We’ve both shattered one another’s hearts occasionally through bad choices, but our relationship stands it,” Palmer said. “We’re not interested in having big, multiple relationships. We’re just slutty, but compassionately so.”
Palmer posted to her Patreon blog, “Since people are getting confused and asking and my phone and inbox is blowing up with ‘where’s Neil?’ a few times a minute … I can only gather that he’s finally told the internet that he’s left New Zealand, and I thought I would come here with a short note. Neil moved to the UK, my heart has been broken, and I am really struggling,” she continued. “I’m still in lockdown here in New Zealand with 4-year-old [son] Ash for the foreseeable future.”
Gaiman tweeted in response, “I see @amandapalmer has told people that we (like much of the world) are going through rocky times right now. It is true, we are. It’s really hard, and I’d like to request privacy (as I’m not going to be talking about it publicly) and kindness, for us and for Ash.”
