(1978 - 1988) (divorced)
In 1978, she married Richard Dylan McDermott, a 34-year-old bartender, who convinced her to enter rehab. When she was 23, she adopted Mark Anthony McDermott, her husband's 16-year-old son from his first marriage. Their relationship came to be a close one, and Ensler has stated that it taught her "how to be a loving human being." After Ensler suffered a miscarriage, Mark took the name she had planned for her baby, Dylan. Ensler and Dylan's father were separated in 1988, the former citing that she "needed the independence, the freedom". According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, "After her marriage ended, she had a long relationship with the artist and psychotherapist Ariel Orr Jordan but is single now, which seems to suit her nomadic lifestyle - she has homes in New York and Paris but travels much of the year."