Inside Carly Simon and 'unfit' ex-husband James Taylor's 'doomed' marriage

James and Carly had briefly crossed paths in the mid and late 1960s, but it wasn't until she saw him perform at New York's Carnegie Hall in November 1971 that their relationship blossomed.

Carly met James during the intermission and offered him a "home-cooked meal," which he immediately accepted. Later that night, their first meal of "two loaves of Sara Lee banana cake" turned "into a life together," she told Harper's Bazaar.

Before their encounter, Carly recalled walking down the street and seeing a cartoon of James on the cover of TIME. "Without thinking, I blurted, with confidence: 'I'm going to marry him'. How did I know this? People have asked me over the years," she recalled in her memoir, Boys in the Trees.

"The only answer I can come up with is he, James, was perfect for me in every way. If you believe in predestination or clairvoyance, that would be a terrific example of why you're right to."

After a whirlwind romance, Carly and James married on November 3, 1972, in a small ceremony at her New York apartment.

Before they exchanged vows, Carly revealed that James hesitated to tie the knot after she suggested marriage. Recalling his response in a 1973 interview with Rolling Stone, Carly said James told her: "'There's really no reason to get married. We love each other and we've been living together.'

"And then later on in the afternoon, James said, 'You know I've been thinking about it and maybe we should get married.' I said, 'Well, what's happened between this morning and this afternoon?' He said, 'This afternoon it was my idea.'"

Carly and James separated in September 1981 before their divorce was finalized in 1983. Speaking on ABC's 7:30 Report in 2010, James admitted he had no business marrying at 26. "It amazes me that people get married in their twenties ... I mean, what do you know?" he said.

In her memoir, Carly said of their marriage: "Our love became bipolar, switching from love to hate, lust to loathing, and back again, sometimes within a day."

They were both also unfaithful during their marriage, with James even playing house with one of his dancers while still living with Carly and their two children, Sally and Ben, in New York.   

Their separation came after they both realized "things were no longer really mendable," Carly later admitted.

James battled drug addiction since his teenage years and admitted that his 20-year battle ruined several relationships, including his marriage to Carly.

"You could fall in love, but if one of the people is addicted, it's not going to work," he told Parade. "The whole person is simply not available."

He echoed the sentiment in an interview with The Guardian: "I mean, you marry an addict, you just have no idea who this person is, and he doesn't have any idea who he is either."

In his interview with 7:30, James admitted that their marriage was "doomed" from the beginning. "I was unfit to be a husband and father," he stated.

While Carly hoped she and James would "stay friends" after their split, he disagreed and hasn't spoken to her in decades.

"I would say that the relationship is very resolved from James's point of view, which makes it clearly impossible for me to have a relationship with him because he's put down an iron curtain," she told Salon in 2015.

"But it's been very hard to raise children without having their father to talk to."

Addressing Carly's claims of his silent treatment, James told The Guardian: "That's sort of the point about divorce, that you go your own ways. I don't know when she has determined that the relationship ended, but we communicated closely for years about the kids. Carly was important to me. But it did end."