There's a silly image in my head now of a skilled writer carefully crafting a realistic argument between the characters, hoping it will turn readers against the marriage, only for the fanbase to become engrossed and engaged with it in a productive way, leading the writer to go "Damn it! I'm
too damn good at writing 3-dimensional but lovable characters going through a juicy realistic argument! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
An interesting thing to me about MJ's "death" is that it was very much a soap opera type of plot twist, and one that when it didn't stick, now comes off as far superior to the current writing simply because actual textual drama and melodrama in it, even if it was blatantly trying to "get back to the good old single days!" idea.
...And I think I had a TPB from that time as well, and remembered being mildly befuddled when I realized the writer was probably so happy that he could just insert a random flirty and busty neighbor in Peter's apartment complex as part of "getting back to basics" with writing Peter's civilian life.
To this day, I still think it's kind of goofy how often "Peter needs to be a loser who's unlucky in love!" proponents always also go "...and I would like to add another entry to the series of smoke-shows Peter runs into who become infatuated with him as soon as possible, please... or at least bring back the platinum blonde Catwoman analogue to jump his bones."