A part of me thinks differently (in a bad way) about Ayu after the Maro thing, while another part thinks differently about Ayu in a way that I now see clearly that Ayu is as human as the rest of us, the only difference being that her mistakes are shown to and mocked by the public.
Ayu is a grown woman who has shown a lot of maturity and wisdom throughout her fame, but even the wisest of people make bad decisions. Twice now, Ayu has announced that she's been in a serious relationship, and while the authenticity of these relationships may be argued by some, in both cases the relationships have ended in (what is publicly viewed as) scandal.
I don't personally believe in the theories about marketing ploys (someone earlier said that Namie Amuro's divorce nearly destroyed her career, so avex should know that this isn't a good marketing ploy), nor do I think that Ayu is completely without "virtue" (to put it in a mild way).
What I think is that Ayu fell in love or at least thought she did (twice) and she was very happy about it. Ayu is someone who speaks bluntly about feelings such as pain, insecurity, love, and hope in her lyrics, she wants to share her feelings with her fans and the fact that she wanted to share her happiness about being in love didn't surprise me. One thing I've learned from people's words about love, is that people that are in love want to share their feelings with the world. They want to show that they are happy, and that they have someone special and wonderful to share their life with. Hiding love may bring the ominous thought that this love might not have a proper place in this world, that it's somehow wrong and shameful so it should be hidden away in the dark, unable to shine in the light. Ayu wanted to share her love with her beloved fans, and I can't really fault her for that. When you're in love, that special person is the center of your world. Trying to repress it is like repressing a vital part of yourself, and Ayu didn't want to do that.
Even with her comments that her private life and her work should stay separate (or whatever it was she said), Ayu's work as an artist is still based on her personal life, and Mannie & Maro were a big part of her personal life for a while. Keeping work stuff and personal stuff separated is difficult for anyone - if your heart is broken by someone or if you are happily in love, of course it will impact your work in some way.
Naturally, Ayu's decision to enter a relationship with her dancer may have been a bad one, but when you have feelings for someone things like bad consequences and public scandals can easily be dismissed as meaningless. Sometimes people want to take big risks for the sake of being happy, and even if it seems obvious that things will end badly, they have hope that everything will be alright in the end. Foolish perhaps, but feelings tend to overshadow logic.
So that's my view on this. Ayu's made some mistakes, things ended badly, and while I do not know why Ayu fired Maro, I can imagine that with the comments "fans" have thrown at her, she's under a lot of a pressure and thinking about Maro's career is not a high priority for her right now.
I'm not completely fine with Ayu's actions, but I feel that I understand her motives behind them. I hope Ayu has better luck with love in the future, and that when Cupid's arrow pierces her heart again, fans will be supportive and happy for her.
