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The biggest problem with dating after divorce? Any new man could still find my failed marriage plastered all over social media...
Just under two years ago, aged 31, I went on a dating app for the first time. Until that day, I had never formed a romantic connection with a stranger. And here I was, a month after my husband ended our marriage, sending devil emojis to a man I knew virtually nothing about.
It wasn’t as nerve-racking as I thought it would be — until he asked for my Instagram profile.
The latest three posts documented my wedding day, which had taken place just seven short months earlier. In one, I’m sickeningly happy, showing off the £5,000 bespoke wedding dress I imagined I’d eventually pass on to a daughter.
Another was a tribute to my six bridesmaids. Then there was the first dance. Shortly before handing over my profile details, I deleted them all. My potential date never has to know, I thought.
But then he messaged: ‘I have to ask, are you engaged?’
Ah. I’d failed to consider the rows upon rows of images of a man who, while only briefly my husband, was my partner for nine years. Until one Thursday evening over aubergine pasta, just six months after our picture-perfect wedding, he told me he no longer wanted to be married.
A month after her marriage ended with her husband, and having never used dating apps before, Eve, 33, found herself sending devil emojis to a man she knew virtually nothing about
He’d developed a connection with a woman in the office that had caused him to rethink our relationship of almost a decade. Overnight, I lost almost everything. I was forced to move out of my ‘forever’ home, and bunk back in with my mother.
Although the break-up was swift, the separation of our shared life was painfully slow. It took six months to sell our house and a full year before we were divorced. In the meantime, we were still connected in myriad ways via the internet.
Like most couples below the age of 45, every milestone of our relationship was documented. We shared snapshots of our lives together on Instagram and, until recently, Facebook. It took months for me to change my relationship status on Facebook which, to my horror, told my friends I was still ‘engaged’.
I had posted pictures of the flat we bought in March 2019 and the house we bought two years later; there was the predictable ‘I said yes’ post in August 2019 and later pictures of the dog we adopted shortly after our wedding.
Back on the dating app, I babbled an excuse to my new love interest — claiming it was a ‘long story’, but that I was definitely single.
My foray into dating apps just weeks after my husband dropped his bombshell was, at first, a distraction from my imploding life. I hadn’t given it much thought, assuming it was like a digital game that I could use to escape.
Still, when this new man asked me out on a real-life date, I went. During the evening, I succumbed to a case of word vomit and blurted out the whole debacle, holding back tears as I admitted that the last man to fall in love with me had brutally changed his mind.
Eve recalls that, to her shock, she had still left her relationship status on Facebook as 'engaged' when searching for Mr Right online (stock image)
My date was surprisingly understanding. He took it all in his stride as if I’d told him I was vegetarian, instantly putting me at ease. Still, in the following days, I found myself deleting more and more snapshots of my past life. Some showed off important moments in my career, or the joy of a friend’s wedding. They were events that, ideally, I’d like to have a documented history of. But they all featured my husband and me smiling — or him, alone, alongside a gushing caption I’d written about how lucky I was to have him.
It’s just social media, you might think, what’s the big deal? But as a 33-year-old I’ve spent the entirety of my adult life online. For us, Instagram is a living history of our best bits — the equivalent of a cherished photo album, but one that everyone who knows you (and some who don’t) can look at.
Erasing great big chunks almost makes you feel fraudulent — not to mention sad.
And it functions as a sort of dating prospectus. Rifling through a person’s social media profiles is, these days, part of the standard of meeting new people. And large gaps in content look suspicious.
Then there are the photos where I have been ‘tagged’ by others (where they’ve uploaded an image of me, then linked it to my profile). There are hundreds of me in a wedding dress.
And at my hen party, wearing a white suit with feathery cuffs, blindfolded opposite a nude male model. I can’t delete these. There is a depressing sense of losing control of your own narrative; it lies in the hands of those who captured that moment of your life.
I’ve told friends to tag me in as many post break-up photos as possible, bringing the single me to the top of the feed, and hiding the wedding dress.
Meanwhile, I was desperate to move on in the ‘real’ world, too.
My first few dates felt like I’d been transported to a parallel universe. Oddly, it had a calming effect; I was so focused on the correct dating etiquette that I forgot all about what struck me as passive-aggressive emails from my husband and the fact that, in my early 30s, I was back living with my mother.
When, within a few months, my dating app man became my boyfriend, I was careful who I told — keeping it within my inner circle of three best friends — and what I posted on Instagram.
When her dating app man became her boyfriend, Eve made sure to limit the amount of people she told as well as keeping the relationship away from Instagram
When it did eventually get out, a few friends made unhelpful comments along the lines of, ‘does he know you’re still married?’ and ‘poor guy, dealing with your baggage’.
In hindsight, I spent far too long agonising about what other people thought about my decisions. I wonder if we would care quite so much if it wasn’t for social media piling on the pressure to live our lives for the entertainment of our followers.
I’m not the only one battling with this new form of post break-up bureaucracy. Since writing about my divorce in this paper, I’ve received hundreds of messages from women sharing similar stories.
I’ve endeavoured to respond to every message. Sometimes, out of perverse curiosity, I end up scrolling through their profile and searching for evidence of their former partner. Nine times out of ten, there is none. Even insignificant reminders of the life you lost are unbearable — they have to go.
But the process of deciding what to keep and what to bin is an unwanted trip down memory lane; as if you needed reminding.
So, what’s the solution? Never celebrate any romantic milestone on social media on the off-chance one of you has a change of heart? Or, for those of us who are especially unlucky in love, resign yourself to a constant cycle of Instagram re-invention, wiping away any photographic evidence of old flames?
The option I chose is to ‘delete all’ — up to a point. I eventually got rid of every picture featuring my ex-husband taken since roughly a year before our engagement. I kept some earlier ones that featured me in my twentysomething prime, which I couldn’t bear to erase for ever. A couple of vague hints at his existence remain — like a shot of the walk-in wardrobe he built me in 2021 (just too impressive to delete).
I wasn’t ready to erase all the memories. It felt like a betrayal of the person I’d been for a decade: content, settled and in love.
Over the years I’d also accepted follower requests from about 25 of his friends, colleagues and aunts. I felt I had no choice but to delete and block these. I couldn’t stand the thought of him having an insight into my day — even if the information was passed from a mutual friend.
He doesn’t get to ease his guilt by seeing pictures of me happily eating brunch or getting a promotion. I wanted to start my new life free to be the person I am now — not his idea of me.
I blocked and deleted my husband on Instagram within days of the relationship ending. Some describe an odd addiction to content shared by their ex-partners. I, however, couldn’t even bear to see his name in my email inbox.
I’ve spent the past year attempting to align the shattered pieces of my life in some sort of workable order. And as puzzling as it might sound to some, my social media housekeeping has been an important part of that. It has, at times, made me wish I was born 50 years ago; when you could say your goodbyes and that was that.
One divorced woman wrote to me via Instagram: ‘I had to navigate the feeling of deleting pretty much my entire life.’ Another described the ‘added pain’ of asking her ex-husband to delete wedding pictures of her from his Instagram page.
‘I had to persist for two years,’ she said. ‘It was all for him to show he was the victim and had done no wrong.
‘I realised after our break-up I had no photos I liked of me by myself — he was in all of them,’ said a woman whose husband asked for a divorce after four months of marriage.
The past year has also brought an acute awareness of how my litany of perfect relationship posts over the years may have affected other people.
After my split, my single friends became far less reserved about sharing their feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy when a succession of school friends announced engagements. Their pain didn’t come across as bitter or jealous, just heartbreakingly sad. And I felt guilty.
Then, of course, I felt the same pain as pictures of shared homes, romantic trips to remote Italian villages, newly adopted dogs and those ‘happy five years to this one’ anniversary posts came at me over subsequent weeks and months.
I’d be in a good mood, tap the Instagram app for 20 seconds and suddenly all I could think about was my divorce, the perfect house I lost, and that brilliant £300 pizza oven that my ex took.
Speaking on her podcast, author Elizabeth Day coined the term ‘fertility privilege’ — how those who’ve conceived easily can be naive to the effect of their new baby pictures for those who can’t get pregnant. Is parading your happy relationship on the internet subjecting singletons to the perils of ‘couple privilege’?
Realistically, I think people find it easier to muster empathy for the one in five who suffer medical issues that stop them getting pregnant than it is for those who haven’t found a partner.
Some 18 months down the road, Eve's digital date remains her boyfriend. However, for reasons all too close to home in her past, she refuses to share any more information online...
And quite rightly. Some of my friends have endured the London dating scene for decades; now that they’ve finally found their person, why shouldn’t they be allowed to celebrate?
I don’t have all the answers. But I do have some advice that would have been useful to hear when I started dating.
Don’t rush to put every moment on Instagram for all the world to see. Maybe it’s worth saving the mega life announcements for your nearest and dearest.
And no matter how blissful your relationship, take time to find joy and fulfilment by yourself. Do not let your entire identity become wrapped up in your partner’s. This applies to all experiences and periods of life — not just those shared on social media.
You’ll find your Instagram page becomes filled with memories you will cherish, as well as ones that you may come to find upsetting.
As for me, well, 18 months later, the understanding man who I met on that first dating app date is still my boyfriend. And for very good reason, that is all the information I choose to share.