'Divorce-tok' fills social media as creators find audiences — and support — by sharing heartbreak

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On Instagram feeds that are often teeming with curated, contrived content, a recent post from Monette Wagner stood out for her disarming openness.

Looking into the camera, Wagner, a 36-year-old mother of three, said in the video: “Divorce can feel like a death.”

In what resembles a digital journal, Wagner has posted videos in real time about the emotions and life changes that have come with her recent divorce. Developing financial independence, getting used to co-parenting, and moving on from heartbreak are frequent themes of her Instagram posts.

A growing number of people, the majority of them women, are sharing unvarnished divorce stories, both offering and seeking advice on social media. Moving beyond a stigma around discussing marital breakdowns, the content provides a space for the creators to heal, and for their followers to relate and reflect on their own experiences and emotions.

A professional photographer in Indianapolis, Wagner already had a platform on Instagram to share and promote her work. But she recently took the page in this more vulnerable direction.

Alongside posts about the heavier moments, she also shares lessons learned and more optimistic musings. She has posted about wanting to reconnect with the confident, curious person she was more than a decade ago — before she met her now-former husband. She's revisiting passions she had as a teen, including skateboarding and learning to DJ.

“I wanted to show my kids that you can still be strong even through these hard days. I wanted to show them how strong hope is,” she said. “I feel more confident. I feel resilient. I feel like I faced my fears of showing up scared, of putting myself out there as my authentic self.”

On TikTok, where niche categories of content sometimes earn a nickname, content that delves into marital woes has been dubbed “divorce-tok.”

The level of detail creators choose to divulge about their divorce and marriage varies widely. Some, like Wagner, do not post about their ex-partners. Others provide detailed accounts of issues in their marriage and the sometimes messy and lengthy process of finalizing their divorce.

The voyeuristic world of social media tends to love story-time-style videos where creators talk as if they’re chatting on the phone with a friend, sparing no details. Some creators post one-off videos, while others make it the focus on their platforms. Trends related to divorce also periodically pop up online, like this season’s “hot divorcée summer” videos and clips showing people’s post-divorce “glow-ups,” or physical, and in many cases, emotional, transformations. The #divorce hashtag has millions of posts on both TikTok and Instagram.

Jen Hamilton, a labor and delivery nurse with more than 5 million TikTok followers, recently has been sharing the “nitty-gritty” details behind her divorce, as she said in one video. Hamilton has explained how her husband led what she called a “double life” with another partner, and has shared videos of herself crying, cracking jokes and generally processing the news while maintaining her signature optimism.

In a more celebratory post, Hamilton shared photos and videos from what would have been her 14th wedding anniversary, recognizing the occasion with what she called a “Jendependence Day” party. More than a dozen friends and co-workers joined her at her North Carolina home as she burned her bedsheets and toasted to her future beyond her marriage.

“I feel like if I share my pain with you, I don’t feel so alone, because there’s so many other people going through the exact same thing,” she said in a video in July. She added that her followers then, in turn, feel less alone too.

Some men have posted content along these lines, but women make up the vast majority of creators posting about divorce.

Many of these creators say they’re not sharing their stories in hopes of gaining pity or sympathy, but rather are hoping to develop a sense of community online with people who have gone through similar experiences.

Alex Daly, a 41-year-old creator in Philadelphia, started posting about her divorce around three years after she went through it. Once she found that she had processed her emotions around the divorce, she was eager to talk about it. She aims to reach people who are “still in the thick of it, because it’s a really hard place to be,” she said.

“It can feel very lonely and isolating. It can feel like you’re the only person going through it,” Daly said. Followers have thanked her and told her she's saying what they’ve been thinking and feeling. “You’re making me feel normal,” she said some people message her.

It seems paradoxical that a topic that can be difficult or awkward to discuss with family and friends is also one some feel comfortable sharing with potentially millions of strangers online. But it can be much easier to forge digital connections than in-person ones, according to Tasha R. Dunn, an associate professor at the University of Toledo. Dunn researches the relationship between lived experiences and media, including how we present our lives on social media.

“There are few divorce support groups in a given community, but you have something at the tip of your fingers on your phone or computer where you can find people who’ve literally shared your same experience,” Dunn said.

“People maybe feel a little bit safer to put that content out there rather than to have a physical town hall and say, ’Everybody come, I’m going to share my experience.'”

The candor that makes divorce-related content so popular could also be detrimental for those posting if they’re in the midst of legal proceedings.

Jackie Combs, a matrimonial and family law attorney in Los Angeles, said she does not recommend that people share anything related to their divorce, especially personal grievances or intimate details, publicly online.

“Every single reel that you put out there, every piece of content that’s related to it, you have to presume that somebody is watching and is going to use it as evidence, if needed,” she said.

On social media, Combs herself often shares content about divorce, speaking about the importance of financial independence and prenuptial agreements. She said she sees social media as a key part of the “destigmatization” of divorce to show people it's “not the end, it’s just a pivot.”

Creators like Wagner and Daly also can be the subject of intense trolling and negativity.

Daly said she's received comments and messages from people saying she's “ruining people’s lives” or that she doesn't have morals. She said she tries not to let those comments or interactions get to her because those people don't know what happened in the privacy of her marriage or who she truly is.

The negativity is “just proving that there is still a stigma and a taboo around divorce,” Daly said. So it keeps her motivated to “share about how divorce just doesn’t have to be the end of your life and how it can actually be an amazing beginning.”