TLDR: Together five years, married for three, no kids -- separated 6 weeks ago and wife communicated two weeks ago she doesnt want to reconcile and wants divorce. I disocvered yesterday that she's already done the inevitable "instagram clean up" and completley erased me from her profile. It hurts and I'm just surprised at how quickly she appears to be moving on. I know focusing on myself is what's best for me at this point, but I just needed to vent a bit and share how much this hurt me in the moment when I discovered it last night.

Context about our divorce can be found in my separate post (that unfortunately got no engagement) here. Together for five years, married for three, own a house, have a dog and honestly thank god no kids yet.

It's been about six weeks since I came clean with my STBEW that I'd relapsed into addiction and was hiding it for months. I've made some terrible decisions that I'm honestly disgusted with, but I'm doing my best to take accountability and work through my issues.

Current situation: STBEW doesn't want to co-exist in our marital home and moved out two weeks ago and is subletting an apartment from a friend. We're actually fairly amicable at this point and are dividing assets on our own as it's really just one shared brokerage account, buying out vehicles from one another, and putting the house up for sale.

Anyhow — the point of this post is I discovered yesterday that she's already done the inevitable social media "clean up" and has almost completely deleted (she left 1 post where the main picture is us with some close friends) me from her Instagram. Not only did she delete the easy obvious ones where it was a single picture with both of us, but she literally took the time to go through posts with multiple images and selectively removed the ones with us.

It was around 11pm last night I noticed this and my initial reaction was to break down in tears and had a good cry for a few minutes. I know we're divorcing and moving on with our lives, but it's literally only been six weeks since our separation, so it fucking hurts to see her "deleting me" so quickly. We were together for five years, and just poof, like that, it's as if I never existed. I know this is just social media and isn't a direct reflection of her emotional state (meaning I'm not assuming she's already completely over me and that this isn't hard for her at all - also possible that could be the case though) and that we all cope in our own ways - but like I said - fuck, it just stings really fucking bad right now.

I can't think of any other reason to expedite the clean-up other than her preparing to already start dating. Mind you I've got a pretty decent EQ and am well-aware she absolutely has the right to do whatever she wants - whether it's already sleeping with other people, dating, etc. It just hurts to see what are her true colors really are.

It's a LOT to go into, but she has been beyond entitled in so many ways as we've navigated things the last six weeks. From a few posts I've read it seems like this is fairly common, but I'm already being subjected to her making me out to be the "bad guy" or "villain" here. I know in her heart she knows that's not true -- I'm a sensiive guy with a big heart and gave a LOT to our marriage (not without some major missteps though which I'm fully owning), so it's both painful and makes me angry to see her painting this narrative of me that couldn't be further from the truth. I can imagine it's normal for the partner who's initiating the divorce to feel a little guilty no matter how right they may be in making the decision, and my take is that she's assuaging her own negative feelings or guilt by creating this false-narrative that I'm the one to blame here.

And on top of that, the entitlement I've seen from her is simply beyond me. One example, she's attempting to monetize the emotional pain I caused her by making the case that even though she's chosen to move out and get her own place, that I need to carry her portion of the mortgage/PITI as if I owe it to her. Unfortuantely the law in CA isn't in my favor and whomever resides in the marital home is responsible for it, but putting the law aside, it's beyond me that she chose to walk away from a house that we co-own together (even went 50/50 on the down payment) and expects me to just pay her way. God forbid she takes an ounce of accountability for choosing divorce instead of attempting to reconcile and accepts the implications/consequences that come along with that.

One last example that shows the entitlement pretty well -- she's been very fortunate to be on our family cell phone plan (save the judgement of me being 37 and still on a family plan for another day - my Dad refuses to take us off and considers it a family perk of sorts LOL) since she moved to the states and we got married. I let her know last week that I wouldn't rush my Dad to kick her off the plan (again, I'm really doing my best to be reasonable here and not be a total asshole) but reminded her it would happen eventually. Separately, I let her know the other day that my family kindly requested she leave the family WhatsApp chat that we have. She begrudgingly did so while making a nasty comment about how soon that was and said it was messed up that was a priority for them. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, she's moving forward at the speed of a bullet train and actively deleted me from Instagram — need I call out the hypocrisy and ridiculousness in how contradictory that is? All of her actions point to her wanting to eat her cake and have it to - to the Nth degree.

It's really beyond me and I genuinely wonder if she's even aware of how ridiculous she's acting OR if she's really so delusional and actually feels justified in all of her recent actions - specifically the ones pertaining to finances. God forbid she has to come out of pocket for anything here.

This post was much longer than I'd planned but I guess I needed to vent and get all of that out. I'm open to any feedback here - whether it's supporting my train of thought here or constructive criticism if I'm having some kind of blind spot. I would ask that folks please go easy on me here though. I'm doing my best to pick up the pieces and accept that I made some terrible decisions and really hurt my STBEW, but as we all know, there's two sides to every story. And trust me, there's been plenty of missteps and plain stupid decisions on her part throughout the marriage.

Thanks for letting me vent, guys. I've been casually reading posts and more so lurking the last few weeks here, but am going to try and be a more active participant moving forward. I could really use the support (I am seeing a therapist but this is a great supplement to that) right now and I can see there's a ton of wonderful men here just trying to support one another as we all navigate our respective situations.

Hope you all found some sense of peace and joy during the holiday today. I know things will get better for all of us eventually, but right now it's really a day at a time for me.