28-year-old ‘soft-launched’ divorce on social media and says it’s the way to go

A woman “soft launched” her divorce by slowly deleting her ex from her social media accounts – and says it “helped her cope with the split”. Sierra Gonsalves, 28, started leaving hints on her social media that her marriage had ended in January 2023.

Her two-year marriage broke down in November 2022 and Sierra slowly started deleting pictures of her husband from her Instagram and Facebook account. Soft-launching is a term that was used by business to slowly roll out products and it’s been adopted by couples to tease people and let them know your relationship status.

She started by not posting any pictures of him in her newest posts, not uploading any family Christmas or New Year posts and deleting her wedding photo off her page. Sierra also began leaving other breadcrumbs – such as posting memes about divorces, commenting on TikTok videos about break-ups and slowly removing more photos of the pair.

The process helped Sierra come to terms with the divorce on her own timeline and meant she didn’t need to deal with an influx of questions from friends. Sierra then ‘hard launched’ her split in May 2023 with a video of the hints she had dropped over the last few months and said it was the “best way to announce a divorce”.

Sierra, a nanny, said: “I soft launched my divorce. I wondered who was watching from high school. I gave them breadcrumbs.

“I started archiving old pictures of him and posting pictures of just me or with my friends. I’m someone who doesn’t like change.

“Ripping the band aid off wouldn’t work for me. The soft launch was for me. You invest so much time into someone, it’s hard to delete the memories.

“I came to terms with it on my own timeline. Then I hard launched. It was the best way to announce a divorce.”

Sierra split from her husband in November 2022 and started archiving and deleting photos as she “didn’t want to see his face” on her feed. Sierra realised she was soft launching her break-up and carried on slowly leaving hints.

She said: “I archived the photo from when we eloped. Then I started posting just pictures of me or me and friends. I found divorce memes about other people and started sharing them.

“I changed my profile picture but made sure it didn’t get shared on the feed as an update. On TikTok I would comment on divorce videos and talk about how it would relate to me.”

Over the first few months of the year, Sierra slowly deleted all signs of her husband from her social media profiles – including changing her relationship status to single on Facebook. Sierra filed for divorce in March 2023 and in May that year she hard-launched the divorce – sharing a video announcing how she had been dropping hints over the last few months.

She said: “Everyone commented saying ‘congrats’. People were saying they would have eaten this up if it was me, they knew in high school.

“Others said ‘OMG, I didn’t realise I was soft launching my divorce too’. Some of my friends had noticed he had been missing from some pictures.”

Sierra is now moving on from her break-up. She said: “I’m honestly really good. Every single friend has been there for me.

“I’m in a good place. I feel happy. I can feel my old self coming back to life. Getting divorced at 28 – I’m still young.

“This is not the end of my life.”