Just as the weekend began, Dean McDermott announced that he and Tori Spelling were finally over.
It wasn’t long at all before he abruptly deleted the post.
Tori went on to pretty aggressively ignore Father’s Day on Sunday. The animosity was real.
But the divorce apparently isn’t. For now, the only thing that they’re divorcing is their health hazard of a former home.
Early on Saturday, June 17, Dean McDermott took to social media to share an astonishing message.
“It’s with great sadness and a very very heavy heart,” he began.
Dean wrote: “that after 18 years together and 5 amazing children, that @torispelling and I have decided to go our separate ways and start a new journey of our own.”
“We will continue to work together as loving parents,” Dean vowed at the time.
“And,” he assured, to “guide and love our children through this difficult time.”
Dean then made a request: “We ask that you all respect our privacy as we take this time to surround our family with love and work our way through this.”
Curiously, Dean McDermott ended up deleting the post.
He didn’t wait days. He didn’t replace it with something else. And he didn’t offer any explanations.
Instead, Dean just deleted it later Saturday morning … and is seemingly pretending like he didn’t post it at all. Even though, obviously, thousands of people saw it, and millions more have since heard about it.
An inside source opened up to Us Weekly to offer an explanation that neither Dean nor Tori were willing to give.
“Tori and Dean are not getting a divorce,” the insider immediately clarified.
That does make sense. At least, it would explain the silent retraction that Dean seemingly performed on Saturday.
“Tori and Dean have been better than ever” lately, the source detailed.
It’s true that we have seen the family make multiple public appearances lately, from Stella’s birthday to more formal promotional gigs.
The source acknowledged: “They’ve had their ups and downs like any couple, but [they] have continued working on their marriage through couple’s counseling.”
Then, the insider affirmed that “They love each other and are not going to split.”
So, what happened? Because Tori and Dean sure aren’t telling.
“Friends suspect that Dean posted that because he and Tori may have gotten into a big blowout fight last night,” the source explained.
“He obviously regretted it,” the insider reasoned. Well, yeah.
“So,” the source continued, “he deleted the post.”
It sounds like even their own inner circle has to speculate about what fueled what must have been a very messy time for their household.
On Sunday, Tori didn’t exactly respond … but she also didn’t give Dean a shoutout for Father’s Day, either.
Things are awkward. Even her other recent posts (none in the past few days) are littered with comments about Dean’s announcement.
We can only imagine how messy and toxic their Friday night must have been. But if Dean hadn’t pulled the trigger on a seemingly fake divorce announcement, we wouldn’t know about it at all. Sometimes, the messiest people are the worst at hiding it.
There is one little complication in all of this. One that might reduce how much people laugh at Tori and Dean.
Just a couple of months ago, they had to flee their former home. The mold infestation was a serious hazard, and had resulted in multiple hospitalizations for “mystery” ailments for the entire family.
Tori says that she and her kids need brain scans to determine the long-term damage that the mold did. It is more than possible that this has in some way played a role in Tori and Dean’s issues. That said … they had their troubles long before the mold.