This week, Dean McDermott posted that he and Tori Spelling were splitting. Then he deleted the post.

For the past 18 years, Tori Spelling and her husband Dean McDermott have been together. But it appears their relationship is either coming to an end or on rocky grounds. 

Over the weekend, McDermott shared a post on Instagram, saying he and his wife Spelling were breaking up. 

"It's with great sadness and a very very heavy heart that after 18 years together and five amazing children, that Tori Spelling and I have decided to go our separate ways and start a new journey of our own," he began the statement.

"We will continue to work together as loving parents and guide and love our children through this difficult time. 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."

But only a few short hours after the post was made, it mysteriously was archived. 

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The post was made in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Representatives for both Spelling and McDermott have so far not responded to PEOPLE's request for comment, or further confirmed the news.

The Beverly Hills, 90210 actress is yet to publicly comment on the matter.

Over the past 18 years, the couple has weathered plenty of storms together. 

In 2014, McDermott publicly admitted to cheating on Spelling. He said he had engaged in a long affair with another woman, saying in their reality series True Tori that he felt "shame" over the infidelity. 

During a recent podcast, McDermott said his reasons for cheating were to do with him and his state of mind, rather than anything to do with Spelling.

"It was about inadequacies with myself. I felt so bad about myself, I felt like a piece of s**t, I needed to do that to feel some kind of power," he explained. "It was horrible and I'm an a**hole piece of s**t for doing it. That was a rough Christmas, but we came out through the other end."

Reflecting on the situation, Spelling said that while she's proud they didn't hide their marital issues from the cameras, it has been tough for her children to read of their parent's relationship woes online. 

"My kids have not seen clips, but they've seen something out there online and my daughter saw something," Spelling said on the Women on Top podcast in 2020. "It really upset her."

Spelling and McDermott have five children together — Liam, 16, Stella, 15, Hattie, 11, Finn, 10, and six-year-old Beau.

The pair regularly share parenting content online, Spelling saying she is more the "feelings mum" whereas McDermott is the "procedural" parent.

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Spelling and McDermott met on the set of filming a movie in 2005. At the time, both were married to other people — McDermott to Mary Jo Eustace, and Spelling to Charlie Shanian. McDermott and Eustace share a son together, Jack, who is now 24.

By 2006 — and after filing for divorce from their first spouses — Spelling and McDermott were married. They themselves had engaged in an extramarital affair.

Spelling said the fear around McDermott's propensity to cheat continued to be a sore point after the 2014 infidelity was brought to her attention. 

"My biggest fear in our relationship was I was like, he's going to cheat on me, he's going to cheat on me, he's going to cheat on me," she said. 

"So when it happened, I was like, 'See, I always thought from day one he was going to cheat on me,' and it wasn't about him, that was about me. I was like, 'Okay, I know I'm not good enough,' that's how I felt about myself and one day he's going to realise that and he's gonna find someone else."

In 2021, there were further rumours that the pair's marriage was rocky, after Spelling posted a holiday season card on Instagram in December — and McDermott was notably absent from it. 

She later explained that it was because McDermott was away filming a movie at the time. But the rumours persisted.

For McDermott, he has said that since the affair, "everything crashed" but it allowed them to "start over and completely rebuild".

As Spelling said to PEOPLE previously: "It was one of the worst times in our lives, but it was also one of the best times. I wouldn't change anything because if we hadn't started talking and opened up those lines of communication, maybe we wouldn't be here today."

Feature Image: Getty.

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