My DH and I work in adjacent fields. He is far more senior than I am - field-leading professor, HoD, whereas I am early career on short-term, pt contracts and running a business on the side to make ends meet.
The problem I have is that we work in closely related departments and he is standing in my way. The official excuse is because he's scared of being accused of nepotism. When casual teaching opportunities come up, I can't have them because of "his position". They go to PhD students instead, even when I am more qualified and more experienced in the particular area. He recently gave a bunch of teaching to someone from the ex-poly down the road, who doesn't even have a PhD and isn't even en route to getting one, in preference to giving it to me. When opportunities to chair sessions, or to do important admin tasks, or anything else comes up, I'm excluded for the same reasons.
I recently spent ages working on a bid with him. The bid was my original idea. It's in my research area, which is firmly connected to my PhD and postdoc research. I spent hours not only editing it and doing costings but substantively contributing to the theoretical framework, drawing heavily on my own research and knowledge of the literature. I spent days getting all the sodding green ticks in line on the endlessly complicated application, ensuring the costings and supplementary documents were all consistent etc. I did all this on the understanding was that I'd be written in as an RA with DH as PI.
DH took what I'd done and drew in a bunch of new people with more permanent jobs, many of whom I don't know. They made a few minor changes, and put in for the grant, without my name on it. DH won it - it's for a substantial amount of money. Then he told me the RA posts would be advertised and I couldn't even apply because he was PI and it would look like he had given me a job.
So I'm now watching my own idea and my own work slide out of view. I feel like he's literally stolen my idea, and to some extent also my research identity. Before I met him, he was interested in a fairly weak, minor field that was tangentially related to mine, which is larger, more complex and more difficult. Since we've been together, he's increasingly colonising my territory and making it his 'brand'.
I feel completely.... betrayed.
I've also contributed in a substantive way to his papers, without credit. He's promised to write with me in return, but the work never, ever materialises. I've come to realise that essentially what he wants is for me to produce my best work and for him to be able to put his name on the top.
It's not just him either. I am surrounded by academics who want me to work on their papers (I'm known as a good writer/editor) without credit, and without pay. I've foolishly been doing this for some time, in the hope that one of them might throw me a bone of an opportunity, but the reciprocity never materialises. Over the last 8 years, like an absolute fucking idiot, I have literally written huge sections of well-cited papers in the field, without credit.
I'm finding this all incredibly decimating to my self-confidence and my self-worth. To be honest, they weren't very high in the first place, which I guess is the reason I've allowed this to go on for so long as it has. I now spend a lot of time crying and feeling utterly worthless, undervalued and exploited. I know that my work is good enough to be published and win major grants, because it has been taken without credit by other people and it has done so, yet I feel so hollowed out by all this that I don't feel like I have the confidence to go forward independently.
I'm 40 soon and I'm feeling very unhappy about where I am and what I'm doing. I know I need to buck my ideas up, pluckily pick myself up and get working on my own behalf, but I am honestly struggling to get through a day at the moment. I feel like I'm in some sort of depressed torpor and need a shot of adrenaline to the heart or something to get out of it. The worst thing is, at some level I have done this to myself. I'm a total fool.