OK, right, where am I with this? I'm not sure. Still getting my head around it.
I did terribly at having it out last night. I started out well. I was fiery and icy and I had my ducks in line. I pointed out how much work I'd done on the bid, how the explicit understanding had been that I would get a job on it, and how the entire research agenda outlined therein was mine, not DH's. DH demurred - said he was interested in the same things before he met me. I actually showed him his work from back then, and he was a bit shocked. (This is instance no 1 of post-hoc rationalisation, which will be a theme of this post). He then said that he never really intended to give me the work, but that he didn't think it would be an issue because he didn't think he'd get the grant. That, I think, speaks volumes about how he sees my labour. The reason he cited was that it would be "embarrassing" to speak in front of a project team about a role for his wife, yet clearly it isn't embarrassing for him for that wife to provide the entire framework for the grant in the first place. 
Unfortunately, I then fell apart. I started talking about how this whole thing made me feel - worthless, valueless, undermined. And I started crying and couldn't stop, and it turned into a huge fit of snot-laden uncontrollable sobbing. Elegant it wasn't. DH, by this time, was totally stricken, repentent, contrite, and ended up in tears too (very unusual for him, but annoying in that he expected me to comfort him).
He went and got the proposal, and here is where things get interesting and complicated (bear with me, I can't think of a way of abridging this). They've changed the emphasis of my bid quite significantly, to fit the skills of the new team. Mine had 3 RA posts, and 3 phases. Two RAs would be doing qualitative interviewing in phases 2-3, the third was to provide the central theoretical/historical framework of the project in phases 1-2 (this was supposed to be my job). This made sense to me because the skills sets are different: archival/ historical/ hard philosophical-theoretical research is a very different expertise from qualitative interviewing work, and because of my research to date I am uniquely qualified to do that work. The new team have changed the bid to blur these roles into 2 posts, so that both RAs are doing a mixture of both kinds of work. This makes no sense practically because I don't know many early career people who will have the skills in both areas; the archival work is properly archival and someone who hasn't used archives before will be lost. But effectively what it means for me is that I am now far less qualified for these posts than I was for the one in my own bid, because I don't have strong interviewing skills. I'm probably could do the work, but hypotheticals don't tend to work so well on job applications!
However, there is an opportunity in this. The work I was going to do has been deprioritised and squashed into a ridiculously tight time frame. Effectively, this means that this project basically won't really scratch the surface of what I wanted to do, which also means it won't really challenge or change anything. So what I am going to do is to dig out my part of the bid, and rewrite it, and reapply to different funding agencies as a different kind of bid that is much more theoretically focused. And DH is bloody well going to help me with this since it's his fault I'm having to do this additional work, and I am going to be a Co-I or it is a dealbreaker.
Practically, this is a better way forward as it give me the work I am best qualified to do and a project that I think will be more significant than DH's. It does mean exchanging the proverbial bird in the hand for the one buried in the bush, though. But equally, I'm not sure it would be that good for my own mental health to watch my own bid effectively get wrecked by a team who want to take it in a new direction that is less interesting and that doesn't (to my mind) work.
Where am I emotionally? I'm not sure. All over. First, let me say that I realise that I am to blame for this situation. For years I've allowed people to walk all over me and to take labour that I've done without credit. It has become a kind of norm, or expectation, that I will allow myself to be exploited like this and I have a whole host of "friends" who do it. I've gone along with it because I was stupid, because I thought it was "nice", and because I foolishly believed people would see I had skills and would want to write with me properly, in an above-board fashion. In actual fact, though - and here comes the second instance of post-hoc rationalisation - what people do is to forget that I've contributed substantively to their paper, and to take all the credit themselves, putting me firmly back in the shadows, but then asking me to do the same thing with their next paper, and the next, and the next. I personally don't know quite how they live with themselves but I guess it's just really, really easy for them to lie to themselves when their egos and their careers would take a hit if they admitted the truth.
Anyway, here comes a bit of a drip-feed. I should have included this in my first post, but I didn't because it's hard for me to talk about. In the last year, I've been working with a counsellor on a range of issues to do with being violently abused and controlled as a child, and my submissiveness has come up over and over again as a problem. I have the fear when it comes to writing and publishing in my own name, because being my own person was extremely high-risk when I was young, so I repeatedly choose courses where I seek to appease other people in the hope that this will be rewarded. the trouble is, it doesn't bloody work, though, particularly in as exploitative a place as academia. So I need to stop behaving this way, and start stepping out of those safe but miserable shadows and into the light (which, by the way, is a terrifying prospect). But I have only just begun this process, and DH is behind the curve of where I am emotionally, so is still thinking I will just sit back and do everything I used to do. As with everyone else. I've set a boundary here that is new, and it's come as a shock to him.
Of course, that shows him in a pretty bad light I'm not absolving him of blame. If I've allowed myself to be exploited, he's been all to happy to jump in and do some exploiting. Though, like most of the people who do this, he has rationalised the exploitation out of existence after the event because that was much more psychologically comfortable. There is also a genuine element here where he is protecting his own reputation and career from accusations of nepotism, but he has allowed that to become an actual form of discrimination against me personally. I do feel really depressed, undervalued, and undermined by him personally and I don't know how easy it will be to put that right.
I feel like I have a clear practical direction here, but not a clear emotional one. I do love my DH - he is supportive in many, many ways, but I am not just able to overlook this and move on. I do feel like I would do better if I were to move away, at least for part of the week, to a different institution and a different circle of people and I'm going to consider quite seriously whether I need to work towards this in the longer term as a goal. I don't feel like I am prepared or ready to do it yet, because I'm still working with my counsellor to put the most basic boundaries in place, and the thought of being 'out there' on my own is still quite terrifying. I like the idea of a female mentor, however - perhaps this would be a way forward.
At present, the urgent thing is to get through this bout of depression and associated crisis of confidence and come out the other side fighting. I feel like I'm struggling to put one foot in front of the other at present. I'm repeatedly allowing people to come in and walk all over me, and it has to stop.