I am so angry with and feel so hurt by my partner.

[SoAngryAboutThis]

I'm just so angry about this that I can't work out how to address it.

I have had the worst 18 months of my professional life and it culminated with me leaving my much loved employment two days ago. I'm not going to go into detail about that because I'm not looking for opinions or advice on that.

And it would be instantly recognisable to other colleagues and stakeholders if i did. Suffice to say that I'm devastated about what and in the way things have been done. And I'm not alone in that. It is not something I deserved or have caused in any way.

This isn't just 'a job'. It is something I've done for 20+ years, it's not just what I do, it's a core part of who I am. Even if I never stepped foot in that environment again, it's still how I would describe myself or at least would until I choose I no longer want to describe myself in that way.

My partner knows this. He has listened, he has supported not just me but my colleagues too (I'm not the only person who has been targeted), I couldn't have got through the last 18 months without him. Frankly, it's been traumatic.

On Friday (my last day at work), he and I went out with a couple of colleagues (who have become very valued friends). I saw my partner talking to someone we both vaguely know. I mean so vaguely that we recognise him to say hello and briefly pass the time of day with but neither of us could remember his name and I don't imagine he remembers ours either - just a face we recognise in the crowd.

I overheard him mention the name of my previous employer.

When he came back to sit with us, I asked what had been said and he glibly replied, "Oh I just told him you used to be a _ but they let you go,"

Used to be a _? Let me go? I was lied about, disregarded, undervalued, overlooked and sidelined for 18 months because my face no longer fit. I was sent to A&E with a suspected heart attack earlier this year through stress. I've cried and felt a sense of loss akin to when my marriage ended.

And he's minimised it to I used to be be a _. I didn't used to be anything. I still am.

I am so angry that he not only reduced the last 18 months to such a simple sentence but that he reduced one of the most devastating and painful periods of my life to chit chat outside a pub to someone whose name he doesn't even remember. I was so angry, I said this in front of my friends. He did apologise and then said, "It's OK, he wasn't even really listening."

That does NOT make it OK.

I am still so angry. I'm angry that he said it, I'm angry that he minimised it in that way. I'm angry that he shared my personal information with a stranger. Angry that he gave this incredibly painful and personal part of me and my life to someone else who didn't even care that he was hearing it and on my last day when he knew how upset I was. And it's also made me feel that I don't want to share personal things with him. How can I give him anything of myself when he treats it with such little care?

He doesn't treat me with little care and it doesn't reflect what he thinks or feels about me but to be so careless with his words...

I need to speak with him but I need to get it clear in my head what I'm going to say and to process the anger here so that I can communicate it effectively.

I am also aware that some of my anger is related to.the situation but I just feel so betrayed by him. I've been made to feel that I don't matter at work for the last 18 months and this has just compounded it.

Main character syndrome op . Really a he briefly and appropriately exchanged social conversation with a acquaintance . Did you want him to go into fully gory detail and ask doe his advice ,your being ridiculous.

This explains it beautifully

If this was a trusted friend you would have given all the details to, then your DH could have invited this friend to sit down with you all and gone through everything

As it stands, this was a passing acquaintance, with limited knowledge of your personal and professional life and your DH gave the briefest recap to.

I know it's upsetting, but your DH was not unreasonable to not broadcast personal and career affecting details around a bar/restaurant to a near stranger

I have every sympathy with you as I lost a leadership role that I loved and a team/function that I had built due to a change of leadership some months back.

There is a lot to process and it is very difficult - so much of our identity is wrapped up in work.

I would urge you though to get counselling for this so that it does not affect your relationship with your partner.

None of this is his fault, and I think you know deep down that you are overreacting and being emotional here. His language reflects what happened to you and he’s not going to sugarcoat it for a passing acquaintance. Albeit if you had a settlement he likely shouldn’t be speaking about it.

Please don’t let this define you - it’s only work and there are always other jobs. Don’t let it wreck your personal life as well or you will end up with an even bigger problem.

Gosh it sounds like you work at my school. This could apply to lots of circumstances there. Sending hugs OP.

At the end of the day though it is just a job.

Even though the circumstances of your leaving were painful, and tbh we have no idea of the circumstances, nobody is indispensable, and there isn’t a single employer who Bews their staff as anything other than commodities.

Your partner has been supportive from what you’ve said and now you’re determined to turn him into the villain in this, in the same way your employer was apparently to blame for everything that went wrong.

You don’t want to hear that you hold no blame here.

And in so monthss time you’ll be back here wanting sympathy for the fact your partner dared to mention your name in the capacity of what you used to do for a living.

What are you afraid of this man knowing?

You’re being so cloak and dagger about all this that I’m wondering just what it was you did that forced you out.

It’s evident there is more to this. Possibly that you don’t even want your partner finding out.

Your partner made a mistake. He blurted out something to a stranger concerning something private and deeply upsetting and worded it a way that you think demeaned you and gave an inaccurate portrayal of you being let go as opposed to you choosing to walk away from a job that you have been bullied / managed out of. I can see why this is so upsetting to you. I am sorry for the pain you are feeling.

Your partner has been very supportive throughout what sounds like a very traumatic period and I dont think for a moment that they did this deliberately. Your partner is probably now regretting that a momentary lapse during a conversation has just upset you further.

They probably dont know what to say or do to try and start helping you pick the emotional pieces of yourself up and start putting those pieces back together. From your partners perspective they are probably worried sick about you.

All of your rage and pain is being misdirected at your partner. I know what has happened to you feels suffocating and unfair and you need to be able to let that anger and pain out safely.

Would you be in a position to take a holiday now and give yourself some space and some peace and quiet, maybe somewhere you can take some long walks to start clearing your head, even if you just need to shout and scream somewhere isolated.

This is going to take time for these feelings to settle as your job has been such a key part of your identity, its ok to remember that you are not your job and no job is worth all this pain and upset. Its ok to let go of the job now and dont let your poisonous former employer define any part of you.

You’re being a massive drama queen OP.
I understand you’re distressed about your career, but you’re deflecting it onto someone who has stood by you.
I used to be a teacher. I retired early 7 years ago because SMT and my HOD were awful and I couldn’t face it any more.
I was immensely proud of being a teacher and helping in a small way to shape students’ futures.
I still work in another school as an invigilator and love being in school.
But I’m not a teacher any more and it doesn’t matter.
Im a partner, a friend, a mother, a grandmother, a writer, a reader, a person who loves walking on the beach and in nature, a swimmer.
I love September for me now.
You at not be at that stage yet but there are so many things you can do and be.
,

OP, you keep saying that he shouldn’t have mentioned it at all but it would have been at the forefront of his mind. That’s a good thing! It shows he was thinking about you and your situation. You can’t police everything he says to other people. He was not being nasty or trying to hurt you. I’m assuming you’re not normally a controlling perfectionist regarding what he says to other people so I think your anger is misplaced with this.

This is a good way of putting it.

He's a man. Most of them are tits. Well-meaning, nice, caring, all of it, but still tits. Move on.

It’s not like he said I’m bloody sick about hearing about this I’m off to the pub with the lads. He showed up, not for the first time, he was there with the right intentions. Maybe he doesn't fully get it, but Op you’ve no sense of perspective on it and sound wound up to the extreme.

I’m sorry to say it sounds like you have overreacted here, and are directing your anger at the wrong person, as others have pointed out. I don’t think he was in any way trying to minimise what you’ve been through, it sounds heartbreaking. He was probably just trying to shut down the subject of the conversation quickly and move on to safer ground.

I left a career in medicine after whistleblowing an awful department and being forced out. That was nearly ten years ago and I’m still angry about it. So I do know how you feel.

with kindness, I think that yes he may have misspoke but this is the trauma of the last 18 months that is erupting out rather than him having been unkind or unsupportive.

Definitely consider therapy at some point and I’m really sorry this has happened to you

Nice try.

I have explained why I'm not giving details.

And, tbh, i could give specifics and no one would have any clue if it were true or not anyway.

Have you considered the effect your misfortune has had on your partner? It must have been stressful for him too. Maybe he was letting off steam, without purposely diminishing your trauma

Kindly, you don’t get to control what someone else discusses.

He’s been there for you and now you want to turn your anger onto him because he didn’t speak the way you wanted him to.

I feel sorry for him. I have a feeling you’ll be bringing this up at every opportunity.

Give the man a break. He has supported you and some your friends/colleagues for many months. He's not your enemy, he's your biggest support who has said something a bit tactless to a stranger who wasn't even listening properly.
You are misdirecting your anger.

And there you go again! Only responding to posts that can feed your anger and keep the fires burning.

Sounds as though you're looking for someone to hate on and you've decided that he will do. Careful! You might end up making a bad situation even worse..........
Put another way: Don't cut off your nose to spite your face!

You did. Because it would be outing.

So presumably this man with knowledge of the place you work might know why you were fired or whatever happened. Given your partner said you were let go we can assume you were fired.

If it was genuinely unwarranted you’re presumably pursuing a case for unfair dismissal through the courts anyway so what does it matter that he knows you worked there, given it will all be public enough in time.

I know. And I know people think I'm going on about this specific part but its only because people keep saying similar.

There was nothing to shut down. This man hadn't asked anything about me.

I was not the subject of the conversation nor part of the conversarion.

That makes complete sense, and I don't think you're overreacting to a small thing here.
There's a difference between what he said and what it represents, and I think that's what's making this so hard to untangle. On the surface it's one throwaway sentence to a near-stranger. But underneath it, it landed on the rawest possible nerve: after 18 months of being made to feel like you didn't matter, your last day, the day you're finally out of it, you needed the people who love you to treat it with weight. Instead, the person closest to you handed it over as small talk to someone whose name he'd forgotten. That's not really about the sentence. It's about what the sentence told you: that something you're still bleeding from can be casually compressed into six words for a stranger who wasn't even listening.

And "used to be" versus "am" — that distinction you drew is important and not petty semantics. You didn't stop being who you are because they pushed you out. He collapsed 20+ years and 18 months of trauma into past tense, in the past tense of someone summarising an ex-job, not describing a wound that's still open. That would sting from anyone. From him, after everything he's watched you go through, it stings more.
His response afterwards — "he wasn't even really listening" — probably felt like it made things worse rather than better, because it wasn't really an answer to what upset you. You weren't upset because a stranger heard something damaging. You were upset because your partner treated something enormous as small. Whether the stranger absorbed it or not doesn't touch that.
I'd also gently note: - you're allowed to be angry about this on its own terms, separate from the job situation, without needing to sort out which percentage belongs to which cause. They're tangled because they're both about being diminished. That's not you being unreasonable or displacing — that's just what it is when the same wound gets hit twice in one week.

For the conversation, it might help to lead with the distinction you made here rather than the incident itself: not "you said the wrong words to a stranger" but "you treated something that's still an open wound as if it were finished and small, on the one day I most needed it held carefully." That's the actual complaint. The pub comment is just the moment it became visible.

Another way of thinking about it - he didn't 'have' to say anything but maybe he did because he's pretty stressed by it too / it was the thing prominent in his head and he's feeling around for a way to talk about it. Was he still 'shocked' that it's finally over and you're not currently an x and you don't work at y any longer?

I think for the future you can:

• Not go out / book a private room / go somewhere some distance from home when you're reeling from difficult news. Or have a pre going out chat about how to handle things, but really in the context of finally leaving a difficult workplace you didn't need to be in a place where you'd come across acquaintances.

• Make sure he has people he's allowed to talk to about what's happened to you ie. people you don't generally interact with

• Agree how you want him to describe you in casual conversation so he knows what to do next time if someone asks.

• Leaving a complicated workplace is IME a form of grief. What can you do to soothe yourself? How can he help? Are you able to have a break from work or are you having to start job hunting right away? For me everything got a bit better when I started sleeping a bit more.

What's stopping you from leaving him? He's obviously done something unforgivable in your eyes.