I told this story the other day and I don’t know. I guess it felt like a useful reminder.

I started my first proper job in my career in January of 2020. I was so excited. It felt like people were taking me seriously, that it was my first step in this glittering career ahead of me. And one that I’d worked hard for. I’d studied for a qualification to get into this industry, and then worked a hard, thankless job for another year as the stepping stone that I hoped it would be into this job. A dream job I’d told people.

And those first few months in that job? Honestly felt amazing. It was super local to me, so the commute in and out of the office wasn’t bad, it was on the edge of the High Street and I joined the book group that ran out of the library. I had this lunchtime routine going for a long walk, I was close with my colleagues. My manager was a bit weird, but nothing was perfect. And I wanted to do a good job – and I did. Those first couple of months saw me doing so much and getting lots of great experience that I’d use later on.

But March 2020 happened and when everyone was sent home for that first lockdown, everything changed. My manager went from talking about promoting me and getting in a lower level admin to help assist me to calling me 20-30 times a day. She would ask me to cc her in all my emails as though she was checking in on me. She’d have me write handover notes most days so that she understood what I was doing every day, the implication being that I wasn’t working because I wasn’t sitting next to her in the office under her watchful eye.

And she started getting very critical of my work. I wasn’t doing anything differently but she’d pull me up on things with an edge in her voice. She’d say that she expected things sooner from me even when she knew how complex things were or that I’d been waiting on information from colleagues in the USA. At first I just put it down to stress or maybe worry about the state of the world, the future of our jobs, the unknown.

But what started off small kept spiralling and eventually I’d have multiple video calls a day where she’d heap criticism on me. I couldn’t do anything right even though I didn’t think I was making mistakes. I’d double-check and triple-check information I’d give to her but she kept changing the goalposts. She’d tell me she wanted something formatted in a certain way but when I sent it to her she’d say I’d used the wrong font when I hadn’t. She’s say oh, it’d be easier if she just did it herself.

I felt like my confidence plunged every single day. The incessant criticism got under my skin, into my brain. By that summer, I was crying every morning before I logged in. After work, I’d crawl into bed and not want to move. Feeling no energy to move. I wanted to cocoon myself away from her and her bullying.

When I spoke to my husband, he’d brush it off. He’d say every relationship with a manager has its rough times. But I was crying on my lunch break too. And in the evenings. So I said to him, I don’t know if I could do this anymore. I don’t think I can get through these days with being treated this way. I told him that I wanted to quit and what he said to me will stay with me forever.

He said that we might struggle a bit financially if I quit. We’d taken out a loan the year before and had our kitchen redone. The loan repayments were large but I knew that with his salary the only difference without mine would be a few less luxuries. And still, that was his response. To all encompassing depression, to the incessant tearing down of my confidence, to being flayed slowly day after day, the erosion of my mental health.

So I didn’t quit that day in August. But by November I was fired anyway. And the following January I sat down with my husband and I said this marriage isn’t working for me anymore. It took awhile for me to verbalise my reasons but when I think about my separation, when I think about my reasons for wanting a divorce I usually think back to this experience.

Having him put a minor financial hardship over my well-being broke something inside of me that I’ve worked really hard to fix. It took me months after that conversation to sit down and talk about what I was feeling but it’s always stayed with me. Like the biggest emotional betrayal I’ve ever had to deal with.