Sorry! I went out of town for a week, just saw your reply.

Working with him is a very difficult position to be in and I wish I had better answers. My advice would be to manage it like you would manage an illness: figure out when and in what context you’re going to have to interact with him and prepare yourself. Are you going to be giving him performance reviews? Observing his class? Figure out when and where you’ll have to be around him and steel yourself as best you can. My context behind this advice: my ex is still friends with my close friends. Whenever I had to see him at parties, I had to prepare myself. I imagined seeing him and how I would react, figuring out ways to be neutral, limiting our conversation to the extremely superficial. It did not always go according to plan by any means, and it’s totally unfair that your emotional life is bound up in your job in this way, but you can manage it, either by winging it, prepping for it, or finding another job. You got this.

I wouldn’t worry about being unable to share the information. If you can’t, you can’t. I find most people have a breaking point. If it has to come out, it will, in one way or the other. The only reason I suggested telling him yourself is because it feels so much better when you have control over how he finds out. You may find he already knows and uncomfortable events are very rarely as bad as the anticipation of them.

And one more unsolicited thing that you might already be doing: definitely focus on other areas of your life. I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the midst of an emotional hurricane, the good things in my life seems to diminish and I spend less time there and more time wallowing. I don’t know if you’re this type of person, and I really don’t want you to think that this is something I “picked up on” from your writing. I didn’t. It just happens to me and I wanted to mention it, just in case. Spend as much time as you can on things that are not even remotely about him or your job. If you need to and if you can. It helps.

Best wishes, Missyrap. I don’t know much, but I know stuff comes to an end and new stuff starts. Look to the horizon, and when the storm passes, make you sure you go for a nice dip in the water.