Career Heartbreak: Lena Dunham Has Named It, Have You Felt the Same?

There's a lot of heartbreak in Lena Dunham's new memoir, Famesick: the ending of romantic relationships, the loss of fertility, the rawness of criticism from the public. But for many readers one facet hit the hardest: the breakdown of Lena's working relationship with Jenni Konner, her fellow showrunner and producer on Girls. 

It makes sense that this has struck a chord. Few of us have experienced the struggles of sudden fame, but the pain of a work relationship going from wonderful to woeful is oh so familiar. 

Yet despite being experienced by so many of us, the devastation of a career breakup is rarely discussed. There's a sense that getting upset about a mentor who withdraws support without explanation or a colleague who goes from friend to enemy, is silly or unprofessional. After all, we're told, it's not personal, just business. When work and money are involved, our emotions are supposed to be neatly packed away in a laptop-friendly bag. 

But the truth is that when a professional relationship goes wrong, the impact can reach far further than the day-to-day of your job. "I was mentally and emotionally destroyed," says Hannah*, a 39-year-old Londoner who was working in tech at the time. "Everything was great in the beginning. I was headhunted for the role, spoken about really positively and I generally felt really welcomed. The founder took a real active interest in me and my life." 

Things took a turn when Hannah tried to raise an issue concerning the wider culture. "The founder went from literally sending me flowers, telling me what an amazing job I was doing, to changing my line manager three times, pushing me out of meetings, and questioning my ability to do my job, my integrity, and my skills," she explains. Eventually she was let go by the company, but long after her departure, Hannah's confidence and trust in others remained rocked. 

It's the hope that hurts. When you join a new workplace and immediately dislike your manager or colleague, that's tricky, sure. But when you start out thinking they're brilliant and then these colleagues turn on you, it can feel crushing. Psychologist Dr Tina Mistry explains: "Psychologists talk about this idea of the 'psychological contract', the unwritten set of expectations between two people at work. It's never on paper, but we all carry one. And the moment we sense it's been breached, something shifts. When that contract is broken, it starts to tell us we're not as safe here as we thought we were." 

Karyn*, 34, had a close relationship with her manager for years; she was invited to her wedding, they commiserated together over business updates, and each sought advice from the other. Then Karyn got a promotion, and her manager turned on her. "It was like I couldn't get anything right," she shares. "She used to tell me how brilliant I was and how much she appreciated me. Then, overnight, it was like she saw me as a threat. I had a complete breakdown. I kept picking apart what I had done to try to find what had caused the change. I doubted everything. It played into so much outside of work, too. I had this fear that other people would decide they hated me too." Karyn ended up leaving a job she loved. 

"For a long time, I was very wary of other people, especially anyone who I'd see as a mentor," she says. "I don't ever want to go through that again." 

But why did that work relationship have such a dramatic effect? Psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber notes: "Work relationships tend to reactivate older dynamics. The way a manager praises or withholds, or a colleague subtly competes, can echo something familiar from family life. A parent who was hard to please, a sibling who got more attention. We don't always realise it, but a lot of the intensity we feel in work conflicts is borrowed from somewhere earlier. And there's the practical layer too: you can't easily walk away. You see this person, you depend on them, and the difficulty has nowhere to go." 

The dynamic of mentor and mentee, like that of Dunham and Konner, can be especially tough. "It's one of the most emotionally loaded relationships in working life," Charlotte says. "When someone takes you under their wing, they're not just teachingyou. They're seeing potential in you, and that being-seen is intoxicating. It often touches something quite tender, particularly for people who didn't get enough of that kind of attention growing up. When it goes wrong, the loss is layered. You're not only losing a guide, you're losing the version of yourself that existed in their eyes. The promising one, the chosen one. That's a real kind of bereavement." 

Recovering from this loss will take time. The first step is acknowledging that it hurts, and that you're not weird or silly for being upset. "Name what you're feeling without judging it," advises Beth Stallwood, a career coach and author of WorkJoy. "And know that the feeling won't last forever, even if it's painful now." 

It's worth taking time to reflect on what worked in the relationship, what didn't, and what you might do differently. Then, gradually, Beth recommends reconnecting with people you have deep, trusting relationships with before setting one small goal that moves you forward. "Moving forward feels way better than standing still," she says. 

For Karyn, that process was slow but real. "It took time, but it's sunk in that I was never the problem," she says. "I learned a lot from the experience, mainly about trusting my own judgment rather than relying on another person to tell me who I was. Now I can have work relationships that are so much healthier because all my self-worth isn't on the other person's shoulders. I'm actually glad I went through this and got to the other side." 

*Names have been changed.