That review concluded I had violated clear company policy, resulting in my termination roughly six weeks after that devastating flight, a professional consequence I hadn’t fully anticipated amid everything else already unraveling in my personal life.
Selene faced her own professional consequences, though somewhat less severe given her junior position, receiving a formal written warning and mandatory reassignment to a different department under new supervision.
I learned about her particular consequences only secondhand, through the same HR process that had ultimately terminated my own employment, understanding the company’s clear distinction between our relative levels of institutional responsibility for the relationship’s violation of company policy. I felt, hearing about her comparatively lighter consequence, a complicated mixture of resentment and grudging acceptance, understanding intellectually that my own supervisory position had genuinely created a power imbalance that warranted the harsher professional accountability, even if my emotions didn’t always align neatly with that intellectual understanding.
I found myself, within two months of that devastating flight, simultaneously divorced, unemployed, and largely ostracized from social circles that had once considered Naomi and me a genuinely admired couple.
