1) I'm in my second year and will be moved for the THIRD time, out of the main unit away (down the corridor, in another department) from the rest of my colleagues and people I'm working with. No one was telling me anything. It felt like I was made to feel like I had to justify having desk space.

2) I found out from a research assistant (by accident) that I've been 'unsuccessful' for the main fieldwork study. I confronted my sups, about this as I heard nothing yet again! I completed the fieldwork on a non-phd project for their pilot study. I later found that this was a mistake and that I was very much successful and included as a fieldworker for the other study (but a minor role due to PhD).

3) given the amount of distress and knowing full well what's happended and that my ex and I were thinking about getting married, my collegue (who decided to take my without asking me previously) made the catty comment that 'people tend to get married in their late 20s' whilst looking directly at me :(

Maybe I'm overreacting, but I felt terrible over the above :(

What s nice colleague you have...hmmm. I hate people who make passive aggressive comments like that.

Anyway very few people I know got married in their 20's. Not that it matters either way.

hmm, I think it is time that you consider the working environment and if any chang should be made.. How about starting with why you work "remotely" from your colleagues?

tomFinland, are you a fan? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_of_Finland

H- I too had been dying to ask that!

A long long time ago ( back before there was light and sound) I had a work colleague who used to explain the difficult behaviour of clients or colleagues as that person being "insane." Without wanting to make light of or speak badly of mental illness or people with mental health struggles, this has often been a useful way to think of people and situations for me--as in, whatever is fuellng the person may very much be an internal feature of their own irrationality or dysfunction that no rational approach will impact. No matter what YOU do--their action/reaction will be the same. Sometimes there is nothing that can be done to help a situation. I am not saying this to be defeatist, but to suggest that sometimes difficulties are so ingrained within a particular system, department, person, etc. that nothing you do is going to change it, and the reactions you get have little to do with you, and much to do with the ingrained nature of the environment.