Trainer Favoritism

[WalnutGroveEq]

I never thought I’d be in this situation and I don’t know what to do. My trainer has developed a relationship with a client that goes beyond professional boundaries (read between the lines here, but both parties are adults well over consenting age, although both are married), and I can’t get over it.

I’ve worked with this trainer for well over a decade since I was a teenager and they have been a huge remodel and mentor for me for years. We’ve always had a good relationship, though strictly professional and they have never made me uncomfortable in anyway before now.

Knowing this is is going on though, has really ruined riding for me. I’ve always been a regular at shows and lessons and would hang around after my lesson was done just to watch them teach others and absorb everything I can. Now, I don’t want to go to shows because I can’t stand seeing them together, I don’t want to go to lessons because of the same. I have little desire to ride because if I don’t want to go to shows I have very little to work towards.

I’m just so angry and I feel so betrayed. I know that this has nothing to do with me, but I just can’t help feeling complicit in something that I feel is wrong on so many levels. Its very possible that all involved parties, including spouses, are aware and maybe its all on the up and up, but it just seeps into every part of horses for me and I hate it.

The worst part is the favoritism is so poorly disguised it’s pathetic. It’s almost like they want everyone to know. I can’t get away from it. It’s completely changed the dynamic of our group and its just so upsetting. I used to be very close with this other client and I thought we were good friends, but now I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back in the worst way.

I know I could leave and work with someone else but this trainer is ultimately very gifted and has been someone I trust implicitly. I have come so far working with them and I believe they are the best for my discipline in my area. I never thought i would be competing at the level I am now and that I would be as successful as I have been able to be in recent years.

I still have a lot of goals and aspirations for higher levels and I don’t want to have to start over looking for a program that works for me after having so much success where I’m at.

If I do leave I feel it will also cause a rift between me and my show family who I am really close with and I don’t really want to lose that relationship too.

I just feel very lost and I don’t know where to go from here. On the one hand I absolutely have the option to go elsewhere, but on the other I feel incredibly bitter that I am the one looking to leave because of something that I had no part in when I have been a client for nearly twice as long as the other party involved.

I guess I’m looking for some advice or support from horse people who might really get where I’m coming from because non-horsey people don’t really seem to.

[Fiesta01]

You didn’t specify what you meant by the trainer showing this other person favoritism. If your trainer has cut down on the time they are training you to concentrate on the other person, and if you’re continuing to pay the same amount for said training, then you have a legitimate gripe.

If this is the case, you should calmly approach the trainer and voice your concerns about your reduced training time, WITHOUT mentioning your belief that their relationship is the cause.

If your training time has not changed, then you need to accept that adults can do things with which you don’t agree and concentrate on your horse and your training. If you can’t do that, time to change trainers.

[AnastasiaBeaverhousen]

OP
You are emotionally invested in your trainer .
You were getting something from it beyond teacher/student.
That isn’t necessarily wrong. A lot of people become friends with their instructor.
However, a trainer is always a teacher first.

Perhaps you feel a little abandoned, and rejected.
Not unreasonable feelings.
Once you accept and mourn your loss, you will be able to remember the good things you still have.

If the quality of your lessons are still good, and you are progressing in your riding, I think you’ll be able to get past this.

[showy]

Oh I could write a novel about this but I’ll keep it short. I left a longtime trainer over their personal inappropriate relationship with a beginner type client. It was painful to come to barn or show and deal with teenager level pda and general cringe. There was favoritism as well. Not paying much attention to other clients. It eventually morphed into letting beginner client ride other client’s nice horses.

It won’t get better. In fact it may implode in this case. Leave. Riding is something that should be 100% enjoyable and it’s clearly not for you right now. It’s too expensive to not be fun.

I have learned so much riding with different people over the years. You’ll struggle and perhaps make some mistakes with/ finding someone new but you’ll learn and become a better rider and horseman for it.

[2DogsFarm]

@Fiesta01 From my read, OP is referring to a consensual relationship between adults - both married, but not to each other. I.E.: an affair.

I had a similar experience - though no horses involved .
My GF was having an affair & I didn’t feel I could be the one to tell her husband.
But when we ran into a friend of hers & she claimed she was “separated”, I had to draw a line.
She was still very much living with her husband.
I told her I’d out her if she put me in this position again.
IIWM, I’d leave the trainer & tell him exactly why.
As talented a Pro as he may be, this kind of slimy behavior is not something I could condone by remaining in their presence, let alone paying for the “privilege”.

[Horsegirl_s_Mom]

Your post describes very well the unintended consequences when boundaries are crossed in what should be a professional setting. For sure, you’re not the only client who feels this way. I’m sure others are wondering how their lessons and opportunities will suffer now that trainer only has eyes for one particular client.

This is not necessarily relevant to OP’s situation, but a question popped into my head as I was contemplating the situation: Does Safesport prohibit all romantic relationships between a trainer and client, on the theory there is a power differential?

[Scribbler]

@WalnutGroveEq

I never thought I’d be in this situation and I don’t know what to do. My trainer has developed a relationship with a client that goes beyond professional boundaries (read between the lines here, but both parties are adults well over consenting age, although both are married), and I can’t get over it.

I’ve worked with this trainer for well over a decade since I was a teenager and they have been a huge remodel and mentor for me for years. We’ve always had a good relationship, though strictly professional and they have never made me uncomfortable in anyway before now.

Knowing this is is going on though, has really ruined riding for me. I’ve always been a regular at shows and lessons and would hang around after my lesson was done just to watch them teach others and absorb everything I can. Now, I don’t want to go to shows because I can’t stand seeing them together, I don’t want to go to lessons because of the same. I have little desire to ride because if I don’t want to go to shows I have very little to work towards.

I’m just so angry and I feel so betrayed. I know that this has nothing to do with me, but I just can’t help feeling complicit in something that I feel is wrong on so many levels. Its very possible that all involved parties, including spouses, are aware and maybe its all on the up and up, but it just seeps into every part of horses for me and I hate it.

The worst part is the favoritism is so poorly disguised it’s pathetic. It’s almost like they want everyone to know. I can’t get away from it. It’s completely changed the dynamic of our group and its just so upsetting. I used to be very close with this other client and I thought we were good friends, but now I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back in the worst way.

I know I could leave and work with someone else but this trainer is ultimately very gifted and has been someone I trust implicitly. I have come so far working with them and I believe they are the best for my discipline in my area. I never thought i would be competing at the level I am now and that I would be as successful as I have been able to be in recent years.

I still have a lot of goals and aspirations for higher levels and I don’t want to have to start over looking for a program that works for me after having so much success where I’m at.

If I do leave I feel it will also cause a rift between me and my show family who I am really close with and I don’t really want to lose that relationship too.

I just feel very lost and I don’t know where to go from here. On the one hand I absolutely have the option to go elsewhere, but on the other I feel incredibly bitter that I am the one looking to leave because of something that I had no part in when I have been a client for nearly twice as long as the other party involved.

I guess I’m looking for some advice or support from horse people who might really get where I’m coming from because non-horsey people don’t really seem to.

There’s already been some good advice.

I would add that you’ve been at the same barn since your teens, it’s presumably your first and only serious show barn, and you are now in your early to mid 20s.

Very often we get questions here on COTH that boil down to navigating how to become an adult at a barn where you’ve been since you were a child. Very often the solution is to move barns and create your adult self in a new place.

From this post, you are way over invested emotionally in this trainer, and you are responding in a teen age way. That’s fine, we feel our feelings and we can’t change that. But the level of bitterness and jealousy suggests over investment, whether you have seen them in a parental role or a suppressed crush or a queasy bit of both. That’s not healthy for you as a 23 or 25 year old adult.

Realize too that this is very likely not the trainer’s first extra marital barn affair, but you may have missed the signs when you were 14. And it will not be the last affair. That’s who they are.

You have two choices. Change how you feel, which may be a tall order. And may mean you no longer value the trainer. Or move barns.

The question here is not “favoritism.” The trainer is not being unfair to you. The question is that the overt show of adult sexuality by the trainer is disrupting everything you thought you knew about this person, and knocks them off the semi parental pedastal you had them on. It’s like your parents split up and you have to deal with step parents.

Either work through this so that you can see trainer as just another fallible adult with all kinds of sexual and emotional needs outside your lessons that are none of your business. Or move barns and develop adult relationships with a new trainer and venue.

Adult relationships with a trainer include having no personal emotional investment in their private or sexual lives.

[Scribbler]

@Horsegirl_s_Mom

Your post describes very well the unintended consequences when boundaries are crossed in what should be a professional setting. For sure, you’re not the only client who feels this way. I’m sure others are wondering how their lessons and opportunities will suffer now that trainer only has eyes for one particular client.

This is not necessarily relevant to OP’s situation, but a question popped into my head as I was contemplating the situation: Does Safesport prohibit all romantic relationships between a trainer and client, on the theory there is a power differential?

I think SS has its hands full dealing with the sexual assault of minors.

In more formalized work spaces, such as colleges, sexual relationships between professors and adult students can be cause for firing, especially if the relationship occurs while the student is
In that professors class.

There have been no SS suspensions that I know of over affairs between adult trainers and students.

[Djones]

Or stick around until the trainer’s spouse finds out about what’s happening, that’s when it gets juicy.

You see, when the trainer, R and the affair-partner, M arrive at the barn after a weekend away at a horse show with three clients along. You see M is going to waltz into R’s spouse’s barn (let’s call the spouse P) and acts like an innocent princess, only to the blasted out of her boots by P when she’s told to get her whoring ass off the property TODAY and her horse, too- and by the way the truck and trailer belong to P, so no, the trainer, R cannot move your horse- it’s YOUR problem, sugar. Get out NOW.

It’s horrifying to witness and it’s coming.

R&M are now married. She’s wife #5. Good luck, sugar.

[hoopoe]

I do not see anything in the OP that says the she is not getting , from the trainer, what she is paying for.

I read Favoritism in her post as infatuated behavior by the 2 parties, not neglect of trainer teaching duties.

[NC001]

I’ve dealt with a similar situation where dynamics changed due to the trainers personal life. I get what you mean- a nice environment is now not what it once was and it’s sad. We got out early on luckily- every one else is leaving too. But the care and training were suffering in our case.

It doesnt sound as though you need to get out asap luckily but you may want to start looking. These things can go south very quickly.

[WalnutGroveEq]

I worded the title as favoritism because I didn’t want to say affair. And you are right. I definitely have viewed this trainer as a parental figure and finding out about this situation has made me feel like my parent is in a romantic relationship with my close friend.

I did have an instance where I felt that the other client was taking priority and I did not get the service that I was paying for. I did speak to the trainer about this and stated as explicitly as possible with out making any outright accusations that I felt like the services I was paying for were suffering because of the other client.

I thought that the message was clear, but from the trainers response either they didn’t understand or they did and they were doubling down and denying. I decided not to press the issue further because the horse world is a small place and I don’t want to burn bridges.

I am not the only client who feels this way and I think everyone else I’ve talked to is in similar limbo. I definitely am grieving the loss of the image of the trainer I used to admire and that is why I feel so emotional about it. Ive had suspicions about the situation for more than a year but have only had confirmation for about 6 months and I thought I had moved on by this point but I was really bothered by it yesterday so decided to vent here.

I appreciate the advice and I am very much working through how to process this.

[Scribbler]

@WalnutGroveEq

I worded the title as favoritism because I didn’t want to say affair. And you are right. I definitely have viewed this trainer as a parental figure and finding out about this situation has made me feel like my parent is in a romantic relationship with my close friend.

I did have an instance where I felt that the other client was taking priority and I did not get the service that I was paying for. I did speak to the trainer about this and stated as explicitly as possible with out making any outright accusations that I felt like the services I was paying for were suffering because of the other client.

I thought that the message was clear, but from the trainers response either they didn’t understand or they did and they were doubling down and denying. I decided not to press the issue further because the horse world is a small place and I don’t want to burn bridges.

I am not the only client who feels this way and I think everyone else I’ve talked to is in similar limbo. I definitely am grieving the loss of the image of the trainer I used to admire and that is why I feel so emotional about it. Ive had suspicions about the situation for more than a year but have only had confirmation for about 6 months and I thought I had moved on by this point but I was really bothered by it yesterday so decided to vent here.

I appreciate the advice and I am very much working through how to process this.

I think it’s time to leave.

[AllSport]

I’ve had a situation the was quite different but I think the feelings I had were very similar. Things were happening around me that just ruined the whole barn experience for me. I saw things that I didn’t not agree with but had no control over and I felt like sticking around was almost saying–what you’re doing is okay and acceptable behavior. I was very uncomfortable and that was my issue, I get that. Other people stayed, other people left, and that’s their choice. I tolerated it for a long time but enough was enough. I gave up a great opportunity and cut ties. Part of it was painful losing that opportunity and my barn family, but I’m also really happy to no longer feel like I’m supporting the situation by sticking around. They probably don’t care I’m gone, but I feel better about myself as a human.

[AnastasiaBeaverhousen]

You already have your answer.
Your trainer chose to ignore your concerns.
Time to move on.
You aren’t being disloyal.
You don’t owe your trainer anything.

If you do move on, resist the urge to badmouth the trainer or go into details as to why you are leaving.

As gratifying as it is to go low, take the high road.
And don’t let this situation steal your joy.

Look at it as an opportunity for personal growth.

Good luck.

[RedHorses]

If another human at the barn is so disrupting your enjoyment of your horse and barn time, and you really can’t ignore it, then it is on you to find another barn. Yes, it’s tough to leave a familiar, comfortable place but you’ve been feeling it for a year and still can’t get past it.

I’ve been there. I realized the night I heard “that person” was on their way to the barn, and I started hustling to get my horse tacked up (when I had been planning to not ride) and out of the barn before their arrival - I realized that was unreasonable and unsustainable, and I needed to find another barn and a public reason to move. I had enough stress at work and the barn was supposed to be my happy place. It was time to go.

It might take a few tries to find the right place, but it’s totally worth the effort.

[candyappy]

@WalnutGroveEq

The worst part is the favoritism is so poorly disguised it’s pathetic.

@WalnutGroveEq

but on the other I feel incredibly bitter that I am the one looking to leave because of something that I had no part in when I have been a client for nearly twice as long as the other party involved

It sounds like you have put this trainer on a pedestal for a long, long time and now you see they are a fellow human being who makes poor choices and has bad judgment. You also sound a bit jealous of the attention your " friend" is getting.

I do not condone someone cheating on their spouse but it really is none of your business personally and should not be affecting your trainer client relationship to such a degree.

To be honest the trainer isn’t what I would call showing favoritism but just fully absorbed in a new relationship like most people are. The difference is that other person was your friend and is maybe now getting the individual attention in lessons more than everyone else is.

I am sure things will calm down after a while. I would ride it out . Or seek counseling to help you get past it.

[ammys_havemorefun]

Well I think “getting the individual attention in lessons more than everyone else is” is showing favoritism! Yes, everyone makes bad decisions, etc, but when the trainer lets a personal relationship (that I personally believe is extremely inappropriate given it’s pro/client) affect their treatment of other clients in their business (barn/training) then that’s a major problem. If the relationship isn’t affecting their business decisions then not your business imo. I think it becomes your business when it starts affecting your business relationship with the trainer.

However, sometimes some clients need more individual attention in their riding this week, and maybe someone else does next week. If you are sure that there is actually favoritism and not another client simply needing a little extra this week whereas you might need extra next week, then that’s certainly a problem. But it’s hard to pass judgement without specifics.

[TheJenners]

@WalnutGroveEq

I know that this has nothing to do with me

Accurate.

Honestly if it’s causing you to have a moral dilemma, then leave. I don’t get that your needs as a client aren’t being met here. You have one time you felt that you had your needs or wants pushed aside and then trainer didn’t agree with you when you brought it, but your need or want may be flavored by your distaste of the relationship and not seen as valid by the trainer. Or it isn’t and it was valid. We don’t know unless the trainer comes on here, and with the number of trainers or other horse pros who have a spouse not at the barn who go on to cheat in some fashion, well, the chances of that trainer seeing this and seeing themselves is slim.

It sounds like you are a lesson student and not a horse owner. The only time I’ve had an issue with a trainer’s personal life was as a boarder, when she stopped taking care of horses in order to sneak off to see her boyfriend. It came to a head when she asked if I could feed on a workday, I said I couldn’t and she reassured me it was okay because someone else could do it. I got a call from the BO that afternoon that no one had been there all day and my horse was locked in, and the BO had finally given him water because she felt bad. I contacted the other person who was supposed to have fed, and she told me that she had told the trainer she couldn’t feed either and was only supposed to feed that night, and that I was feeding in the morning. I was furious, the BO was furious, I went out and counted my supplements and checked my order history and saw that I should have run out of something two weeks before and still had several scoops left.

The BO fired the trainer that weekend, the other boarders left and I stayed on and switched to self-care. One of the other boarders was actually already on the books to leave that weekend as well and had given ample notice, and I found out later that it was because they were constantly being asked to feed, multiple times a week, in trade for lessons that were now so numerous there was no catching up, and they had a feeling if they weren’t feeding then feeding wasn’t happening but didn’t want to badmouth the trainer and let the rest of us know.

[Fiesta01]

@2DogsFarm

@Fiesta01 From my read, OP is referring to a consensual relationship between adults - both married, but not to each other. I.E.: an affair.

I understood that. I just don’t believe that other peoples’ relationships, as long as they’re consenting adults, are my business.

I think your situation was different since you were friends and that friend lied to someone else about her marital status in front of your face, thus involving you in the deception. I wouldn’t out a friend, but I would let them know that if it happened again, I would no longer associate with them until/if she cleaned up her private life.