If I hadn’t had children, perhaps I would have been able to get on top of the job. I began to tell myself that I wasn’t cut out to be a manager, that I didn’t have a tough enough side. I felt torn: as the manager, I wanted to be the first person in and the last out of the office, but I was determined to get home in time to bath Philip and put him to bed.My job turned out to be harder than expected and I started to struggle. Once we had an emergency when Philip went limp and grey and stopped breathing and I had to apply artificial respiration.

Events like that made it increasingly difficult for me to walk out the door in the morning and be at ease with my conscience. But then Philip was born and I found the competing demands of work and home difficult Paula, who was on maternity leave, needed my support. Paula had had difficulty falling pregnant, eventually succeeding through an IVF clinic, and I was worried about taking on a job that would prevent me from being a hands-on father.My first couple of months as a manager were a honeymoon. I was seduced by the position, partly because there was headhunting involved and I was flattered to have been selected, but also because it was a job that synthesised my experience I also had misgivings. I’m learning that my value as a human being is not just derived from my work Liz and I have never been closer, for example. There must be some measure of success in that.Part-time nurse, full-time lifeMichael Hunt, 41, a former NHS manager, works part-time as a community psychiatric nurse.

He lives in north London with his wife, Paula Martin, 36, also a nurse, and their two children, Philip, three, and Helen, one.When Paula was five months pregnant, I was offered a job as the manager of an NHS mental health resource centre earning pounds 24,000. I’m less successful than I was and that’s hard for a man to swallow, but I don’t regret my decision one bit. We were struggling to find a backer and the consultancy wasn’t doing well enough to pay ourselves a salary. My redundancy got used up and we started to eat into our savings, which despite my previous salary, were a modest pounds 10,000. I contemplated finding a job, but the thought of being an employee in someone else’s business made me feel like a complete failure.For the first time in my life I became depressed I just wanted to sit in a hole and cry. I pushed myself to keep going but it was like walking along a narrow ridge and trying not to fall into a dark place I didn’t talk about it I would try to shut Liz out.

Somehow she always reached me before I sunk too deep.Then, in November last year, just as things were at their most precarious, we found financial backing and were able to start paying ourselves. I bring home a decent salary now, but the future is still far from certain. The fact that I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice the stability of my family, to shunt them around the country at the drop of a hat, seemed strange to them. I got redundancy, not a huge amount, but enough to live on for six months.I immediately joined three colleagues who were starting a new consultancy. The best part for me was that because my hours were regular – 8am to 5pm – I actually got to see my children in the morning.

And in the evening, we ate together, I’d help with homework and be part of the family. But financially and emotionally it was much tougher than I expected. But a move to Aberdeen meant uprooting the family at a sensitive time and removing them from friends and school. It also meant that all aspects of life would henceforth serve work. Liz and I had always believed it should be the other way round.We decided I would hand back the keys to the car, give up the company pension (which would have been substantial) and ask for redundancy My employers were reluctant One of them called me “a difficult man”. They offered me a highly senior position with a substantial pay hike. But the catch was I had to relocate to Aberdeen.I loved my job.