tldr I have proof my dream job was using me as negotiation fodder.
I work as a non-profit fundraiser. Recently, I moved from a large city to an exurb so my wife could become a tenure-track professor. I've applied for a lot of jobs so far, but a position showed up at the college my wife teaches at. I'll spare you the details but I seemed qualified, it's the kind of work I'd love to do, and would include a 40% raise and a slew of benefits I don't currently get. I applied and went through a series of four interviews, one of which was an all-day affair. I was very excited by the people I talked to and was told I'd hear back in a couple of weeks. When those couple of weeks passed, I was told I would have to wait a couple more weeks while they interviewed another candidate. Not great, but I know they have certain policies in place around having to interview a minimum number of candidates and thought they might not want to show favoritism to a faculty's spouse. Anxiety inducing, but fair enough.
I only know the rest of this because my wife is a professor there and she is included in staff-wide emails regarding the interviews for this position (she got the same emails about me). The other serious candidate was a threat, but not an obvious ringer. She also had a connection to the school and more work experience, but that experience was less directly relevant and I have a relevant master's degree from a top 6 university. Point being from what I could gather they could pick her. Here's the catch, that person withdrew her application to accept an application elsewhere. That means I was the only serious candidate left in the pipeline. With that, I grew (I think reasonably) excited. Because there is a hiring committee that would need to convene I still anticipated not hearing back until the original time, and I did. Yesterday I got a brief email from the provost/head of the hiring committee informing me that they would not be proceeding with my application.
That means that, after four interviews and taking a full day off from my current job, preparing several PowerPoints, and then waiting almost a month they had no one else under consideration and still decided against me. If they had cut me loose earlier or picked the other person, I would be willing and (given my disposition) inclined to assume they had good intentions, but I really don't think there is any way to interpret the facts other than that they wanted to have me on hand to point to in negotiating with the other person for better terms. What makes it worse, is I can't even point out that I know what they did to them, because my wife needs to work with some of them. I'm sure not everyone I talked with was in on deceiving me and I'm willing to give many the benefit of the doubt as individuals. But as a group, clearly they were willing to use me.