- Olga Gofmane's world was wrecked when her husband told her he loved another man
- As if things weren't bad enough, her employer Holland & Barrett docked her sick pay
- Tribunal ruled that the company had breached the contract and found in Olga's favour
- Amazingly, Olga and her husband are still friends - he even wants to be invited to her next wedding
By Amy Oliver
|
Stress: Olga Gofmane's husband 'came out' after 12 years of marriage leaving the Latvian born shop manager unsure where to turn
It always seemed that Olga Gofmane and her husband Serge were the perfect couple. They were the ones who would be together forever; the pair to model your own marriage on. Friends agreed that Olga was a beautiful mother to the couple’s two children, while Serge was a successful chef with a broad range of interests.
But in November 2011, a week before their 12th wedding anniversary, Serge uttered 11 words which shattered that life, shocking Olga to her core and nearly costing her a promising career as a manager at the health chain Holland & Barrett.
‘We had been at home and the kids were in bed,’ the 34-year-old says, sniffing back tears. ‘Serge said, “I’m in love, but it’s not a woman, it’s a man.â€
‘He had told me a few days before that we couldn’t continue our life the way it was. It sounds strange, but I didn’t take it too seriously at the time. This, though, wa s serious.
‘At that moment I felt like my life was over and I didn’t have a future. It was completely out of the blue and I was so shocked. I’d never had any gut feeling about Serge being gay. I remember swinging from being hugely angry to upset to even being happy. It was a whole cocktail of emotions.’
Over the next month, Olga, who moved to Britain from Latvia with Serge, 32, and their son in 2005, watched helplessly as her husband kept disappearing from their home to stay with his new boyfriend.
What’s more, he seemed sparkier and energised.
‘He was very happy,’ Olga says. ‘I’d never seen him like that before and that’s what made it very hard.
‘He still respected me, but I had to ask him several times not to send text messages to his friend in front of me. Once, he replied, “Olga, when you really love somebody, you will und erstand me.†I went mad at that. I cried and shouted. I went absolutely crazy.
‘In fact, there was a lot of shouting from me, but not from him. He was calm and self-confident. I think it was a relief for him to finally tell the truth.’
Serge (not his real name) said: ‘I changed when I realised who I am. I felt very different, everything was much easier and nothing could worry me. I didn’t feel bad [about Olga] because our relationship wasn’t very good at the end. I felt guilty in the beginning but not now, no, because everyone is much happier.’
Two weeks ago, Olga won a legal battle against Holland & Barrett. She had taken time off work as manager of the branch in Newbury, Berkshire, because of the emotional stress of her husband’s declaration, and her employers had docked her sick pay. The tribunal ruled that was a breach of contract.
Happiness shattered: Olga's life was turned upside down after her husband Serge (not real name) confessed to her that he loved another man
Although a very personal crisis for Olga, hers is not a unique experience. Indeed, the case has highlighted the fact that hundreds of thousands of couples may be suffering in silence.
Bonnie Kaye, whose marriage collapsed after her husband came out, runs the website gayhusbands.com. It estimates up to 200,000 British women and four million American women are â€" or have been â€" married to gay men.
There have been a glut of high-profile cases. Michael Barrymore, married to his late wife Cheryl for 21 years, famously came out on stage in 1995. In 2010, Conservative MP Crispin Blunt came out after a 20-year marriage. More recently, millionaire hedge fund manager Pierre Lagrange split with his wife Catherine before taking up with fashion designer Roubi L’Roubi, and Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas and his wife Jemma split up after he had spent years struggling with his sexuality.
Olga, no doubt like many of these men’s wives, wishes that her now ex- husband had been more honest. ‘I understand why he couldn’t be,’ she says. ‘While I’m sure this situation is common, I’m also sure some people are too embarrassed to speak about it.
‘Serge is from a country where being gay isn’t recognised It’s not socially acceptable and he knew that. I didn’t tell anyone the truth about our split for a long time either; some people still don’t know.
‘The first person I told was a good female friend about a month after we split. I didn’t tell the truth straight away because I was so embarrassed.
Denial: Olga began to question whether the way she was had contributed to her husband admitting he was gay
‘Telling my parents was probably the hardest thing. They would call every day and ask me to put my family back together; urge me to bring Serge back. My mother gave me lots of advice: maybe I had to look better, change my clothes or look at what I cooked.
‘In the end, my brother told them. My parents decided that Serge was just puzzled, that he didn’t know what he was doing, and that he needed help. They worried about his health because, as I’ve said already, homosexuality isn’t acknowledged in my country.’
Would it have been easier if Serge had run off with another woman?
‘I have thought about that,’ Olga laughs. ‘You know what to do then. You can cry with your friends, you can hate him for several months, friends can support you and relatives know what to tell you. It would have been painful, but I would have tried to get him back.
‘In this situa tion, I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any experience; I haven’t read any articles about it.’
It was only after Serge’s revelation that Olga found herself identifying potential clues about his true sexuality in retrospect. ‘Looking back, I can see thousands of signals from him,’ she admits. ‘We were more like best friends than man and wife. Romance didn’t exist and Serge seemed ashamed to hug and kiss me in public.
‘Also, his hobbies weren’t that manly. He kept more than 300 orchids and didn’t have a lot of male friends. He had a lot of female friends, but I was never jealous of them and he was never jealous of my male friends. In the past, I saw it as a sign that we trusted each other, but now I don’t know.
‘The most painful thing was feeling so disappointed with myself. I kept thinking maybe I didn’t do enough or wasn’t good enough for him.
‘Our physical life was great, I can say that. There were no clues there about his sexuality.’
The couple met through a mutual friend while Olga, then 20, was studying psychology at a Latvian university and Serge, then 19, was trying to carve out a career as a chef.
‘His hobbies impressed me,’ Olga admits. ‘I thought, oh my God, this man must have a big heart, he has green fingers and he can cook! He was so different from the men I had met before.’
Olga remembers falling quickly in love and a year later they got engaged. Olga had just returned from a three-month student placement in the UK. ‘It wasn’t romantic, really,’ she said. ‘He didn’t get down on one knee. We both just agreed we should get married.’
The church wedding in Latvia followed just two months later.
The couple’s son arrived the following year and their daughter seven years later, after they had settled in England. The pair led busy lives and argued like any other couple, but Olga was determined to live up to her marriage vows no matter what.
‘Before I got married, I saw hundreds of families divorcing,’ she explains. ‘I vowed my family would be different, and was very black-and-white about it. Family was the biggest focus of my life. That’s why the split was so painful, because that dream has been crushed.’
One day I just felt like I couldn’t cope. I sat in a dark room at work and criedÂ
A few weeks after Serge came out, Olga moved out of the three-bedroom family home into a similar rented property just outside Newbury with the children, who were four and 11. ‘It would have been so painful to stay in the house,’ she says. ‘Every single thing would have reminded me about our family life.
‘If I saw a cup, I remembered where it came from; if I saw a picture, I knew where we had bought it. It was like every bit of furniture was shouting at me. I felt like I was going mad. As soon as I left, Serge’s boyfriend moved in. I was very jealous, because it was my house.
‘They changed a few things and bought some new furniture. I don’t know if they kept our bed.
‘In the past I was very hungry for details like that because I was scared of being out of control.’ Olga’s lowest point came last March. She was trying and failing to juggle being a single mother with holding down a job while coming to terms with her marriage ending in such a dramatic way.
‘One day I just felt like I couldn’t cope,’ she admits. ‘I sat in a dark room at work and cried. My friend came to meet me and made me call the doctor.
‘He told me to go home immediately, but I went back to work until the end of the day.’
She was then signed off sick for a month and ten days, but later found that Holland & Barrett had reclaimed her sick pay.
No support: As if her family problems weren't enough, Olga's bosses at Holland & Barrett docked her sick pay
She was left with a pay cheque of just £1.50 for the month.
Tough, intelligent and certainly not a pushover, Olga sued the company for breach of contract. She won, but the firm was exonerated of discriminating against her.
The judge accepted the regional manager's argument that she had suspended Olga's sick pay because she believed Olga was not adhering to company rules on reporting absence. Last night, the company said:
‘Mrs Gofmane continues to be one of our employees and we remain sympathetic to the difficulties she has experienced in her private life.’
‘The tribunal wasn’t about the money,’ says Olga. ‘It helped me focus on something other than my break-up. I realised it was helping, but I also know that if I didn’t protect my rights, I would never forgive myself. I was happy with the outcome and don’t feel any pressure from the company. I don’t feel anything has changed; I think it was just a misunderstanding.
Olga certainly doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her. She says: ‘I’m a different person. I’ve grown up and don’t want to blame Serge any more. In the beginning I was in hell, but I’ve survived.’
When Serge came out, I felt alone in the world. I thought who can understand me?
Against all odds, Serge and Olga are now friends. ‘We can talk to each other and have coffee together.
‘If you had told me two years ago that I would be friends with my husband after he left me for another man I wouldn’t have believed you. He even wants to be a guest at my next wedding!
There are no plans for that. I do have a very good friend right now, but I’m not going to rush it. I will be very careful with my feelings this time.’
Serge also sees the children regularly, but Olga constantly worries how the split and its circumstances will affect them. ‘My daughter was upset in the beginning,’ she says. ‘She missed our home, but she is too young to understand why. I don’t know about my son. He doesn’t want to speak about it.
‘I wasn’t ready to speak about my life with anyone, really, because of the children. But I decided to for one reason: to help other women. If I had read an article like this one, it would have made it easier for me.
‘When Serge came out, I felt alone in the world. I thought who can understand me? Who can imagine what this means?Â
‘Now, I want to say to others, don’t give up, life continues. If it has happened to you, you are strong enough to go through it.
‘The most important lesson I have learned, though, is how great it feels to forgive somebody.’
No comments:
Post a Comment