Michael spent two months pretending to still have a job after being made redundant. This is the tragic reason why he lied to his fiancee, her reaction when she found out and the surprising new twist
At 7.20am, Michael Daramola knotted his tie, smoothed his jacket, waved his fiancee Yasmin Williams goodbye, and set off for his job as a manager for a retail banking company.
Or so Yasmin, 32, thought.
After half an hour circling their south London neighbourhood, waiting for her to leave for her job as a secondary school teacher, Michael turned his key in the lock of their two-bedroom flat, took off his work clothes and spent the day at home instead. Exactly as he had done the day before. And the day before that...
Two months earlier, Michael had been made redundant. Yasmin was already working long hours, earning more than him, juggling her job with parenting their three-year-old son, Kobe – all while her fiance was living a lie.
What's more, Michael, 35, had taken to spending money he didn't have on tech and gadgets as a means of making himself feel better, landing him in £12,000 of debt she knew nothing about.
You'd be forgiven for thinking this sounds like a scene from a soap opera. For poor Yasmin, however, it was her very real life.
Yet the fallout from Michael's deception does feature on TV – in a new Netflix series called Blue Therapy, which follows couples in crisis working with a relationship therapist.
In Yasmin and Michael's case, the crisis is obvious: his panic about money, compounded by Yasmin's exhaustion, created a physical and emotional chasm that threatened to wreck their five-year relationship.
On camera, Michael Daramola admitted to his fiancee Yasmin Williams that he was in debt and had been pretending to go to work every day
Yet the broader story is equally intriguing, for behind Michael's refusal to come clean on his job loss lies a feeling of emasculation that has its roots in changed gender roles.
'I thought, I can't be the only man in the UK that has gone through redundancy, lack of intimacy, debt doubling and my missus out-earning me,' he says.
I talk to the couple over Zoom. They appear tactile and relaxed. Michael is contrite, Yasmin extraordinarily forgiving, both full of insights they learned from therapy and a far cry from the fractious pair viewers are introduced to on screen. Michael tells me he 'felt sick to my stomach' when he lost his job, and so began his secretive double life as he looked for another one.
'I had to keep up this bare-faced lie to make sure I didn't add any more stress. I had to act like everything was normal.'
And yet his decision to admit all on a TV programme certainly introduced a far-from-normal twist. Last June, Michael saw on social media that producers for Blue Therapy were looking for couples to discuss their problems on air with Karen Doherty, a therapist accredited by the UK Council for Psychotherapy.
Perhaps, he thought, this might be the 'safe environment' he needed to finally tell Yasmin the truth about the way he'd been spending his days and money.
'I felt redundant in every sense of the word,' he says. 'I felt alone. At first I thought I could hide it from her for a week, but that week quickly turned into months.'
Yasmin agreed to appear on the show on the understanding they would be discussing issues that arise from a woman earning more than her partner. There was no fee for taking part, though the therapy was free.
The couple on the new Netflix series called Blue Therapy, which follows couples in crisis working with a relationship therapist
You can only imagine her horror when Michael dropped his bombshell – a gift to TV executives, since he did it as the cameras were rolling – and admitted not only the debt but the fact he'd been pretending to go to work every day.
'I felt blindsided,' she says now. 'I didn't know who he was, if I could trust him, if there was anything else he wasn't telling me, if we were going to stay together.'
Indeed, it seems incredible that Yasmin didn't up and leave him.
For all his inner turmoil, you can't help but feel cross at Michael's treatment of her, not only leaving her to shoulder the financial burden, look after their son and do the housework but also – we now discover – criticising her for their lack of sex life.
Not to mention the fact he laid bare their most personal problems on the world's most-watched streaming service.
Why on earth would she stay? That Yasmin is now seven months pregnant, and they're talking to the Daily Mail about their ordeal together is, of course, proof that she did.
In fact, they claim, since the show hit Netflix this month, they have been inundated by viewers grateful to them for shining a light on financial problems so often mired in secrecy. 'We've come out stronger,' says Yasmin.
When they met in October 2020, in some ways they exemplified the new financial dynamic among childless young couples.
Yasmin drove a new Audi; he had a beat-up old Corsa. Both had degrees, but as an English teacher in a secondary school, Yasmin earned double his salary. Not that she minded, she says, because 'our values were aligned'. Or so she thought.
Yasmin was brought up to talk openly about money, but Michael's attitude towards it was more complicated. Raised by a single mother who had to quit her job because of ill health, he grew up with precious little financial security and 'sometimes no heating' at home.
As an adult, he made up for it by spending compulsively, feeling a momentary high from splashing £50 here and there, but then a 'massive crash' when the credit card bill came in.
After he and Yasmin moved in together the following April, Michael admitted he was in 'a bit of debt' and Yasmin suggested she contribute 70 per cent of the rent so he could pay it off. Michael swallowed his pride and accepted her offer.
Michael and Yasmin had three therapy sessions over a period of around two months as part of the show last summer
Yasmin thought of Michael as ambitious and on the way up – a bit of debt didn't scare her. Of course, new parenthood changed everything. Kobe was born in September 2022, and by the end of 2024 the couple were engaged and Yasmin had been promoted to deputy head of the English department.
Now the reality of life with a stressful job, a child and financial responsibility began to kick in. Yasmin had little energy for Michael when she came home after a tough day's work, she says.
'I'd think, stop trying to give me a hug, stop touching me, leave me alone, I'm tired. I've got a bit of food on me from feeding Kobe, I'm wet from doing the bath, I feel hot and flustered, and he'd [say] 'you look so beautiful…'.'
In bed, Michael says, Yasmin would fall asleep quickly, 'and I'd be staring at the ceiling, unravelling [thinking], 'maybe she doesn't find me attractive'.'
He started spending more to 'fill the void', buying gadgets he didn't need, filling an Amazon basket with 'speakers, smartwatches, four dashcams, all for no reason'.
While he says the purchases gave him some sense of control, they added to his escalating guilt. Yasmin had taken on more of the rent to help him get out of debt, but now he was simply getting into more. 'I felt emasculated,' he says.
The more 'unmanageable' his debt grew, the harder it became to be honest about it. 'On top of [Yasmin] working so hard, I didn't want to then go: 'By the way, my debt is now doubled.'
And so, by the time he lost his job at the banking company in a reshuffle in May 2025, both had retreated into their own worlds.
'It was an intense, sinking feeling,' he recalls. 'My whole identity of being a provider in some sense was gone. I felt money made the man.'
He had intended to tell Yasmin straight away, but says that in the end he talked himself out of it, convincing himself he needed to find another job first for Yasmin to keep faith in him.
'I thought she would think: 'I've had enough. What am I doing here?' I would have been left in the dust.'
He could carry on contributing to their bills for a short time using his redundancy payout. Up to this point, you might understand Michael's fear that his fiancee would leave him if he told the truth.
Since appearing on the Netflix show, the couple have been inundated by viewers grateful to them for shining a light on financial problems so often mired in secrecy. 'We've come out stronger,' says Yasmin
But sympathy dwindles when you realise he carried on letting Yasmin do the majority of the domestic work, getting Kobe to and from nursery, even preparing Michael a Tupperware container for lunch at an office he wasn't going to.
This infuriated Yasmin when she found out. 'You could have taken some of the pressure off,' she says. Or surely all of it. He merely says: 'If I'd done those things, you would have noticed.'
As it was, she was so focused on work, their son and keeping the house tidy, she noticed nothing – 'which is probably why he didn't want to tell me, because he could see how stressed I was'.
It was a vicious circle. Conversation had 'fallen by the wayside', she says. Nor was there camaraderie from collapsing on the sofa after an exhausting day. She says: 'It wasn't like we were sitting down and having cuddles and unwinding together. We'd be sitting on our phones, not talking.'
Meanwhile, Michael was secretly applying for jobs, but the rejection letters kept stacking up.
But despite his troubles, he had never been convinced by the concept of counselling – until he saw that advert for Blue Therapy.
'What's the worst that can happen,' he jokes now, 'other than embarrassing my missus on national TV?'
He and Yasmin had three therapy sessions over a period of around two months as part of the show last summer, and during the very first, Michael admitted he was £12,000 in debt. 'I felt like I was drowning,' says Yasmin. Worse was to come.
A day later, in the second session, with his heart pounding and palms sweating, Michael told her he hadn't had a job for two months. For him it was a relief to get it out – and when Yasmin wasn't immediately angry, he assumed 'it wasn't that bad' and 'everything was fine' now that she knew. In fact, Yasmin was in shock.
'I didn't have words,' she says. 'It was like one punch after another. My brain had gone into overdrive.
'I've always said to him, the worst feeling would be to be made to feel like an idiot, where other people know information I don't. And that's what I felt. There was a feeling of embarrassment and betrayal.'
Arriving home from the Georgian mansion in Hertfordshire where Blue Therapy was filmed, she asked Michael: 'What else is there? We've never had issues in terms of infidelity, but how can I not question every other element of our relationship?'
She blamed herself, too. 'I felt I'd also let down the family. Why didn't he feel he could tell me?'
Compounding the 'tension and sadness' was an impending financial crisis that 'consumed everything' she says. 'Every day I was asking Mike where he was going, how much he'd be spending. I said, 'You can't be trusted.'
'It was obsessive, but he had to prove himself for us to build back trust.' For his part, Michael felt 'interrogated, emasculated, almost powerless' – but knew Yasmin was justified.
'The frustration wasn't necessarily with Yasmin. It was the frustration of allowing myself to get to this situation where I'm having to track every single penny.'
Yasmin helped him to control his compulsive spending by repeatedly asking him, 'Do you really need it? How much is it? What is it for?' every single time he wanted to buy something.
Together they combed through his bank statements, and worked out how he could pay off his debt gradually using money from his redundancy. 'He paid it all off himself,' says Yasmin. 'It made him understand the importance of being transparent.'
But therapy taught the couple more about their relationship than how to handle finances.
Yasmin realised her need to be in control of everything, from the budget to childcare arrangements, was learned behaviour from childhood, when her mum was in charge of the house, she says. 'So I assumed it was the woman who did all that.'
As a result, Michael felt he was being treated like a child. She admits: 'I wasn't allowing space for him to fulfil his role in the relationship. I was contributing to tension between us. I was contributing to stress on myself.'
She became more direct, she says, at asking him to do his fair share around the house. 'Sometimes, unless you're told, you don't realise what the other person is thinking,' says Michael. 'Yas expected me to know.'
The couple started putting down their phones and connecting with each other.
'We learned just because you talk, doesn't mean you listen. Going through therapy has taught us how to listen to each other, to [ask] 'What's the problem? How are we going to deal with it?'
'Connecting on a more emotional level led into us rekindling those physical elements,' says Yasmin. So much so that last August, she discovered she was pregnant.
What's more, after applying for more than 150 roles at different banks, Michael switched his focus and got himself a job in customer services instead.
He has paid off his debt now and is trying not to conflate his salary with his sense of self-worth. But the reality is, Yasmin still earns more – and Michael is still slightly uncomfortable about it.
- Blue Therapy is available to watch on Netflix now.
