I found out my ex lived a double life – the pain of humiliation was extraordinary

Last month, Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the Scottish National Party (SNP) pleaded guilty to embezzling £400,000 from the organisation between 2010 and 2022. What made this admission doubly shocking is that Murrell is also the estranged husband of the former first minister of Scotland and Leader of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon, and Murrell’s crimes happened when she was in power.

Sturgeon was interviewed by the police about what she knew, but no charges were ever bought. However, that hasn’t stopped the rumour mill churning away as cries of “How couldn’t she know what her husband was doing?” reverberated throughout the country. In fact, according to one poll conducted by The Times , only 20 per cent of Scots believe Sturgeon when she says she didn’t know anything about her husband’s embezzling of party funds.

In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg, a clearly devastated Sturgeon tried to defend herself against the accusations she was aware of her husband’s crimes .

I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of this particular case, but I do want to say that I find it entirely plausible that a partner wouldn’t know that their spouse has been living a double life. It is indeed credible that a woman wouldn’t know that the man she loves and trusts had been lying and stealing behind her back for many years. I know that because I have been that woman, and watching Nicola Surgeon fighting back tears whilst struggling to comprehend what has happened, as people around her incredulously shake their heads, has reopened some very old wounds.

I had a long-term partner who had been struggling with addiction and I didn’t know. It sounds incredible, but it’s true. They had been stealing money to fund that addiction and I didn’t know. For years they had been living a double life, caught in a horrendous cycle of stealing, using and lying, and I did not know – because they did not want me too.

Looking back with all the clarity hindsight offers, the truth seems so obvious that I am embarrassed I didn’t see it. Once it all came out, all the strange stories, the missing money, and furtive behaviour made perfect sense, but at the time, you could have given me a hundred guesses as to why our accounts never seemed to balance and I would never have thought they were stealing. Why on Earth would I? I had shared my life with this person for years. Trust is the bedrock of any relationship, and I trusted what they said.

If your long-term partner tells you there has been an error at work and their pay has been delayed, that’s frustrating, but why would you assume that was a lie? When they tell you that they have lost their bank card and can’t access money, and could you pay the bills this month, would you search their bank account to corroborate that? When they tell you they have lost their job again because the paperwork they supplied in the interview was incorrect, you might be pissed off – but surely you would accept that as fact? It’s only once the trust has been smashed to smithereens that you start asking questions.

Bizarrely, Sturgeon’s former husband spent most of the money he stole on everyday, albeit fancy, items on Amazon: nice shoes, computer games, a Le Creuset casserole dish, a Berghaus jacket, and so forth. Sturgeon explained that none of this seemed unusual to her because they were both on high salaries and could have easily afforded such items anyway.

In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC, a devastated Sturgeon defended herself against accusations she was aware of her husband Peter Murrell’s crimes – I believe her (Photo: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA)

I was at the other end of the financial spectrum and didn’t question why my partner and I didn’t have any money because we were both on very low incomes. Now, I understand that we should have had much more money than we did, but at the time I was a struggling student and it didn’t seem that odd that we couldn’t afford to put the heating on. Just typing that out makes me want to kick myself. I’m still angry that I didn’t ask more questions, but you don’t. I remember feeling guilty when I did start asking questions, because it was such a terrible thing to even think that the person you love might be lying to you.

Once the full scale of my partner’s actions came to light, we spent the next year attending various support groups to try to work our way through it. I sat in many friends and family groups, and the story was always the same. They didn’t know. They didn’t know until their entire world came crashing down, usually precipitated by a knock at the door; the police, the bailiffs, an angry, secret lover.

Many emotions haunted those meetings, but humiliation always loomed high as people wrestled to process what the hell had just happened to them and the life they had. They had been simply going about their business, blissfully unaware of the danger they were in. And then, knock, knock, knock. “How did I not see it?” was a very common refrain. As was, “I fe…