Everyone has something they're hiding, and some of these secrets are truly shocking! Reddit users have taken to the platform to share their most buried secrets, from the scandalous to the heartbreaking. There's no holding back when it comes to spilling the tea!
Baring It All
I refuse to sleep with my girlfriend until I’m married. She thinks I’m a devout Christian because of this…I am not. I find something to do every Sunday instead of going to church. The real story is going to devastate her. The truth is that my you-know-what was severed off in an accident when I was five, and I have about 1/2 inch of it left. I have no idea how to tell her.
I’m so in love and I know the moment it comes out I’m screwed. I’ve been with her for 1.5 years, and she (somehow) respects my choice to wait until marriage (for any interaction other than kissing).
Guilty, Your Honor
I’ve been working as a lawyer for the last three years. But I have a ruinous secret. I never finished my law degree and didn’t pass four of the subjects I had to. I faked my Bar certification, oiling the palms of the people who work at the Bar association to get myself enrolled. And now…I think it’s about to come crashing down around my ears.
I’ve been a litigator and screwed up my current case, lied to my client, and he got screwed by the court yesterday. The judge advised him to approach the Bar association for possible restitution and they have set up a committee to investigate into me and my work. The committee includes a senior lawyer who has always been suspicious of me.
One of my classmates works for him and he must have mentioned my problems in law school. He very categorically told me that he will be looking into my law degree. I can’t make amends. The university I had studied in split off its law school into a separate university and contacted me during that process to inquire whether I would like to continue my classes there.
I never replied. Even if I manage to pass my subjects before the investigation takes off, my degree will be from a different university from the one mentioned in my enrollment documents. I’m looking at some extremely sizable claims from my current as well as past clients, not to mention time behind bars. And the knife twists further.
I’m engaged, and the wedding is planned for November of this year. I don’t know how to come clean to all my family and my significant other.
More Than A Difference Of Opinion
I left a cult, and my entire family is still in it. If I tell them I truly don’t believe I will lose them forever. No I’m not kidding, they will cease to communicate and associate with me and my wife. My parents, brothers, sisters, and 20 years’ worth of friendships, gone. Some of them, including family, have already expressed that I am no longer welcome in their lives.
Try Keeping Track Of This One
My dad cheated on my mom since I was 5. They got divorced when I was 9. He got remarried when I was 12. That was his third wife. I am now 17. I went to visit my dad over the summer only to find out he is cheating on his fourth wife (my stepmom) with two separate women. I didn’t have the heart to tell my stepmom upfront so I started to drop little hints.
Dad caught on. He tried bribing me to not tell his wife. Bad idea. I took the money but told her anyway. They are now getting divorced. She was not fazed by any of it. But that’s not the most twisted part. I found out a year ago she is now sleeping with my dad’s brother. She got pregnant. My dad and his family don’t know. Even my uncle doesn’t know.
I’m the only one that knows besides her and her sister. I found out by accident when I came to check in on my half-siblings. My dad is supposedly their biological father, but my ex-stepmom has custody of them. I have blackmail on my ex-stepmom for all of this. I only found out because of snippets of conversations I’ve heard while at her house checking on my siblings.
She also has a bad substance misuse problem. How do I know this is all true? I confronted her about it last week. She’s threatening to sue me if I tell anyone—even though my case would definitely win in court with all the evidence AND pastcourtbattles with her. I threatened to call CPS, she called it a bluff. I called CPS. My dad now has custody of his kids.
So they do DNA testing and make a disturbing discovery. Only one of the six kids is actually his, but he’s been their father figure for the majority of their lives so he treats all of them like his own. He is actually a good dad, but isn’t the best at being a loyal partner. The fact that this whole ordeal started when I was five when my dad cheated on my mom and just recently came to a close without any of our family knowing except a few people says a lot.
A Moment Of Weakness
I have a long-distance girlfriend who I love very, very much. However, I recently gave into a deranged request. My single and 10 years older than me roommate asked me to impregnate her because she desperately wanted a baby. A baby bank would have cost her thousands of dollars which she didn’t have. She promised that she wouldn’t tell anyone who is the father.
I had previously said no to her hitting on me, but she begged for a baby so many times that I finally gave in. It’s the right thing to do, right? Nothing can go wrong, right? Well, she is pregnant now and the realization slowly starts to sink in that: I will have to lie to the love of my life for the rest of my life or that I will have to tell her—but I know for sure that she will leave me then.
Someday there will be a young guy or girl asking who his/her dad is. My flatmate will say my name, and then I will get a call, 16 or 18 years from now, no matter where I am or who I am with or whether I have children of my own: “Hey, I’m your child. You’re my dad. You knew that. Why were you never there when I needed you”? But that’s not all.
My roommate feels lonely and constantly tries to cuddle/sleep in my bed with me/sleep together/spend time together, all of which makes me feel like a horrible cheater if I do it and like a horrible person if I don’t do it. Until I have enough money to move out this will always make me feel bad. I will feel guilty for the rest of my life. For the rest of my goddarn life.
Showing Her True Colors
My grandfather’s brother married young and suddenlypassedfrom cancer at age 22. No one liked his wife but couldn’t put a finger on why. People began to figure out what kind of a person she was when she wouldn’t visit him in the hospital during his treatment. Hepassedwithin a month or two, and the cherry on top was the funeral.
She showed up dressed for a night out, wearing heavy makeup and the expensive fur coat my great-grandma gave her as a wedding gift. She then went on to hook up with two men in the basement of the funeral reception. The family never saw her again. Not dark, but despicable. I still don’t know her name, she’s unmentionable on my dad’s side.
A High Price To Pay
My secret it that I don’t love my wife anymore. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that she’s now pregnant with a child I wasn’t ready for, and that the child in my mind is nothing but a financial burden that we can’t afford. I’m too afraid to divorce her because the state that I live in always screws over the father with very high child support.
Red Flags As Far As The Eye Can See
When I was 15, I found out my dad was cheating on his second wife with his third wife. I didn’t tell anyone because I was really close with my stepmom and didn’t want to lose her. When I was 18, she finally figured it out and left him. He got engaged to third wife a few weeks after the divorce was final. To this day, 25 years later, third wife refuses to acknowledge that he was married while he was dating her for four years.
She won’t even let herself see it and he’s a master manipulator. I once mentioned that he and my ex-stepmom built a house in 1992. His third wife blew up at me that I was wrong because she met him in 1991 and he must have been already separated. Like, look at the auditor’s page if you don’t believe me. People tried to tell her before they got married but she would alwaysfreak out at them.
She knows he lies to her constantly but never considered that he lied about that. Instead, she’s the victim and she’s a good Christian and we’re all mean and going to burn. PSA: if you have been dating a man who has children for six months and you haven’t met the kids, he’s married. If it goes on for four years…you just don’t want to know.
Forbidden Love
I’m in love with the daughter of my ex-girlfriend, who I’ve known since she was 12. I wish that was it—it’s not. I remained involved with her mother for eight years purely because I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her daughter again for that entire time. There have been three occasions when I believe something could have happened if I had pushed it.
Once was when she was underage and twice since she was older. I believe she has similar feelings for me to some extent at least, although we have never spoken about it at all. I am around 10 years older than her; I was several years younger than her mother. I don’t have a problem meeting women, I’ve always had a girlfriend etc.
When I don’t see the daughter for a while I talk myself out of my emotions, then as soon as I see her again and as soon as she smiles at me once I am completely overwhelmed by an almost unbearable desire for her. I haven’t acted on it because I respect her mother and wouldn’t want to do that to her. I believe the daughter feels something similar.
Even though I’ve now broken up with the mother I have attempted to remain some kind of friends with her because I don’t want to accept that I will never see the daughter again. I think about her quite a bit and I find it impossible for any other girl to measure up to the feelings I have for her. I know it’s kind of messed up that I’ve felt this way since she was 12, but I’ve never done anything inappropriate and I never would.
Just being around her made wasting my time and her mother’s with the relationship I maintained worthwhile. Which I know is a terrible thing for me to say and do. I almost certainly won’t ever indulge in any real involvement with her. These thoughts are pointless. I just wanted to confess the truth for once. I’ve never told anyone anything about it.
Unanswered Questions
One time, my stepfather shouted at my mom that he had been looking for a way out of the relationship for ten years. He didn’t know I could hear. I was ten years old at the time. I spent the first few years of my life living with my mom and bio dad, meaning that my mom was with my stepdad for at least part of the time she was with my dad.
Clearly, they had something together that my stepdad couldn’t just walk away from. Years later, in my 20s, my mom had been drinking or something and was bashing my stepdad. They had divorced by this point. That’s when she said something I’ll never forget. She referred to him as “The sperm donor, since that’s the only thing he ever did for us”.
She was talking about my stepdad, not my dad. I’m in my 30s now. We lost my dad years ago, my stepdad is out of the picture. My mom has cleaned up her life…but I have these memories. I’m pretty sure my mom and dad divorced because she cheated on him, and I don’t know for sure who my real dad is. I’m not even sure my brother is my full brother.
Whatever happened back then, though, my bio dad knew, and he never said anything, but I had no doubt in my mind that he loved me and in my mind, he will always be my father.
A Face To Meet The Faces That You Meet
Despite my dedication and relatively hard work, I’m still at rung one of the corporate ladder while people with less talent and skills have surpassed me easily, all because of my lack of social skills. As a result, I’m miserable in my job but I have to keep up the charade in order not to screw my family’s lives up. They couldn’t handle having to commit me to a psych ward or such.
So I keep a straight face, tell everyone everything’s perfectly fine, and carry on. The truth is, it’s only a matter of time before I truly, really snap. Not in a violent way, just…break. Mentally, but also physically. If worse comes to worst, I could never afford the medical bills for a prolonged hospital stay. So I keep faking it, at least for now…
One In Five Odds
My mom and dad had a child out of wedlock—gasp!—in college. My dad’s parents pressured them to give her up for adoption. They eventually got married and had four more kids. I’m now 30 years old and just found all of this out. It blows my mind, and my oldest sister and I are now Facebook friends. She seems to have grown up in a very happy home.
I hope she doesn’t constantly wonder why they gave her away and kept their other four children. It makes me a bit sad.
Rise And Grind
Every day, I wake up, get cleaned up, put on a suit. I go to work, I drink my coffee, and sit at my desk, and I basically pretend to be the most obnoxiously boring white collar American IT office drone imaginable. Every day is the same stuff with these vapid, boring, sheltered ignorant people. I have to listen to their opinions on foreign policy, the government, economics.
I have to sit through grandiose tails of fishing or hiking, or how “amazing” their trip to post-revolution Egypt was. Every day. And all I want to do is scream—because they don’t know my dark past. I was literally a spy. I’ve seen Hong Kong from 25,000 feet while hurtling out of a plane the I was not supposed to be on. I’ve met Sheiks and princes and sailed the Mediterranean on a boat full of refugees.
I’ve shot down missiles, jumped out of a moving train, and literally looked at WMDs. I know exactly how much Chevron will pay to make a village move in Nigeria. I can’t say a thing. I have to sit there and do my stupid spreadsheet and I can’t say a thing to these ungrateful clowns who are so sure of the way the world works. Agh, felt way too good to get off my chest.
Carrying A Flame
For the last five years, I have been hopelessly, painfully in love with my best friend. I have dated other people and so has he, we’ve moved to different cities and led completely different lives, but I am so in love with every single fiber of his being that it consumes me. Nothing I have done can make me forget about him, and I don’t think it ever will.
Out Of My League, Out Of My Life?
I love my fiancée, but her complete lack of drive in the bedroom is making me uninterested in our relationship. I have tried all manner of buy-in over the last three years to get her interest up and we have fought about it many times, but I have finally given up. I have an extremely high drive, and so was she when we first started dating.
But she will only sleep with me a few times a month. She says she enjoys it when we do but often rushes me to finish so even when it happens it’s rarely intimate or satisfying for me. It makes me feel unattractive and undesirable and in turn makes it difficult for me to be affectionate with her. And there’s a kicker. She is beautiful and fun and way out of my league so there is intense pressure from all of my friends to stay with her.
It’s constant “if you don’t marry her you are a moron” comments. We live together but I spend more and more time isolated from her and my friends because the anxiety of feeling like I am doing the wrong thing by marrying her is crippling. I usually end up at home with headphones on playing games while she watches TV or is out drinking with her friends.
I’m The Secret
Not exactly my family since I don’t know them, but my father’s. He got my mom pregnant when they were shortly out of college and broke down completely at the idea of having a child. He moved to NYC for work, got married, had children etc. His wife, children, siblings, and mother have no idea I exist. He’s a VP for a large financial institution, so he’s pretty wealthy and seems pretty important.
He would pay unofficial child support every month with checks sent from his work address until I turned 18.
Mommy’s Little Secret
My daughter isn’t mine. My fiancée went away for a Tough Mudder competition (mud run) the weekend “my” daughter was conceived. I took the baby to get a DNA test one day when my fiancée was at work and I was at home with her. Sure enough, just like on Maury, I was NOT the father. In fact, I went to a doctor and it turns out I am sterile.
I can’t tell anyone because I love the little girl like she’s my own but it hurts when people comment on how much “she looks like her mom” but never how much she looks like me. I could never bring myself to say anything to her though because I don’t want to NOT be in the little girl’s life…as far as she knows, I am her father and she loves me unconditionally and I can’t ruin that.
Food For Thought
I’m a renowned chef. I don’t have my own TV show or anything but I have been featured on a few FoodTV shows as well as a few shows on The Cooking Channel. Anthony Bourdain stopped by one of my restaurants in the early days of No Reservations. No one would ever guess my deepest secret. Which is that I absolutely HATE most of the food I cook.
I cater to the rich snobby crowd and it’s amazing how sheep-like these people can be. I could take a pile of dirt but as long as I say it’s been “braised” and finished off with some “truffle oil” served with a tablespoon of “caviar”, they’ll “LOVE” it because of those random key words thrown in there. These people are so pretentious as all heck.
They only buy name-brand items and their minds work the same way with food. As long as I’ve got certain key words on the menu and certain ingredients in the food, they’ll claim to love it. Most of these people who claim to have high-class taste and an advanced palette are full of hot air. I’m trying to sell my share of my two restaurants to my business partner or other investors and get out.
I just want to have a small joint making fried chicken wings, not goose liver and fish eggs.
Playing Both Sides Of The Coin
My grandfather faked a burglary to get my father thrown behind bars. Cash and my grandfather’s coin collection were “stolen”. On the night of the burglary, my dad had a strong alibi because he was working the whole night long as a barkeeper and about 75 people had seen him there. But even knowing this, my grandfather won’t stop suspecting my dad.
About one year later, my grandfather gave my uncle the stolen coin collection. This event split my family into those who believe my grandfather and hate my father (my great-grandparents) and those who believe my father and hate my grandfather (the rest of my family).
The Truth Hurts
I see a lot of stories about people finding out that their parents weren’t the people raising them, and this one is a little bit different. My dad always thought his father who raised him wasn’t his biological dad, and the father thought the same. He was treated terribly by his father because the father was told he couldn’t have children and my father was born prematurely (but at a healthy weight).
So, everyone assumed my grandmother had an affair and got pregnant with my dad. It was to the point that after my grandmother passed on, my grandfather failed to even mention to his new wife that he had a son and grandchild (me). Years later, my dad gets an AncestryDNA test for him and me. He actually finds out that his dad was, in fact, his biological father.
It was shocking and sad.
Nice Try?
When I was 2½, nearly three years old, my mom divorced my biological dad. Once the paperwork was finalized, my mom had my great-granddad come down from Georgia to Florida and load up his truck and her car with what she could carry. Afterward, she went out to look for a place to live, look for a job, and do other stuff to get established in Georgia.
She left me in their care for nearly a year, coming down on the weekends to play with me and give them a bit of a break. My great-grandmother thought the world of me—but her motivations were seriously dark. She’d always wanted a son and saw this as a golden opportunity. She tried to claim my mom abandoned me, even going as far as cooking up the classic “baby in the bassinet on the front porch” story.
She even tried roping my grandmother into it. Unfortunately—or fortunately—she didn’t have any solid evidence. My grandmother refused to take part in it, as she knew there was no solid evidence to back up her claims.
Not As Easy As Rebounding
I am still hopelessly in love with my previous girlfriend. I think about her every day, wishing that she could be mine. I have had a current girlfriend for over two years now, and when I see my ex it is so difficult to contain my emotions. I am not in love with my current girlfriend, I wish I was. To be honest, I only started dating her because I thought it would help me get over my previous.
I see my ex (note: SEE her, not talk to) every month or so briefly. Every time I see her it devastates me emotionally for a few days.
Phoning It In
I’m a fake. I don’t do anything. I sit at my desk all day and do maybe 15 minutes work a day, on a good day. People ask me to do things but eventually they just go away or things sort themselves out. Usually they make excuses for me. Thing like “caught you at a busy time”, etc. Only, there’s another side to this. I am incredibly successful.
I earned about $300k after tax last year, got a big promotion and I know I’m about to get another one. I’ve tried everything: self-help books, even hypnosis, but I can’t get into it. The funny thing is, when I do something I’m interested in, I work really hard at it. I just want nothing to do with my current job, but my income is astronomical.
“The Incident”
So my parents weren’t much home when we were growing up, both worked long hours and had to travel a lot as well. So mostly it was just me, my brother, and the designated au pair we had employed at the given time. My brother and I were terrible siblings back then, I think we were too alike in the worst ways as kids—it would lead to fights.
Every once in a while, it would maybe go a step too far, like him giving me a concussion or the like. But as I always remembered it, we’d usually just move on without it ever becoming a “big deal”. Our family is one where “keeping the peace” is alpha and omega. But when I turned 18 or 19, my mom gave me this long handwritten birthday card apologizing that “that ever happened”.
It talked about how crushed our au pair was at the time, how heartbroken she herself had been. But here’s the thing. To this day, I have ZERO idea what “that” was, and I don’t want to know. I’m scared it will make me look at my family different or that happy childhood memories could be tarnished. I’m pretty sure it’s something about my brother and me.
I know it’s not what I’ve personally always defined as “the real violent episode,” because we were in our teens then and had no au pair—but it’s weird knowing you have memories that you don’t have access to.
Can’t Outrun This Problem
My dad was a high school teacher and slept with multiple female students. Pathetic and cliché. We relocated several times because this happened in a number of small towns and several girls’ relatives threatened him. No formal charges ever—he was fired from one school but able to continue teaching in another, as this was the 80s. My mom finally took me and left.
Me being a kid, didn’t find out details until later. He never knew I knew. What a surprise to learn that he had a pending harassment lawsuit where he taught when hepassed onsuddenly in his mid-50s.
Some Things Are Impossible To Live With
My mom is schizophrenic. We’ve dealt with it since we were kids. It was an absolutely horrible childhood and we (the kids) knew it was wrong, all of it. Most people thought she was odd or “eccentric” but they didn’t see everything. Just that 15-minute glimpse of people you see when you meet them. Now in my mid-40s, dealing with her in her mid-70s, I have no sympathy. I have nothing but hatred and disgust.
All of us kids feel the same but the rest of the family and her friends all feel sympathy for her and feel like “something went wrong” later in life. But we all know, us kids. We had to live through it. Every horrible episode, every scary disturbing freakout. Every time she literally pulled her own hair out or smashed her head into the wall until she knocked herself out.
As kids (me at 4 years old, being the youngest) we cleaned her up and covered her in a blanket for when she woke up. Yup. That’s the secret. Or maybe the secret is when she dies all of her kids will breathe a heavy sigh of relief and finally move on with their lives as if a giant weight has been lifted.
So Close Yet So Far
I thought I was going to graduate college…until I had a massive what seemed to be a week-long panic attack and stopped working on my last paper. I did the walk but never turned in the paper. I have been lying to folks about having a degree for seven years now. I have recently contacted the school to see if I could get the paper completed and turned in, but we’ll see.
A Hairy Situation
I’m a cis het woman who has to shave every day like a man. I won’t let anyone touch my face for fear that they’ll feel my stubble, and if I stay over at a friend’s house I hide a razor and shaving cream in my bag. I then wake up at some insanely early hour and go shave in the bathroom while everyone is still asleep. It’s a whole thing.
I’ve done laser hair removal, but a lot of my hair is too light to really react, yet too dark to go unnoticed if I let it grow. I’ve yet to ever find an electrologist that actually makes my hair go away. I also have hair on my stomach all the way up to a few inches under my chest. I’ve been tested for hormone imbalances, and all the levels come back normal.
They assume I have poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, but can’t get the numbers to back the diagnosis up.
Taking One For The Team
I am in an insane amount of debt from supporting my boyfriend through medical school. I had to pay for his meals and some day-to-day supplies such as toiletries with my credit card and use inheritance money. He had no family to support him and he had student loans that barely paid his rent, books, and transportation as well as some food. But the consequences were chilling.
Now I owe $30,000 on student loans on top of car, car insurance, gas, and everything else for my bills. I am now employed but still not out of the woods as I need to pay for the $5,000 on my credit card that was spent during the years I helped him. I pay for my own student loans as much as I can at least. I had to apply for a car loan recently for only 500 dollars and was turned down from that darn credit card. That was a harsh reminder of my dirty little secret.
He graduates in May though so he will finally be able to support himself pretty soon once he gets into his residency and gets paid.
The Family Curse
Apparently, my family is cursed. Back in the day, my grandparents made these friends in New Zealand. One day when my grandparents went over and they were getting ready to go, the friends insisted that they take a photo of them. My grandparents felt uncomfortable and tried to get out of it, but the friends insisted. They made my grandpa hold a lily and my grandma hold another and cross the lilies over so they were in an x shape.
In my culture, or at least what my family believes, is that lilies are a symbol ofdeathand photographs are believed to capture a part of the soul forever. The friends took the photograph, and from then on, our family has been stricken with tragedy. My grandparents went through a nasty divorce, their two children (my mum and aunt) have had horrible lives.
We’ve had many deaths, and my upbringing was miserable as well. My grandma believes that our family is broken apart and our story is tragic because of what happened that day in New Zealand.
Missing In Action
My aunt disappeared. There were three kids, all went into the forces. One Navy, one Army, and this aunt went Air Force. Only she didn’t. Her mother says she dropped her off at the base, but there’s no record of her ever actually entering the Air Force. And then most of the family just never saw her again. I’ve only seen her once, just randomly in my other aunt’s (her sister’s) house.
It seems like her siblings know what happened, but they aren’t sharing.
Stolen Valor
During a conflict in my country, my grandmother’s sister paid doctors to falsify the documents so that her son didn’t get conscripted—but it was all for nothing. While working at a store one day, it was hit by a bomb and he didn’t make it. His sister then paid the doctors to falsify documents to say helost his life on the battlefield.
His wife and child then got all veteran benefits: an apartment, instant acceptance to any high school and university, a large monthly allowance that allowed his wife not to work. The wife never remarried, since the benefits will be lost if she did, but she lives with a guy in the apartment she got from the government. She claims he is only her friend even though they have two grown children together.
Both her and my grandma’s sister, who go to all meetings and events, claim their loved onelost his lifeprotecting our country. They are disgusting and even my cousin, who is the child of the deceased guy, doesn’t talk to them. I tried reporting them once, because I am sick of their attitude, like they are these saints who lost a loved one and are spitting in the face of the real veterans.
My mom served and didn’t get any benefits since she, luckily, got out unharmed. Two days later, they came knocking on my grandma’s door to complain about me and harassed her. Apparently, they have someone in the government who has been protecting them. So I and the rest of my family just avoid them, to spare my elderly grandma the trouble.
Holding It Back
I was diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome and OCD as a child. I have tried to start making a list and I estimate that I have somewhere along the lines of 500-1,000 unique tics/compulsions. While in public or communicating with people, I try and prevent any one of them from happening. A tick or compulsion can come about simply by looking at someone, seeing a specific number or color, or seeing something in the background.
These tics can be physical or mental, people can notice them, or they can also be rituals I perform in my head. Despite this I have been able to obtain a Master’s degree and become a very social person. The hardest part, aside from dealing with a tic/compulsion every five seconds, is trying to hide them from people. I’m not really embarrassed about it but I would rather just fit in and avoid having to explain all of the time.
Essentially, the discomfort and never being able to truly “relax”, sucks and I don’t wish it upon anyone. Still, I am glad for my overall physical and mental health and personality that I have developed having had to live with these disorders.
An About Face
All my life I’ve claimed that I never want children, I’m not good with them, and I don’t think I would be a great mother. Then recently, everything changed. Last week I went to the doctor for a routine exam and found out I have a hormone imbalance that makes me unable to have kids. Suddenly I realized how badly I want children despite me always denying it.
I would love to be able to have little mini-me's running around, me teaching them and watching them grow. Teaching them to play piano, watching their recitals, taking them out for ice cream afterwards. Reading them bedtime stories, and having their cute little green eyes gaze up at me with unconditional love. Ugh. I haven’t told anyone what I found out last week, not my mom, not my partner, no one. it’s eating me alive. I feel worthless, and I don’t feel like a woman.
The Other Woman
I’m 20 and in a relationship with a 39-year-old married father and it’s eating away at me. Basically (he says) there has been a lack of affection for a long time and his wife never wants to travel with him when he works. He would have gotten a divorce a while ago, but because there are no “big problems” in his marriage he stays because he wants to see his son every day.
So I get paid ~$200 a week to do what his wife won’t. He doesn’t know, but I look at her Facebook and their family pictures every day to remind myself of the real costs of what I’m doing.
If They Only Knew
My mother and I did a DNA/ancestry kit and she had two first cousins she didn’t know about pop up. So when I asked my great aunt (sister of the cheating uncle) who these people were on our ancestry list, I was told her brother had an affair and had two children with another woman and that the other adult children and their offspring on our side of the family do not know about this.
She asked me not to tell them. So they have a half-brother and sister they do not know about, basically. What really ticks me off is that they are so holier-than-thou Mormon types. It’s sickening. I have kept my mouth shut only because I don’t know these cousins very well anyway, so don’t feel comfortable telling them this info. They may not even believe me!
The Changeling
I was helping my dad take my mom’s clothing to charity after her funeral. We parked in the driveway, he asked me to wait, and that’s when he made a shocking confession to me. They’d kidnapped me at birth. You know, it was never discussed, but there would be comments when my dad was angry. He said he wanted me to know due to medical history, but maybe he just wanted to confess.
They would always dodge questions I had about family medical history. Their baby haddiedthe day it was born, and they “replaced” it…with me.
Swingin’ Around The Age Gap
My aunt has had multiple affairs with different men and women ever since she remarried. my cousin found out and told my uncle. He forgave her, but she’s still doing it to my knowledge. It makes sense though—my uncle is a 70-year-old man and my aunt is 54. I never thought it was true love!
The Feeling Is Mutual
I absolutely detest my mother, and I’ve been stuck with her my entire life because she won custody of me because the justice system is biased towards mothers. I blame her for my parents’ divorce. She cheated on him twice when I was a child. My father found out about one of them because I crawled into bed with someone who I thought was my father after a nightmare at three years old. But it gets worse.
My mother is incredibly controlling with everything from finances to what I eat. The food control has caused eating problems with me where I hide food that I eat and I have no freedom in what I do eat, right down to the cream in my coffee. She will also hurt me when she doesn’t get her way. I haven’t told her, or anyone outside the house who is local, my true feelings.
She is in the military, and as much as I truly hate her, I don’t want to ruin her career because I know working and money are the only two things she truly loves. She hates me because she feels like I took my father’s love from her.
In A Lonely Place
My marriage is over, but I can’t move on for fear that my wife will hurt herself. About six months ago, my wife started helping one of her friends who was having a bit of a break with reality. This was a bit of an odd situation because the friend was a previous boyfriend of hers. I do not believe she was cheating on me and felt that she thought of him as her child that she needed to protect.
Then, in September, this guy ended up doing something crazy that ended in with him dying. Ever since that moment, my wife has tumbled into a very dark place. She has never spent the night at our home since then and lives in the guy’s house, which the guy’s family has allowed. She has completely abandoned our relationship on top of that.
We have a two-year-old daughter and she has still been good for her. I mostly feel safe when she spends time with my daughter, but nonetheless she is unstable. A month or two after her ex’s passing, she tried to seriously hurt herself and was close to being successful. She spent a week in the hospital/psych ward, but none of that really helped.
She’s cripplingly depressed, but she’s in denial about being depressed. She talks about just up and leaving, even leaving our daughter, who I would still like to be in her life. My wife has always had mental issues because of a rough childhood and bad family life and our marriage was never great, but it was serviceable. I never felt all that comfortable in my marriage, always walking on eggshells for fear of setting her off, but we had good times too.
We got pregnant accidentally, and that’s why we got married, but I don’t think that was the right choice. I absolutely love my daughter more than anything, but I can no longer say I love my wife. It’s started to become more disturbing. Her attempt to hurt herself cost a lot of money and added on to our debt—debt that she’s never had any interest in trying to help solve.
As in, she has no interest in budgeting or not using credit cards. Now my financial situation continues to spiral out of control as she has quit working and basically just lives freely off the money I work hard for. Now that we’ve been separated for months we are on fairly cordial terms when she’s not in the depths of depression.
I have expressed that this may be for the best and we should get divorced, but that absolutely set her off into a deep depression. She thinks that everyone abandons her and I would just be another, but I too have been abandoned. I want to move on with my life and take control of my financial situation for my sake, and the sake of my daughter, but I’m afraid if I move down that path then it will get worse and worse with my wife.
I do not want that. I care for her. I feel bad for her. I wish I could help her. I just don’t know when, if ever, this situation will get less tenuous, and if by then it would be too late financially speaking. Except my closest friends and my parents, no one knows about any of this. I want to tell more people my situation, but I fear it makes me look like an inconsiderate jerk that I want to leave my wife in her time of depression and mourning.
But how long does that go on? Of course there’s no answer to that, but she completely abandoned our relationship and did not seek any comfort in me, which perhaps hurt the most. I feel stuck in time at the moment. Just trying to enjoy any time with my daughter and trying to get along in life as best as possible, but it is hard to not have the faintest clue what to do next.
A Moment In Time
When I was a kid, I heard my dad tell someone on the phone that he hated me for ruining his life. My parents had me when they were 19. Growing up, I realized that my dad was only nice to me when I would do well playing sports. I ended up being very good at lacrosse, even having a scholarship lined up. And then it was all ruined in one instant.
In my grade 12 year, I took a cheap shot during a game that resulted in three breaks in my shoulder and a severed tendon. After surgery it didn’t heal right and I lost my scholarship, my dad stopped speaking to me, most of my friends stopped talking to me, and my girlfriend told me that I wasn’t worth her time anymore. I tried to deal with it for a few years. Then I hit a breaking point.
On my 20th birthday I went up to the roof of the building I worked at to jump. Right before I got to the edge a friend of mine called me and asked if I wanted to go out for a drink.
She saved my life, and she doesn’t even know it. I’ve never worked up the nerve to tell anyone I was going to jump, or to tell her what she did for me.
Just When I Think I’m Out…
One of my uncles is part of a kind of Mafia. The authorities were after him for trafficking offenses, so he ran away and changed his identity. Later, his case got cold and he got his identity back, but it all messed with his mind—and the consequences were devastating. He decided to “take revenge” on the family for “not supporting” him while he was on the run—even though literally no one could have done anything about it.
He messed up my father’s life anytime he tried to help, over and over again, until my dad gave up and cut contact. The guy tried toswindle whoever he couldand used his own children in his schemes. He would often brag about how he was defending a certain Mafia/gang from my state—because guess what, on top of being a criminal, he’s also a lawyer! No one ever had the evidence to report him.
But his quest for vengeance didn’t stop there. He then organized aburglaryof the family business, and messed up my father’s retirement plan by disappearing with one of his work registers—which was the only proof of a company he worked for before everything got digitized, the company went under before the records were saved.
Also, my family is pretty much convinced that the latestburglaryfrom my dad’s work, and even an “accident” in which my dad thankfully wasn’t hurt, were this uncle’s misdeeds. Everything points to him, but there’s nothing to show as evidence—almost as if he wanted us to know he did it, but made sure we couldn’t prove it.
He also tried to take advantage of my younger maternal aunt. He offered to take her to a show or movie, then my mom commented something like: “She’s only 14, so she needs to be back home at 8 PM”. My mom and aunt have a 20-year gap, so my mom often looked out while my grandma worked. His reaction was seriously telling. He got enraged and offended that my parents wouldn’t allow him to take her to his home as the movie/show would end up late.
My parents thought his reaction was very odd and asked what the problem was, but he refused to say. That was the moment it clicked he probably thought of trying something with my aunt, so it was immediately called off until he explained himself. He played the victim and misunderstood man who tried to help out and got wrong to the family, but after that, my dad cut contact completely.
My grandma tried to advocate and defend him, to make my father go back, but he never did. Then, a few years ago, after he finally got his hands in the family business, the rest of the family saw his true colors. He fired every family member, buried the company in debt, refused to pay his own parents, and started to purposely annoy my grandfather knowing his heart can’t take it, almost as if he was trying to end his life sooner.
Then, it finally dwelled on my grandma why my father refused to let him back in our lives. My little sister had never seen him until my grandpa’s birthday and she literally looked at his face and said: “He looks like a mad man who would do anything for his own profit”.
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
My great-grandfather was a married Methodist Pastor with his own children. He knocked up a parishioner and then eventually went on to legally adopt this single mother’s “illegitimate” child and then sent the mother away so she wouldn’t be part of my grandfather’s life. He grew up thinking he was adopted and not knowing who his real mother was.
I don’t know the details, but eventually, he must have found out. As a child, we’d do a once-a-year visit with my grandparents to see some old lady they just called a “family friend” who lived alone in a nursing home—but she was his mom. Chuck folk…so righteous.
Hiding The Truth
I’m a male in my mid-50s and I’ve never known who my father was. I was 27 years old when I went to visit the man I thought was my father and he told me I wasn’t. My mom and him divorced when I was 2 years old and I have no memories of ever living with him. I saw him once when I was in the fourth grade at a funeral and then again when I was in the seventh grade at another family member’s funeral.
The next time I saw him was when I was 27 years old, and that’s when I found out he wasn’t my father. My mom always said things like you’re not missing anything with him, be glad he’s not in your life etc. All along she was protecting HERSELF. After I found out the man I thought was my father wasn’t, when I asked my mom about it, she simply wouldn’t talk to me about it.
Not one word, at all, ever. I’ve never seen a picture of my real father, never known even his first name etc. She won’t tell me who he is.
More Than Words
I have a stutter, and almost no one knows. I am able to hide it by 1) Being relatively quiet; 2) Being a human thesaurus of small words. If I can’t say the word I’d like to use, I use awkward phrasing and other words to get my point across; 3) Saying things like “Oh I can’t think of the word…” or “I forgot what I was saying”. I am extremely anxious whenever I’m in a social situation.
I have told one person in my life, a girlfriend of many years. She was supportive at first, then left me two weeks later. Never again.
Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover
I have so much emotional pain and stress built up that I cry involuntarily almost every night. I’m fairly successful, outgoing, and I’m the guy a lot of people go to for advice or help. But when I’m by myself I always feel desperately alone. To everyone else it seems like I’ve got it all together. This has led to the most painful phenomenon. I’ve tried to talk to friends about this and they play it off like I’m joking.
My mom passed from cancer three years ago, and every relationship I have falls apart because of this pain. Just like many other secret keepers, I’m great at giving advice but horrible at following it and no one else knows that I cry myself to sleep.
Hitting The Jackpot
I’ve won a lottery, $20,000,000. It’s been two years now, and I haven’t told anyone, including my fiancé. The money’s locked up in a savings account, and I still go to work. My loved ones can’t understand why I’m so happy and carefree all of the time, even when times are tough. If only they knew…but then I think they would never forgive me.
A Happy Ending After All
My grandpa cheated on my grandma, left my dad and aunts and grandma in the state we live in now to join a biker gang with the woman he cheated with, ended up selling a load ofillicit substancesin Florida with her, gotcaught,and sent to prison. But the story doesn’t end there. Once he got out, he ended up going back home with the woman he cheated with and finally met his kids again 7-8 years later.
I do love my grandpa though, and as for the woman he cheated with? My other “step” grandma? Not sure what that term would be, but I love her very much as well and refer to her as mamaw.
The Final Straw
My uncle has an illegitimate child that lives around the block from one of my cousins. My uncle back in the day was known for having affairs and even had one with one of his students and went to prison for a bit because of it, but the child isn’t from the student affair. Everyone but my aunt knows about the child, but even after a few instances of cheating she would never leave his side because she loves him too much.
Everyone stays hush-hush about it because they know the child would weirdly enough be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I know what you’re thinking, she may know but she doesn’t. I had to threaten my uncle with the issue in order for him to stop taking advantage of my mom’s kindness and treating her house like a yard sale and soup kitchen.
Needless to say, he hasn’t been over to my mom’s house since our talk. My cousin (his child) tried to defend him and I shut her down quickly letting her know I said what I said, if he approaches my mom’s yard and starts stealing and trying to use her in any way I’m releasing the kraken. This all happened during the month when my mom lost her husband in 2020.
The family started treating her insurance check like it was theirs. Always with their hand out, but not wanting to do the same.
Passing Down The Trauma
My grandma was 16 when she got pregnant with my dad, 17 when he was born. Her family ousted her and dumped her at a cloister under the pretense of going to visit another relative. She was blindfolded when she went into labor. My dad was a premature baby, and they took him away immediately without even letting her see or touch him.
My great-grandparents raised my dad for the first few years until she was allowed to come back and returned him. She had married my biological granddad by then. But my father remained an unwanted child. His upbringing was resentful and cold, while his little sister, my aunt, was doted upon. It has reflected heavily on how my brother, sister, and I were raised, with the exception that my dad didn’t play favorites.
He never beat us, and he was a reliable supporter of the family in financial terms, he did better than my grandparents, but the psychologicalstuffhas shaped all three of us. We’re all fine on the outside, we have jobs, our own places, pay our bills, and our taxes. But all three of us are still dealing with issues that stem from our childhood and upbringing.
I don’t resent my dad anymore, he has gotten a lot better and he is a very dedicated grandpa to my nephew. I even get defensive of him when someone outside the family criticizes his parenting, seeing as his upbringing has shaped him too. The psychologicalstuffhas stopped, and we get along well nowadays, things are good. But there was I time I secretly hated him, and I know my brother and sister did too.
Late Night Mistakes
I cheated on my boyfriend about eight months ago. We’d been together (at that time) for just over a year and to this day I love him more than anything. He doesn’t know and I have decided not to tell him. The other guy is a complete screw-up who I spent almost five years in love with. For some reason he always seems to be around whenever I’m feeling really low.
This is usually when I feel like revisiting the past. I had been feeling bad around that time and wondering if I was good enough for my boyfriend, feeling like I was holding him back, like he was too good for me, that he could have anyone else and I couldn’t reason why he wanted me, etc. I got to drinking one night and while spilling my guts to that loser about how inadequate I was feeling, I made out with him.
I haven’t seen or spoken to him since then aside from letting him know that it wasn’t going to happen again, despite his suggestions that we carry on a secret fling on the side. I said that if he ever valued our friendship, he wouldn’t tell anyone.
My boyfriend is a salt of the earth kind of guy. The best man I’ve ever met. I have kept it from him because, the way I see it, I messed up. I made the mistake, not him. I should live with the guilt of it rather than putting that hurt on him. It will never happen again and if I could take it back I would. I’ve never wondered about whether or not I wanted to be with him, only about why he would ever want to be with me.
Lately I’ve been feeling particularly awful about all of this and I honestly can’t figure out why it’s been bothering me so much now after months of successfully hosting this memory way in the back of my mind. I feel like an awful person. How could I do that to such an amazing person?
Even Strong Women Get Lonely
I am a 21-year-old virgin girl. I am slightly overweight and have bad skin. I wish that I could just take a guy home from a bar and sleep with them… but honestly, I am terrified that someone will be disgusted by me. I am also terrified because I am about to graduate college, have never been in a relationship or had a constant hook-up, and no one has ever shown sober interest in me.
It makes me feel like an unattractive child. All my friends think I am a really strong woman who is in complete control of her life. I don’t tell them anything, but apparently it’s in my attitude.
All Dogs Go To Heaven
One day when I left for work, I left on an electric blanket with an automatic shut-off to keep my little dogs warm, since it was very cold outside. To this day, I cannot believe the consequences of this. My husband and I returned home to find it in flames—completely destroyed. We lost everything, except what was in our truck. All of our dogs perished in the fire.
The firefighters said it was electrical. The house was in BAD shape—we were going to move out within months. Nonetheless, I carry an insane amount of guilt…did leaving the blanket on cause the fire and cause us to lose everything, including the canines who were our whole family? The guilt is almost unbearable when I let myself think about it.
The Proof Is In The Pudding
My grandma got pregnant and married her first husband at the age of 18 to escape her parents. My mom says they were good grandparents, but all four of their kids are messed up in different ways—so I don’t know how good of parents they could have been. Anyway, by the time my grandma was 21, she was a single mother of two boys.
She remarried, had my mom, and was single again by the time she was 27. It’s well known in the family, but is not spoken about.
Say Cheese
I was 29 when I lost my dad in 2020, he was 51. Shortly after, I found out my family’s horrible secret. My grandfather got my aunt pregnant with my cousin/uncle who is almost 40 years old. My entire life, he’s (granddad) been a heavy drinker. I never truly had a relationship with him seeing as how my dad wasn’t really one to put up with his garbage.
Recently, he passed on—and the day of his funeral was something out of a scene from a comedy. The hole wasn’t dug when we showed up to the cemetery. The family wanted to have lunch at Cheddar’s and ended up waiting over an hour just to get drinks. Another hour and a half for food to show up—one plate at a time in 15-minute intervals.
A few unhappy cousins started getting into verbal exchanges with staff over lack of service. At 2 pm, myself and a few uncles go back to watch granddad actually get lowered into his hole while the rest of the family stayed at Cheddar’s. And the finale ended with us going back to Cheddar’s to find that some of our family STILL hadn’t received food.
This moved on to arguing with the manager, who ended up comping unknown quantities of appetizers, drinks, and some actual meals. The whole day I couldn’t help but ask myself in my head “I wonder who all knows what he did”? and “How theheckcould someone like this outlive someone as awesome and loved as my dad”?
Lesson Learned?
My dad was born during the Depression, and they couldn’t afford to have him—he was unexpected and had two older brothers—so my grandmother told my grandad no more makin’ babies. Well…he cheated, and it cost him his life. He slept with a married woman. That woman’s husband shot him, and he didn’t survive. My grandmother and her three sons were extremely poor without him, around and my father’s life for the next decade was awful.
Momma’s Boy
I’m 27 and still live at home with my mom. I get a lot of stick from my friends who say I’m too old to be at home. Truth is, I love living at home. I get on so well with my mom. I’m not some man-child who does nothing for himself. I have a good job, I look after myself and pay rent and bills for where we live. I just don’t want to move out on my own because I love my living arrangements as they are now.
Mother Doesn’t Know Best
My secret is that my mother has only ever seen me as a financial opportunity by means of child support (until I was 18) and “college money” from my grandfather that I’ve never ever seen. She has no interest in my life otherwise. You’re probably thinking, “Well she obviously spent money on you the entire time you lived with her”.
This isn’t the case, unfortunately. My dad had to give me a secret debit card because he knew my mom was using all the money on herself after he gave her a $1,400 check to buy me a laptop that I never got. Since I was a teenager and my grandfather would send me $200-400 checks for my birthday and Christmas, my mom would always get me to give them to her because she “needed it” and “family was first”.
When I tried to put up a fight, she would call me selfish and a spoiled brat and tell me how ashamed my grandparents would be and what a terrible daughter I was and didn’t I love her? I was never allowed to have my aunt’s, uncle’s, or grandparents’ phone numbers or emails and I only talked to them on her phone. She constantly tries to drive a wedge between my dad and I.
She says that he is trying to buy my love and make her look inadequate due to the fact that she hasn’t had a job in years, is living off of a trust fund (having blown through my 100,000 in college savings), and my father is now paying for my entire college education so that I can avoid student loans. It drives her crazy that nothing I own she has provided me.
She hates this because it prevents her from the ability to “cut me off”, something she did to my cell—when she still paid the bill—every time we got into a disagreement. My phone was shut off at least twice a week during this period. Even though I know, and have known, that she is emotionally unfit for motherhood and that I am a good daughter, I can’t fight the feeling that I’m a bad daughter and that I owe her something.
Luckily, I have the most amazing dad in the world and a stepmother who has gone above and beyond in filling the motherly void in my life. To them I am incomprehensibly grateful, but I do wish my real mother would care for me as much as the woman who’s known me for nine years. And on top of that, she’s developed an addiction that scares the heck out of me night and day.
Wow, that felt good.
Hiding From More Than Secrets
My grandfather had a secret that he took to his grave. I know it happened when he was young. He was the most compassionate and loving man I have ever known. He has never shied away from his past—except for one thing. I asked him about it once he said theauthoritieswere looking for him but that “it was taken care of”. He said he told my grandmother once and based on her reaction, he said he never tell anyone again.
Based on what I know of his past, I believe hetook someone’s life while under the influence. I believe this because of the movie The Apostle. He couldn’t finish it and got extremely emotional over it. He was a pastor for 55 years it seemed like that movie hit him on a deep personal level. Whatever it was, he had made peace with it. In his youth, because of his problems, everyone believed that he wouldn’t live long.
They all thought that he’d likely wind upin the gutter. Well, he turned his life around and helped so many people. He passed a month ago, and I miss him dearly.
Actions Have Consequences
My dad cheated on my mom right after we moved to the US for his job. He couldn’t bring himself to admit to my mom he was unfaithful, so he took the coward’s way out. He purposely left open an email conversation between him and the woman he was having an affair with for my oldest sister to find. She was I think 13 or so at the time and it messed her up bad.
She told my mom and after watching the destruction of her parents’ lives, she overdosed on pain meds and almost didn’t make it. My other sister and I, around 7 or so, woke up to my mom screaming at my sister and shaking her who wouldn’t wake up. It messed us all up pretty bad and to this day, my dad has never owned up to his faults to any of us kids.
Racing To The Truth
My mother’s uncle and cousin had a baby together, in a very rural part of where she’s from. My mother found out about it as a kid by accident, and spent her whole life trying to find the truth. And she only got the whole story recently by flying across the whole country and basically sneaking into the home where her mother’s sole remaining childhood friend lived.
She got the story out of her before any other family member could show up and stop her. Sadly, she learned that the babyhad actually passed onin childhood.
The Animal Inside
I find every day to be a struggle against the urge not to snap and just start attacking the people I know for various reasons. I almost constantly have to restrain myself when dealing with the majority of them in order to keep myself from doing anything to them, but more often than not I get by with minor appeasement from condescension. But inside, it’s terrifying.
All while, I withhold the urge to just start hurting them as much as possible. While I am currently seeing a psychiatrist for this kind of thing, in a sense I’m so well aware of what my problems are and their signals that I can mask them face-to-face with a professional and generalize my issues as “social anxiety” without even really thinking about it.
I’m hesitant to bring up just how I really feel about everything because I’m more concerned it would inconvenience me than actually be beneficial. While I understand well enough that how I feel about all this and how I think of it isn’t “right”, a part of me doesn’t want to be without it and I find myself enjoying the idea of seeing them all suffer for their bad habits and stupidity.
All the while, I also want to avoid the stigma and judgment of being perceived as a psychotic by people I have to interact with in person due to how it might affect my meager life. I have difficulty sleeping sometimes due to all this. I lie in bed wondering if this is how psychos feel before they go on to commit their sprees. I’m worried that it’s more of a matter of when than why for me currently.
Leave Me Alone
I live in the Bible Belt, and it’s a very religious, family-oriented culture. My father left when I was four, and I recently found out that he passed from addiction in Colorado. My mother passed a couple years ago of sarquoidosis (a rare disease) when I was 14. I have lived with my grandparents since then. A while after my mother passed, I became an atheist.
Until about six months after, I couldn’t admit it to my grandparents. I finally did, and as much as they said it didn’t bother them, ever since then they’ve treated me like a stranger. They still force me to go to church and scold me when people find out I’m an atheist. Most of my more distant family is the same. The only person in my family who still treats me like family is my uncle in Tennessee.
My secret is that I plan to cut contact with my family completely after I finish college and leave the country. Where I live, that is considered as bad as an act of betrayal to god. I’ve always been a very introverted person with a small group of friends that I genuinely trust. Any friends outside this group drift away in a couple of years, sometimes months.
I hope that if I ever get married, my wife won’t have much family, or at least won’t make me get involved with them. Moreover, I don’t want to live to meet my grandchildren. I would be happy living with only a partner and a few friends. But of course, the world is a cruel place. There will always be others who will want to get involved for their own gain.
Between A Rock And A Hard Place
I got a girl pregnant very early in my life. I love, have loved, and will always love my son, but God do I ever wish he was conceived in later years. It’s an interestingly depressing feeling when you give up your hopes and dreams for another. I don’t think it helped that the mother of the child dangled the threat of child support and leaving with the baby if I ever dated another girl, all the while going out with her boyfriend.
When You Assume…
I found out I had an older half-sibling when I was in my 20s. Apparently, my father had a secret affair before I was born. The only way I learned is because this half-sibling sent me a long, very angry message on social media berating me. I was shocked to say the least. The message basically said how they had always hated me because I must’ve “lived such a privileged life, full of opportunities they never had, with a loving father who spoiled me”.
It explained how they had searched for me for years, to expose him. But they didn’t know the truth. That’s when I had to explain to them that our father had also left me when I was just a small child, and that he had never been a part of my life either. I explained that he was a heavy user and complete loser who had been physical with my mother.
I told them that I never wanted him to be a part of my life, especially as an adult. They were in absolute shock for holding onto false anger towards me, and hating me all those years. They explained how it had affected their entire personal life, and how they had been in years of therapy, through multiple divorces, etc. etc.—all over these false assumptions.
Coulda Been John Wick
When I was just a little baby, a tsunami hit my home country, which messed with the terrible third-world government data system, or so I was told. It deleted the “real” me from existence. It wasn’t until my mom decided to raise me in the US that I finally got alegalname and birthday, both of which were changed in the process of moving.
I was seven at the time and have since been living under this makeshift identity, but the fact that I was hidden from the government for that long amazes me. If you ask me, though, she missed her chance to raise an undercover and very personal hitman.
An Offer They Had To Refuse
In 1921, my great-grandfather’s father was going to be installed as the new Don for a mafia family in southern Italy. Mussolini was getting ready to grab power and felt like he was going to cause problems for the family. He didn’t want to do it. He told his father that he and his brother were going out for a gallon of milk.
They jumped on a boat, came to America, and changed their last name.
Something Isn’t Right
I have cancer and no one knows about it, partially even myself. I’m fairly sure it has metastasized to other parts of my body. I’m definitely scared to even admit it and often think of the five stages of loss and grief and that I’m stuck in the denial stage. My heart is racing from fear even as I am typing this. I’m relatively young, still in my 20s, but it started as what I suspected to be a tumor in my pelvis when I was maybe 13.
It was definitely confirmed to be a tumor as it is now by my scrotum and about the size of a golf ball. I’ve been through numerous physicals, but no doctor has ever said anything about it and neither have I. I think about going to an oncologist once in a while but have no idea how to start. “Hey doc, I think I have cancer but I’m not sure and have been concealing it for more than 10 years”. I’m extremely scared of the consequences, not necessarily passing but leaving my partner, family, and friends behind.
I have a decent job, I own a home and have insurance coverage but I always think of a myriad of reasons not to visit the doctor. Will treatment wreck me financially and cause me to be a burden? Will I end up having to have numerous organs removed? Will I even survive this? Sometimes I hope it will go away on its own. I know better.
Other times I hope I’ll just go from an aneurysm or something. Yet other times I imagine that my hand will be forced at some point. That I’ll go to the doctor and go through treatment and be relatively okay for the rest of my life.
It Takes Four
I’m in love with the wife of one of my best friends. Everyone knows I have/had a crush on her but it’s more than that in my head, and it’s been more than that for years. I met her the exact same day he met her when they were set up for a blind date, which was over a decade ago. He’s a great person and they’re happily married now.
I wouldn’t get in the way of their relationship. But there’s something even worse. Another kicker is I’m married too and love my wife to pieces. It’s hard to comprehend when growing up in a monogamous culture, which I think adds to my turmoil. I would never get in the way of their relationship or my relationship with my wife.
Instead I aim to be a good friend to the both of them, and not just because I love her, but because I respect him as a friend as well.
Taking On The Burden
It’s rumored that one of my aunts euthanized my grandmother, who was dying of lung cancer at the time, at 74 years of age. Shepassedafter being discharged from a long hospital stay while being driven home. This aunt had been taking care of her for years, and my other aunts and uncles plus my mother, seven of them in total, quickly turned on her and accused her ofoffingmy grandma so she could inherit the house.
I don’t have the specifics but basically, she flipped out and cursed them out, saying that they had some nerve sayingstuff like thatwhile they all moved away across the country and she was the only one taking care of their mother while also raising and supporting six children and constantly having to defend herself from an abusive alcoholic husband.
She also said something to the effect that my grandma had known it was time to go and she was all for ending it quickly or some such, which the family took as evidence. Now that they’re all old and two of the siblings havepassed they’re all Kumbaya, but there’s still that big resentment there, and they’re still pretty terrible to each other.
The Forgotten Man
My grandfather had achild out of wedlock with my grandmother’s sister. His sister-in-law was married to a man who was away on duty while they had an affair. She gave birth to the child three months before her husband returned since he was gone for the whole year. She didn’t want the child and was going to turn him into an orphanage at birth so her husband wouldn’t find out.
My grandfather wanted nothing to do with that child either. My grandmother found out about the affair and as big-hearted as she was, took that child in and raised it as her own. But it didn’t quite turn out as she planned. He grew up with issues due to this. He had 13 siblings and some considered him a brother. Others treated him like an outsider.
He grew up troubled as you can imagine and knew of his reality even though my grandma tried to keep the secret. He grew up and became a junkie. A horrible addict. To this day you can see him in the family videos but my father and his siblings never point him out. Some relatives have cut him out of family pictures. They never speak about him.
I was only a child when this happened, around 7-9 years old. I remembered him but I thought I only dreamed him up until I was a teenager I saw him in one of my birthday videos. My sister and mother told me the truth. That he in fact was real and what happened. That’s how well my family has kept him a secret. I myself thought he was a dreamed man.
Now That’s A Rebound
After my grandmother on my mother’s side passed, my grandfather took off for a few months, leaving his children ranging from older teens to grade school age alone. When he returned, he was married to a woman who he and my grandmother were friends with from the Moose Lodge and had four more children to add to the mix.
Nothing Sweet Or Little About These Lies
When I was 17, I started dating a 26-year-old, who my parents met and approved of, of course. We dated for six months when I finally decided something was weird and did research online. I was stunned at what I found. Thanks to my county’s auditor website, I discovered he was married and had a six-year-old daughter. I was completely ruined.
I was a mistress at age 17 and I had no idea. Every single thing was a lie with him, and it ruined me. I honestly can’t trust any guy anymore. I always imagine that something is going on behind the scenes that I don’t know about. The worst part is that I decided to stay friends with him, and still talk to him to this day. He now has a girlfriend on top of everything.
This broke my heart to hear. I did honestly love him. Screw me, it doesn’t help that any guy I started to see after him lied about everything as well. I’ve only told a few close friends, but I’m afraid to tell any guy I start talking to in case they think I’m some sort of homewrecking witch, but I never even knew the entire time that we were together.
What He Doesn’t Know Might Hurt Him
My dad is not my biological father. He doesn’t know this. I’m in my mid-30s, I love my dad to bits, I don’t want him to know I’m not his. Not that it matters, since my mother has threatened me over telling him. In fact, no one in my family or our friends knows about this. My biological father desperately wants a relationship with me and I don’t want one with him.
My mother, however, is angry at me for not pursuing a relationship with him because he “has money”.
Switched At Birth
My secret is that my grandmother was adopted—sort of. See, my great-grandmother miscarried her child. At the time (1930s/40s, I think), all women were put in the same ward in the hospital after they gave birth, even if the baby didn’t survive. Anyway, there was a woman in the bed next to my great-grandmother who had just given birth, but she didn’t want a child.
She wanted the hospital staff to “get rid of it”. So they just…gave the baby to my great-grandmother. No paperwork or anything. They had one woman who was distraught at having lost her baby, and another distraught having got her baby, and I guess they just thought “I know how to fix this”. It seems so weird by today’s standards (and definitely not legal) but I guess it was perfectly logical. As far as I know, they all lived happily ever after.
Now That’s Bad Timing
One week before my younger sister’s wedding, my dad decided to call myself, both my sisters, and my mother (his ex-wife) to make a disturbing demand. He wanted us to meet at his house for something “very important he needed to tell us”. We all thought he had cancer or something. We were very worried. Once we were all there, he sobbingly confessed to having a five-year-old son living in the town next to ours.
This means the kid was conceived and born while my parents were still married. He claimed he didn’t know for sure that the kid was his, and he had only recently gotten a DNA test. He showed us a picture of our half-brother. He looks EXACTLY like my dad. My mother was devastated.
Black Sheep Or Bunny?
My great aunt was aPlayboybunny in the 1970s and apparently lived in the mansion and everything. I don’t know what her alias was, and only saw one photo of her in the bunny costume with other models the one time I met her as a kid. No one will talk to me about it and changes the subject the few times I’ve tried to bring it up.
A Real Giveaway
We always joked about my uncle being in the mafia because he looked like an Italian gangster. Well, that wasn’t true—but our suspicions ended up unraveling a wild secret. It turns out he had a totally different father than all of the other brothers and sisters…and, he was the middle child.
What A Tangled Web We Weave
My grandparents on my mother’s side were swingers—all four of them. After my mother was born, her mother and father split up. They then each married a person from another couple—sort of a marriage merge.
The Ties That Bind
My secret is that I am technically still married. We haven’t seen each other in four years but neither of us can afford a divorce, so legally we are still married. I guess that would be fine in and of itself, but I’ve been a huge coward about advertising it. My past two relationships never knew and no one but my immediate family knows—no friends, nothing.
Keep This Between Us
My great-aunt had a kid that absolutely nobody in the family knew about. She moved to the west coast “for work” when she found out, and stayed long enough to have the baby, recover, and give him up for adoption. Apparently, she never even knew who the father was, and it was the 1950s so that was kind of frowned upon at the time.
The Secrets Lurking In The “Other” Inbox
I have a secret sister that I’m not supposed to know about. Apparently, my mom get pregnant when she was really young, so my grandparents kicked her out of their house. She was living on her own and struggling to work to support her and her baby. She ended up giving the baby up for adoption. I guess my sister was shuffled around some foster homes and went through a lot of terrible things in her life, so she didn’t turn out very well.
I only know this because my other sister told me. I guess my secret sister tried to contact my mom and my other sister through Facebook to ask them for money—so that’s how my sister found out about her.
Tragedy On Tragedy
My cousin had a disorder that meant his brain maturation was equivalent to a four-year-old. He didn’t understand safety around babies. So he had attempted to pick up another family member’s baby who was six months old, but he dropped her. Seeing as he had snuck in to see the baby, he put her back and left. She had severe trauma and passed later that week.
Everyone who wasn’t there was told she rolled over and that’s how she fell/got injured. My uncle couldn’t bring himself to risk his son being locked up, be it in a facility or jail/prison, so we just sat on the secret.
Wait For The Punchline
My grandmother was born to a brother and sister and no one ever talks about it. She was adopted out and found out the truth later when her birth mother would come visit a lot. Dad found out later in life. It was the 1920s, they were 12 & 14 on a remote farm—genuine Flowers in the Attic-type stuff. This was typed with my two fingers and one toe.
Too Close To The Bone
I get obsessed really easily. With people, problems, things in general…It’s hard for me to move on from practically all of my breakups, no matter how “minor” they were. Plus broken friendships happen to me constantly—they’ve ended because I get too obsessed with hanging out with or talking to that person. It’s ruining my life but I can’t seem to stop.
Childhood: Ruined
My aunt and grandma actually kidnapped me when I was a four. I have a very faint memory of staying with them, but I spent about a year with them before my parents got me back. I wasn’t really mistreated, but to hide who I was they shaved my head and told everyone I was a boy when I was really a girl. Also instead of saying I was four they said I was two.
The faint memory I have was of being mad my hair was gone, and being really upset I had to wear pull ups.
Gotta Get Out
Here’s my secret: I don’t want to live with my parents anymore. I’m 27, make really good money, and could move out whenever I want. But my parents are both permanently disabled and I pay them rent in addition to most of the bills. They’re also currently in the process of fighting the banks to keep their house. If I move out, everything will most likely collapse and they’ll lose the house and have to move.
Paging Dr. Phil
Apparently, my grandfather had an illegitimate, mixed-race kid outside of his marriage to my grandmother. From what I’ve been told and overheard over the years, my dad and aunts didn’t find out until they received a phone call from the kid, who was around 40 years old by that time, when my grandfatherpassed onin 2004. I’m also certain my grandma knew about his affair/child and him financially supporting her, but chose to not acknowledge it.
Sadly, my dad and aunts never got to confront him. I’m also fairly certain that hush money was given to my mystery aunt to not publicize the situation. It’s a shame that I don’t know her name because I would like to meet her. Hopefully, she’s not like my other three aunts, who are all bougie snobs who have turned my dad into the black sheep of the family for his drinking, even though they’ve been involved in some way more scandalous situations.
And the story doesn’t end there. I know that my dad is shady in the faithful department. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! Several years ago, me, my husband, and my brother decided to ride over to my dad’s house to visit him while my stepmom was away for the weekend. We were gonna surprise him so we didn’t call beforehand.
At the time, he lived in the country and was the only house on his road. When we parked in the driveway and got out, we were greeted by a bizarre sight. There were several articles of clothing strewn on the ground, leading to the door. I knocked on the door several times but my dad never answered and his door was locked. He never locked his door, so that was highly suspect.
So we stood around outside for a few minutes to see if he would come to the door and that’s when I noticed a woman’s purse on one of the outside chairs. I did what any nosy daughter would’ve done—I went through it to see whose it was. I saw the driver’s license of a woman who definitely wasn’t my stepmom. There was also a little prepaid cricket phone in her purse.
So we decided to leave, and as we are driving away, my brother looks at us and did one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen him do in my life. He said “Hey, y’all know that crickets don’t fly” and threw that woman’s phone out the window at 55 mph.
Ignorance Is Bliss
My siblings and I are aware that we have a younger half-sister after our father confessed about her a few years after our parents’ divorce. She lives in a poorer country and we’ve even visited her. My dad says the reason he told us is because he wants us to “look out for her”. I remember the funny feeling of betrayal. I was already in my 20s, and moreteedoff about not being the only daughter as I believed I’d been my whole life.
Also, my dad gave her my middle name. We’re around seven years apart and I couldn’t care less about her. The funny thing was, when we visited her, my dad actually brought his third wife along. He had also divorced the girl’s mother at this point. I wonder what the woman was thinking? And on top of that…my mom doesn’t know anything about the girl.
She saw family photos of us when we visited our half-sister, with the teen girl tugging my dad’s hand. We siblings had to lie that it was his friend’s kid.
That Family Tree Is Twisted
My paternal grandmother had all her four children with different fathers. She was pregnant with my dad when she met the person who my dad thought was his father. She had one child with him, and then got pregnant twice with two other men while married to him. The first wasn’t so obvious, but the second was. They divorced, of course.
I did the AncestryDNA test to figure out what I am, and then this started to come to light with the connections. We thought that the person who my dad thought was his father had three children with my grandmother, but only had one. It sucks that my grandmother didn’t tell the truth before she passed. Also, I carry a last name from someone who is not biologically related to me, who I thought was.
I am just glad my parents who raised me are my biological parents. My dad is completely in denial about this truth. He doesn’t know who his father is, and it is hard to find out since a lot of people in the older generation are no longer alive.
The Real Black Sheep Of The Family
My older cousin is responsible for his girlfriend taking her life. The details of this haunt me to this day. The elders of the family try to keep it quiet, but the young adults know. They had been together for 15 years and he knew she had mental issues. Instead of being mindful of the issues and handling her with care, he mentally and emotionally mistreated her.
He cheated on her, but more than that he put himself in position to be caught to show her she was replaceable. He got her a job with his ex-fiancée, which caused major tension in the relationship and at work. He judged her clothes and her weight and when he felt like she wasn’t up to his standards, after working 60+ hours a week as a nurse, he’d tell her he was leaving for the weekend and not to reach out to him.
He would then post his fun weekends with random girls on social media for her to see. She would try to leave but he always roped her back in with manipulation and “acts of love”. Then she reached her breaking point. She wanted a family. A few years ago, he promised her marriage and a family of their own. When she told him she was ready for it, he did an about-face.
He told her he never wanted to do that because he didn’t want a child slowing him down and they were technically married by common-law anyway, so a real marriage was pointless at that point. She had a nervous breakdown. She started posting all their secrets on Facebook, would randomly call people in the middle of the night to sing random songs and hang up, and rearrange rooms in her and his apartments in odd ways.
Like TV in bathroom, sofa in the kitchen, kitchen table in the spare room. Eventually, she was convinced to go stay with her uncle for a while so he could take care of her. That’s when disaster struck. One night, she told her uncle she was tired and was going to bed. She went in her room, took half a bottle of sleeping pills, and never woke up.
When my siblings and I found out she had passed, we asked my cousin about how he was and what had happened. He replied with “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in a month. I guess her mind got the best of her. I’ll miss her, but I’m alright”. It was such an odd response from someone who had spent a good chunk of his life with her.
My siblings and I felt like it was weird and decided to ask questions. Now, I’m just like screw that guy. I don’t see him, I don’t talk to him, and I avoid any family functions I know he’ll be at. My sister found out he was seeing someone else and decided to add her on Facebook. She talks to her often to make sure she’s okay and that my cousin isn’t messing with her emotions.
A Black Spot
I don’t remember my “ex”. I started “remembering” June of 2012. It’s in fragments and non-chronological. Only my best friend knows. I browsed through both of our online accounts and close friends to try and map out dates and events. All these years I felt so normal. I’ve gotten a few hints and proofs but they’re hardly solid enough to convince me.
I don’t want to talk to the “ex” directly because I fear what I may seem to “remember” is fake and my brain is messing around with me. I know I need therapy but I don’t have the money for it.
Everything All At Once
In mid-December, I was headhunted and offered my dream position at a company I’ve dreamt about working for. I moved away to the capital and made a plan with my university to finish my degree while working. But there’s something crucial that no one knows. I have early stage cancer. I found out before taking the job, and I haven’t told a soul.
I have been putting off getting it treated because a) I’m an idiot and b) my new, super-awesome everything-I-hoped-it-would-be job sent me to do training at the Chamber of Commerce, so I haven’t “had time”. Which is a bad excuse when dealing with cancer, but now that I’m settled in I’ll do it. It’s cervical cancer that may or may not have spread to other parts of my uterus.
Since we caught it relatively early, the best case scenario is they just go in and take it out surgically and I won’t have to suffer through chemo and radiation, but I don’t know yet. Losing my fertility isn’t something that bothers me greatly when I’m in a position where I could lose my life.
Despicable To The End
My grandad had seven kids with three different mistresses while he was married to my nan. My cousin is actually my mom’s half-brother. But that’s not the worst part. About six months ago, my grandad told my family that my nan fainted in the kitchen, but he didn’t know. He watched TV for around 20 minutes before she woke up.
When she woke up she begged him to take her to the hospital, but he didn’t want to waste fuel so he called his friend who took around 20 minutes to get to their home so they could drive to the hospital. My nanpassedon the way to the hospital. We don’t know which friend drove them to the hospital nor which hospital they drove to and her cause ofdeathis still unknown.
This happened around six months ago and it still hurts. He lied about how my nanpassedbefore her funeral and told his kids including my mother to get over it. Hetookpart of the money for her funeral and spent it on his mistress. No one talks to him, he is an absolute piece of trash. He was so flippant at the funeral. His wife of 40 yearswas goneand he doesn’t care.
My nan refused to leave him as she loved him, even though he cheated. He is despicable.
A Secret With A Happy Ending
My uncle served in Vietnam. While over there, his troop found a baby that had been orphaned or abandoned, they aren’t sure. My uncle was shipping back to Australia soon and wanted to adopt him, but my aunt said no. They’d only been married about four months when he was drafted, so while I don’t agree with my aunt’s actions and generally don’t like her as a person, I can understand why she said no.
My uncle’s troop found a family to raise the baby, and that’s the story the whole family knows—but there’s way more to it than that. The secret is that my uncle and some other guys from his troop stayed in contact with the family and the kid, sending them money every month to help raise him and then to help him go to university.
They eventually helped him and his adoptive family move to Australia in the late 90s. My aunt and the rest of my family had no idea all this time, it only came out when my aunt and uncle divorced in 2017 and she had a forensic accountant go through their bank records. She worked at a bank for like 40 years and always noticed the money missing, but his reasons were always justified.
Since we all know now, my uncle has introduced some of us to the guy and his family. They’re all really lovely people.
It’s Not Only Money
A few years before my Dad passed on, he had a chat with me about what my Mum had done. It turns out that she forged my Dads signature to re-mortgage their house and used the money to spend on whatever she wanted, when my dad confronted her with the evidence all she said was “It’s only money”. To add to this, she ran up multiple credit cards to five-figure sums.
On those, my dad bailed her out at least three times. Eventually, my dad had to re-mortgage a small portion of their house to bail her out again. This was when they were retired. I found out the actual sum that he bailed her out of when I was clearing out the house after she passed on. I found a small piece of paper with the sums written down by my dad. It came to nearly £50,000.
My dad said he never left her because of me and my brother, she never owned up to it and never apologized, not even sure if my brother knows the full scale of what she did. I will never forgive my mum for what she did and I am glad she is gone. I miss my dad terribly. After he told me this, everything that went on between my mom and dad during my younger years all fell into place.
For all the money my mom spent, she had little to show for it. I have no idea what she spent it on.
Know-It-All
My husband is having an affair. I know about it but I am too scared of what will happen if I confront him. He is so narcissistic that he can’t see anything wrong with anything he does. We have a nine-year-old and I think it would destroy him if he knew. My mom was married seven different times while I was growing up, so I have a huge fear of becoming her. I know it’s irrational but that is what stops me from divorcing him.
I have a good job and can afford it. I do have solid proof of his affair. And although I haven’t confronted him yet., I know he will lie about it because he lies every time I confront him in an argument.
The Butterfly Effect
I went to school with this kid who used to torment me. He was awful. He would shove me down the stairs, hit me with a baseball bat, basically give me bruises and broken bones. He also used to do other awful things to me. I got a brand new NFL coat for Christmas and was wearing it in class. He wrote a horrible word on it with a sharpie, ruining it in the process.
No one did anything about it because 1) I went to a private religious school, 2) His father was the head pastor and school principal, and 3) The school told my parents I used to self-harm. It wasn’t true at all, but when you are 10 and every adult in the system tells your parents that there is something wrong with you, it is difficult to get them to see any different.
Sometime later my parents put me in a different school for unrelated reasons. I start to excel, make lots of friends, no more broken bones, etc. But then the nightmare happens. About a year later the guy shows up because my old school had to shut down. He starts taunting me, telling me he is going to make my life miserable again.
But then later that afternoon, we found out they brought a dog to start doing locker searches. My friend was freaking out about the stage he had…but it gave me an idea. I knew immediately that I wanted to set that guy up. I had the whole class period to think about it. After the bell rang, I caught up to him in the hall and stuffed my friend’s stash in his bag.
We could have just flushed it, threw it out, but I wanted to get back at him. It all happened so fast from there. I didn’t actually get to see it but after lunch he was detained, expelled, and I had no idea what happened to him…until years later. His parents were forced to send him to a boarding school. Only, this started a shocking chain of events.
While he was there, he contracted a serious infection in a minor cut and had to have his leg amputated. While he was at the hospital, his father perished a car accident on his way there to see his son. A friend of mine dated his sister during their senior year when all of this happened. After high school, she said he struggled with a lot of the lingering effects of the amputation.
His health never made strides and she always suspected his guilt over what happened to their father had something to do with it. He is in constant pain, every day, and refuses to walk with crutches or a prosthetic and has confined himself to a wheel chair. In the wake of his father’s passing, he has become even more of a fanatical religious zealot.
He has become vice principal of another private school in the area. She doesn’t speak to him much anymore because he is just too depressing and since his detainment has become an unapologetic jerk.
Picking Sides
When I was in fourth grade I read some text messages between my mom and the man she owned a business with. At the time I had no idea what they meant, but they were along the lines of “I love you so much, can’t wait to see you again”. Recently, my parents got divorced and my sister and me discovered that my mom had an affair for 15 years.
This man went to my birth and pretty much every big event that has happened in my life. I realized she was having an affair around a year before my parents’ divorce, from walking in on them kissing. My mom is a very controlling person and has brainwashed my sisters into thinking my dad is a horrible person. Me and my sisters currently do not live together—I’m with my dad and my sisters are with my mom.
When I threatened to expose my mom to her friends and family, she threatened to kick me out and make sure I never live in a house again. After I told my friends about what she did she threw a 25-pound dumbbell at me. Now I am bigger and stronger than her, so she will not mess with me. After a very awful childhood, I was put into a lot of therapy—but there’s still a problem.
None of my therapists have ever been on my side, andthey break HIPAA laws by telling my mom everything we talk about.
Not A Secret Anymore
One day, my dad told my mom he was flying to our holiday home on the other side of the state to do some maintenance on the house and he would be gone for about a week. The truth was so much more devastating. What he was really doing was going to the hospital to get a brain tumor removed. He’d hidden his cancer for months and didn’t tell anyone—not even his wife of 45 years.
After a week, he was discharged. He went home and told my mom the whole story. When we asked why he didn’t tell anyone, his response was heartbreaking. He said that he didn’t want to scare or stress anyone out. I think my mom almost put him straight back in that hospital. Thank God it all went well, and he is still cancer-free.
Escapism For Moms
My sisters and I found my mom’s fantasy love letters that she wrote to other men besides my father. I know they were fantasy because she didn’t even know half of them and some were happily married. They were the saddest things I’ve ever laid eyes on. She wrote about how she wanted to run off with these men and have their babies.
She would write them, wad them up, and just throw them wherever. I’m surprised my father never found them. My youngest sister would scream at her, “ARE YOU INSANE, MOTHER”!?! We just thought she was unhappy with my father and never said anything to him about it.
He Deserved It
I had been at my first job in high school for a couple of years. Some new kid came in and told a bunch of lies to the owner about stuff I had apparently “done at work”. I wasn’t questioned, just let go immediately. I was so angry, I immediately started plotting my revenge. On the kid’s next shift my best friend and I went and placed large nails up against all of his tires so when he drove forward they would go right into his tires.
I heard he had to replace all four. That was 20 years ago and I still have to side-eye when I see him around town.
Pinball Is A Full Contact Sport
My grandfather lost his life in a bar when my father was still a toddler. The official story was that he was attacked over a pinball game. Back then, pinball was taken pretty seriously, I guess. It wasn’t until recently that my grandmother made a shocking deathbed confession. She told us that my grandfather had actually taken someone else’s life and buried the body, days before his own demise.
So he was actually targeted in retaliation for a terrible thing that he had committed. Pinball was just the excuse. My grandmother kept this secret for almost 65 years.
Daddy Issues
This was one of those revelations that haunted me the very moment it came out. It was a case where my client, a mother, was trying to get a restraining order against her brother for harming her kid. The entire time, she’d been super dodgy about the kid’s father’s identity. Well, in the middle of open court…she confessed that the brother was her child’s father.
Dad Checks Up On Daughter
When I was 20 years old my brother let me know that I was adopted. Everyone in the family—I’m the youngest of five—knew and kept it a secret. It turns out my mom and birth mom are distant cousins. My birth dad was in a biker gang and he and my mom both had addiction problems and had absolutely no clue how to care for a baby.
After I found this out, I saw some pictures of my birth dad, I was shocked. Turns out I recognized him. He was a regular in the restaurant I worked at the year before I found out about being adopted. He was always very kind to me and told me he knew some of my distant family but left it at that. It turns out he wasn’t there for the food, he just wanted to see who his daughter was and know that I was turning out ok.
Cam Girl
Prior to moving in, she called me to ask if she could draw pictures of bunnies on our wall. I said no. But alas, I moved into a room with bunnies drawn on the wall. After a few weeks of living together, I discovered she was doing a webcam show while I was in the background doing my chemistry homework! I ended up moving out shortly after because she was up all night on her webcam, and I couldn’t sleep. But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
I also once came home to her playing naked Twister in the living room with strangers. She also left used tampons around the apartment. That was the final straw for me.
A “Shameful” Family Secret
My great-grandmother hated me. I was an “illegitimate” child, and my parents split when I was three. When my dad got his girlfriend pregnant, my great-grandmother said that she would cut him out of her life if “He didn’t marry this one”. My father married my stepmother, who was a single mother, and my great-grandmother was fantastic to my step-brother and my sister, but not me.
She flat-out refused to have anything to do with me. I spent Christmas with the family, but I came home crying to my mum, asking why Grandma wouldn’t talk to me. For the entire four days I was there, she ignored me, while cuddling my brother and sister as much as she could, because they lived in another country by then.
I didn’t find out any of this until after she passed. I wasn’t included in her will—the only grandchild not included out of about 7 grandchildren, and many more great-grandchildren. My dad took some of his inheritance and passed it on to me, along with a few heirlooms, keeping up the pretense that she didn’t hate me up into my 30s.
I was so hated by her that I’m only just starting to meet family members, who had no idea I existed. My dad, siblings, and nana were forbidden to speak about me to other family members, so the few who met me when I was a baby had forgotten I existed. I’m 36 now… It’s a long time to be keeping me a secret from the rest of the family.
My sister only told me all of this a few years ago, though she’d known my great-grandmother hated me from when we were kids because she would speak very hatefully about me behind my back. My nana’s partner confirmed it a couple months ago, with my mum finally telling me about it the last Christmas I ever saw her.