“I was the family secret.
My birth father didn’t know about me.
He does now, and it has hurt his relationship with his wife.
I feel terrible.”
Reddit useru/kaushman2askedthe community, “What family secret was finally spilled in your family?”
The thread quickly filled with many shocking revelations that altered some families forever.
Here’s what people shared:
1.
“One of my uncles might have been a serial killer.
He was known for picking up hitchhikers.
I was only 11 when he killed himself.
so I don’t remember much about him.
This all came out during a drunken night at a bonfire.”
u/Kolipe
2.
“My aunt didn’t lose her teaching job due to budget cuts like she’d always claimed.
u/itsjustmo_
3.
“My grandpa was a drag queen.
My aunt found his drag costumes (wigs, heels, etc.)
in his closet, and my grandma scolded her and told her never to discuss it again.
u/plzadyse
4.
Everyone wanted my grandpa to give a speech when it came time for cake/dessert.
The surprise was on all of us because they weren’t actually celebrating 50 years of marriage.
They secretly divorced and then got back together, but no one knew.
Everyone was shocked, to say the least.
u/Prestigious_Pop_230
5.
So, my aunt is now my stepmom and my cousins are now my stepsisters.
I guess theyve had a thing going since before my parents even started dating.”
u/Skeeze_Kneez
6.
And, he was trying to get my mom to meet the person he cheated on her with.”
u/Minute-Aioli-5054
7.
“My great-aunt was a nurse supervisor at a mental hospital in the 1920s.
She fell in love with a guy who was being evaluated for a murder trial.
She helped him escape, and they went to Florida, where the police caught up with them.
My aunt got off easy, but he got the electric chair.
I found all this in a newspaper archives while working on family history.
I showed it to my mom, who admitted it was all true.”
u/p38-lightning
8.
“I was conceived using a sperm donor.
We are up to 32 and counting because they keep rolling in.
It actually created a cool new social group.”
u/mynuname
9.
“The story was always that my two cousins were adopted and not related to each other even.
People sometimes would ask them if they were twins.
They would say, ‘Nope, we’re adopted.’
Somehow, it got out that their bio mom was their younger aunt.
The older sister adopted and raised both girls as her own.
The younger aunt/mom got married and started a family before all this came out, too.
It was a wild journey.
I have heard this is common in Catholic families.
This was in the early ’80s, so I guess it was possible to get away with it.”
u/thrax_mador
10.
Eventually, they remarried…also in secret.
I found their re-marriage license."
u/buffythebudslayer
11.
“I found out I was adopted when I was 32 years old.
My mom’s cousin is my real dad.
They tried to take me back when I was 3, but my mom refused.
Now, my birth parents are both doctors, live in a mansion, and have six more kids.
I grew up in poverty.”
u/ReallyGlycon
12.
“I was always told that my mother’s father had died in the war.
My grandfather had remarried and had a whole other set of kids and grandchildren.
My cousins tried to meet him, but he wasn’t interested.”
u/Johnny_B_Asshole
13.
“My father wasn’t my bio dad.
My bio dad, his father, etc., were in organized crime.
I made my siblings get tested.
It ruined my entire identity.
u/Aggravating-Pea193
14.
“My grandfather was not a struggling immigrant who toiled away in a dress factory upon arrival in America.
He was, in fact, a high-ranking member of a powerful crime family.”
u/Express_Hotel2682
15.
He told the caretakers I wouldnt return to the kindergarten again, then drove off with me.
The caretakers called my mother, who of course knew nothing about this.
She then realized my father was taking me to another area in my country (three hours away).
They officially split my sister and me apart.
I had ‘only’ been away from my sister and mother for three months.
u/Practical-Region-138
16.
“I, by mistake, found out that my mother had an affair and got pregnant with me.
Neither my dad nor I had any clue about this.
I figured this out when I was 37 years old.
This caused my parents to get a divorce after 47 years.
My entire life was turned upside down.
I went through a very dark time.
I now know my entire biological family; we all have much in common.
u/hotrodstew
17.
“My 65-year-old dad found out his mother wasn’t actually his mother.
She was his grandmother, and his sister was his birth mother.
She had him when she was 15; it was extremely frowned upon back then.
They sent her away while pregnant, and she returned when he was born.
He was raised as if he was another sibling.
He only found out by chance when he got a passport and needed his birth certificate.
He doesnt even know who his birth father is.
It’s so sad.”
u/Happy-Grapefruit-007
18. u/sogedking
19.
“My grandpa had a quarter that was warped from a bullet hitting it.
u/burntreynolds33
20.
“My parents were married for 28 years.
Each had an affair very early in the marriage, then things settled down.
A few years after my father died, my mother met and married a man.
But, my father’s aunt recognized him as the man she had an affair with many years prior.
The aunt spilled the beans and fractured the entire family.
Drama, drama, drama.”
u/tiger5765
21.
“We found out after my grandfather died that none of his seven children with my grandmother were his.
They all likely had different fathers.”
u/ProudMedusa71
22.
“At age 43, I learned I had a half-sister.
She reached out to me and is a lovely person.
u/greekmom2005
23.
She was embarrassed to marry a man younger than her, so she lied for like 80 years.”
u/LeastCleverNameEver
24.
Eventually, things got quite dangerous.
They ended things and she moved back home.
u/HuckleberryLou
25.
“My dad’s little sister wasn’t really his little sister.
It was his sister’s baby, raised by his mom.
The girl didn’t know until she was 21.”
u/Ok-Thing-2222
26.
“My mother is kid #7 out of 10.
There was always a rumor that there was an affair, but nobody talked about it.
She has so many questions, but nobody’s alive to answer them.”
u/bossykrissyCC
27.
The secret kind of slipped out.”
u/Rich-Appearance-7145
28.And: “I was the family secret.
My birth father didn’t know about me.
He does now, and it has hurt his relationship with his wife.
I feel terrible.”
u/xprovince
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
