“Keeping Mouth Shut:” People Share Their Untold Family Mysteries

Secrets within the family are things that people love to protect, such as money, jewelry, treasures, etc. However, the time will come when these mysteries will be discovered.

Dive into the world of untold tales where family members’ lips are sealed, and mysteries run deep. Grab a snack as folks spill the beans on the hidden stories that run in their families.

1. The Substitute

  I found out one of my aunts had an arranged marriage. She wasn't the one who was supposed to be in the arranged marriage, but her sister was adamant against marrying the dude.  

I guess my grandma decided to persuade my aunt to replace the sister's part of the marriage. Aunt and the dude got married, moved away, and had kids.

They lived far away, so I barely ever saw them, but only as I got older did I learn that the dude was berating my aunt to the point where she still had some intense breakdowns long after he died.

TemporalBreak

My grandpa doesn't know that his dad was hit by a drunk driver, which became the cause of his death. He was like 2 when his dad died, and I can't remember any of it.

The only thing he said was that he thought it involved a truck. I found the article about my great-grandfather's death when I started digging into my grandpa's family tree.

I also found that great-grandpa was the result of a young pregnancy and was raised by his grandparents. I'd tell him, but I'm not really sure there's too much point in bringing it up now.

Klaudiapotter

Not nearly as bad, but I never met my grandfather, even though he didn't die until I was around ten, and he only lived an hour away. He didn't get along with my dad.

He refused to acknowledge me or my sister because he was so pissed that there was no one to carry on "the family name," as my dad was his only son.

When my youngest brother was born, he reached out to my father for the first time in 10 years to congratulate him. He also disowned my two aunts because they moved out and went to college.

The younger aunt once described to me the dread she felt telling him that she'd been accepted to college, knowing she'd be summarily kicked out just as her sister was.

However, he reconciled with her later in life because she had two sons and no daughters. Anyway, joke on him.

My sister and I are far healthier and more successful than my male cousins, whom he considered worthy of his love and attention.

maxtacos

I was put up for adoption by my biological parents, who had me when they were young. I went through a lot of crappy foster homes, etc.

I wasn’t adopted until I was 13 by a lovely couple. I’m 19 now, and a week before Christmas last month, I met my biological parents for the first time.

It turns out I have a younger sister (who they were financially stable enough to keep) who was also sat down and told for the first time that she has an older sister out of state.

I haven’t met her yet, and I haven’t seen my biological parents since then because they live in a different state.

Testiclebiter69

My great-aunt and uncle had a baby when they were still in the dating phase. They were in love, and getting married was a sure thing down the line.

However, coming from a very conservative society in the Middle East back in the 50s, they had to give the child away to an orphanage. Once that was done, they got married and eventually had four children.

That child grew up knowing his origins and only allowed minimal contact with his family. He still isn't invited to family events and has a family of his own.

When my great uncle passed away, I was told he was amongst the random who came to the cemetery to pay respects. None of my cousins, including myself, know what he looks like, but my dad, his siblings, and cousins all do.

SpaceWhale89

My one cool uncle. Came to our house every Christmas and Thanksgiving, and it was always really great and pleasant... He had a bunch of cats and dogs at his house and was married to my aunt shortly before I was born.

So one day, my mom and I went to visit him and my aunt at his house, and there was this girl there. I think she was a year older than me, so she was about 15.

My mom and I are like, "Who's this girl?" and my uncle is like, "Well...I just found out a few days ago that I have a daughter, so I guess this is your cousin!"

Turns out that before my uncle and aunt got married, my uncle had a pretty wild bachelor party and got someone pregnant...one thing led to another, and my cousin appeared 15 years later to find her father.

She was so sweet, and my uncle was actually really good about the whole situation. He even started paying child support to my cousin's mom, which was his idea. My aunt was also very forgiving. I've never met my cousin's mom.

daddioz

My grandpa was married to Mary Jane (a fake name, obviously). Mary Jane committed embezzlement and went to jail for it.

She only did it to get more money for her family (although she continued to do it after the need had passed). She went to prison and got leukemia.

While she was in prison, dying of cancer, my grandpa divorced her. A while later, we got a wedding invitation from my grandpa.

Two days before the wedding. And can you guess who he was marrying? Mary Jane. A different one. HIS NEW WIFE HAS THE EXACT SAME NAME AS HIS OLD ONE.

BRUHHH!

gdubtheballer

My family could have been worth millions. My grandpa's father, my great-grandfather, had built a company from the ground up.

We made corrugated cardboard for shipping boxes. Great grandfather was a major jerk but had built the family empire, so we still see him in a good way.

My grandfather was supposed to inherit the company 30-something years ago until Uncle Randy happened. My great-grandmother was still alive and was technically the owner of the company.

She was also blind and deaf. Uncle Randy comes in impersonating my grandfather and has her sign away the entire company over to him.

He gives half of the 15 million to his son, who flees to Europe after the death threats. Randy dies within the month after fleeing the family from cancer. Nobody went to his funeral, and we pissed on his grave.

Qu1nn1fer

My grandmother had a sister who died in the 60s. She never married. She was in the army in WW2. When my grandmother turned 100, we looked at old albums together, chatting, and she told me all the stories.

I went up on a chair to get another album for her, and I found a little book at the back of the closet. It had pictures of my father's aunt in an army aircraft, like a fighter plane, and of a few other people. On one page, just a few words were written, "Yours for all eternity."

My grandma absolutely panicked when I was holding that book. She said that nobody had ever seen it and that she had promised to take it to her grave.

She then told me that she believed that her sister met someone in the war (man or woman, we don't know) and that he or she was finished off. And that she had decided to never fall in love again.

I never told anyone before. A few weeks ago, my father asked if anything was missing from her house that I would have wanted.

The book is gone because nobody thought it was important when the house was cleaned out. And I really think my gran would have been happy about that. She died aged 102, having lived through 2 world wars. She's my hero.

norwaymamabear

My dad recently told me a family story of one of his older, distant relatives; we'll call her Jill, mainly because I don't remember her name.

This all happened some 70 years ago, a good 20 years before my father was born. It's a bit unclear what actually happened, but I'll try my best to piece it together.

Jill was a "plain" "-looking girl who was raised on a small country farm. Being a bit of a quiet tomboy, she didn't go to school but took care of the farm's horses instead.

One day in her teenage years, Jill was in the stables when something spooked one of the horses. It reared up and kicked Jill in the face.

Since there was minimal medical surgery, she ended up somewhat disfigured and scarred. She withdrew from much of society and lived solely on the farm as a hermit.

Years of isolation pass, and one day, Jill vanishes. Perhaps her immediate family knew, but no extended family was ever told what happened.

That is it until they were notified of her death four years later. You see, it turns out that Jill had run away and enlisted in the army. She had fought overseas in WWII and passed.

Now, that might not seem like much of a story, but keep in mind that only men fought in WWII. Jill had somehow managed to pose as a man for four years in the army without being detected, and it was her death that gave her away.

Considering the rest of my family history isn't very exciting, I think it's a pretty cool story.

soundsof

My grandmother's cousin married a man she met in college. They had a daughter and were married for maybe 40 years. Three years ago, he passed with cancer.

We were not shocked at this. After all, he was approaching 70 and had a bad form of cancer, and it was spreading fast. We were prepared for this.

What we weren't prepared for was that after he passed, his wife found a journal of his which explained that for 35 years, he was having another relationship with a man.

It was a shock to all of us. He was so committed to his wife that he never left. But at the same time, it must have messed him up to stay silent for such a long time.

Pozzik

My parents used to always joke about how "we picked the wrong boy at the hospital." I never thought much of it. A year ago (I'm now 17), they told me that when I was born at the almost exact same time as a boy whose parents abandoned him.

The boy was almost the same size as well. Now, you'd think that this would never happen, but I was born in China at a hospital that somehow mixed us two up.

Essentially, they weren't exactly sure if I was the son of my parents. My mom looked at the two of us and swore that I was the one, despite the nurses' tags stating otherwise.

Genetic tests were (relatively) expensive then and were refused by my mother. They didn't care at the time since there was no parent to claim the other boy.

Now, I'm about to go off to college, and I have no intention of finding out whether or not I'm the biological son. Strange when I think about the other boy, though. People always say I look like my parents, though, so I have little doubt that my mother knew me best.

NewtonsOtherApple

This happened in May of this year. I have a sister who is four years older than me and a half-brother who is 14 years older than me (from a different father).

My aunt, my mom's sister, sent out an email to the entire family that vented about 60 years of hatred toward my mother.

Right at the end of the email, my aunt clearly indicated that my mom had another kid that no one knew about and had given the kid up for adoption.

Huge news to my family, who knew nothing about this. I asked my mom about this and found out that the father of the kid was my brother's dad, but he and my mom weren't married when this happened 45~ years ago, so others looked down upon it.

My mom eventually married my brother's father and had him, but that was a few years later. After they got a divorce, she got married to my dad about eight years later.

MattPiano

A long time ago, back when I was still in middle school, my mom's best friend died. She wouldn't tell me how she died, only that it was sudden.

When I asked why we weren't going to the funeral, she told me that there wouldn't be one because "her body was being donated to science." I didn't ask any more questions. That was the last time we ever talked about her.

Well, five months ago, my mom handed me her phone to find the number for a pizza store, and as I was scrolling through her contacts, I came across the phone number of her dead best friend.

Biggest WTF moment of my life. The next day, I called it from a pay phone at another store, and she picked it up. I instantly recognized the voice and accent. She's not dead. Second biggest WTF moment of my life.

[deleted]

We had a family Christmas dinner a few years ago, and my aunt and uncles from both sides were staying over at our house. There were probably 10 or 11 of us at the dinner table, and everyone was getting along well like we always do.

My cousin, around 14 or 15 at the time, brought up something about how he laid a massive poop earlier that day. The kids laughed, and the adults were like," That's not table conversation."

Then I jump in and say, "Haha, yeah, there are things we don't talk about at the dinner table, like politics and illegitimate children.”Every adult at the table drops their eyes to their plate and goes silent.  

I'm sitting there like, oh, what in the Woody Allen movie is so awkward about all this? What I didn't know is that my uncle had an illegitimate child many years ago, and that has always been a point of contention between my aunt and him.

They also had been arguing about that earlier in the day, and all the adults knew it. Haha, man, crap was jokes. But seriously, though, never make jokes about illegitimate children unless you are absolutely sure no one has one.

demonthenese

When I first started dating my girlfriend, I was invited to her very conservative catholic parent's 25th wedding anniversary party.

I was hanging out with her and her 24-year-old older brother afterward, and she was talking about how her mom found her birth control earlier that week and lectured her about how wrong making out was.

I quickly did some mental math and said, "She should talk since her brother's birthday is in 5 months." They both looked at me with a crazy amount of shock on their faces. They had never figured that out.

cold08

We were born and raised in the Philippines. After moving to the US, my mother has always been about "Pinoy pride" and making sure we weren't contaminated by Western culture.

She also hates (with a passion) being confused about anything except Filipino. In my late 20s, we learned we weren't even Filipino. We're Japanese. My mom hid the truth because she thought it was embarrassing.

To clarify, she didn’t think to mention it when we were kids, and as we grew older, it became more and more awkward to bring up.

I think she emphasized Pinoy culture with us so much because she was worried about getting called out. We now greet her with “Konichiwa” to mess with her.

AdditionalAlias

When I was around 2, my Mom's mom watched my sisters and me while my parents worked in the city. She refused to let us see our parents for any reason, and we stayed with her for around half a year.

Turns out our parents were trapped in the city for two days because of a horrible snowstorm, so my Nanny had gone to the courthouse and said they abandoned us.

She took temporary custody of us, and my parents had to wait six months to be deemed "suitable" parents. That one was a rollercoaster time for us.

BloomieBoii

My uncle had a child born out of wedlock. When this child grew up, they discovered their/my grandfather and would call multiple times a month with some sob story for money. 

Being the absolutely kind-hearted yet unbelievably gullible man he was, my grandfather gave in almost every time. One year, my uncle dropped off the map. 

Couldn't call him, no one was where he was, and his family genuinely thought the worst. Well, the kid calls saying he's dead and wants their inheritance, as well as whatever inheritance he would have gotten from my grandparents will. 

This drove the family absolutely mad with grief and rage. Eventually, the kid even started threatening to get a lawyer for their due.

Uncle showed up one day; it turned out he ran out of money and got in trouble with some banks, so he started hopping between towns. 

The kid dropped the lawsuit, and no one in my family let their kids talk to that cousin. I only ever met them at my grandfather's funeral.

SirRettfordIII

My family found out with my grandpa's passing that my grandma was never married to my grandpa. She refused to marry him because her main goal was to live on Social Security and never work a day in her life.

But, she said she only said they were married when she got pregnant with my aunt and didn't want to be seen as an unmarried pregnant lady.

She ended up living off Social Security, but recently, the government found out, and now she may be sued by the government. She's horrible and only cares about money, so this is instant Karma.

Instachef89

My father found out from an obituary a few years ago that he had an Aunt that he never knew existed. He asked my Grandmother about it.

They apparently put her sister in an institution when she was in her teens (in the 1940s sometimes) because she was "too wild" and just NEVER TALKED ABOUT HER AGAIN.

Even when he asked her about it, she didn't want to discuss it with him. Eventually, she gave him that bare minimum - that she was very wild, and their father had her sent away to an institution.

I've never seen or been able to find the obituary - but this is a very strange and dark part of our family history. It was so odd.

superstartsky

My mum refused to tell me anything about my dad growing up. All the pictures of him vanished when I was tiny, and Mum would only speak of him if he did something she didn't like and compare us.

If I asked anything, she'd get so angry. She was volatile, so I had to be careful around her. Once, I was old enough to start asking whose names were on his grave with him, but we never went back.

I knew my dad worked for an electric company, was in the army at some point, and was scared of flying. That's it. Mum told me they'd been married ten years, and he was ten years older than her.

I eventually found out I had an older half-brother. She only told me to mess with me right before important exams, so I wouldn't pass and move away from home... Luckily, it didn't work, and I escaped.

Last year, an awesome Redditor helped me out with some info I needed. I had to find out how old my dad was when he died. The only person I could find was a man born in 1927, way too old to be my dad. Nope, that's my dad.

He died a few months before I was born. It was now confirmed. He died a few days before my mum's birthday at 61 years old. He and my mum married three years before I was born, a year after his wife died. I also found out my brother is 29 years older than me.

I also found out I have an older sister who is 36 years older. She's the same age as my mum. That is so freaking wrong. My dad was older than my mum's parents.

Zanki

My "grandfather" was my great-uncle, and my "great-uncle" was my grandfather. To make this less confusing...let's say there are two brothers, John and Harry.

John has an excellent job in America and is back visiting the old country. Both brothers are at a football match and meet my grandmother, Rose.

Now, Rose really is into Harry, but John is the one with the job in America, so when he asks her to marry him and go to Boston, she agrees.

So John and my granny married, and she has 3 of his kids. It ends up being not a great marriage (go figure), and they haven't had a child for ten years.

Meanwhile, Harry has come to America and is living with the family. Welp, all of a sudden, Grandma is pregnant with my father.

Fast forward to much later when Rose gets drunk and admits to someone that she "really loved" my father's father. John always treated my father poorly, and we were able to put the pieces together.

Pretty sure John and Rose weren't sleeping together by this point, so he definitely knew the paternity of my father, but being a good Catholic, I just put up with it.

thatisnotmyknob

During WWII, my great-grandmother had an affair with the mailman while her husband was away at war and ended up getting pregnant by accident.

To save her marriage, she decided to put my grandfather up for adoption before her husband came home from war, and nobody ever found out.

Somehow (and I have no clue how), she managed to keep it a secret until she was on her deathbed and ended up telling her two daughters, who were born after my grandfather.

Sometime later in the early 1990s, they hired a private investigator to find their long-lost brother, and when they found him, they waited in the parking lot for him to get off work and broke the news to him that they were his sisters.

My dad told me he remembered going to a Christmas party with them as a child, and that was about it. They lost contact. I’ve never met them, but the story still fascinates me, and I figured maybe you all on the internet would find it fascinating as well.

_ryannyce

My dad has a secret family. Found out from my Mum's friend's brother that my dad cheated on my mum a couple of years ago repeatedly with different women.

Apparently, he has an entirely new family that he has never met. None of us are supposed to know about this. I have six siblings (7 of us in total) and apparently even more siblings.

I don't know if I passed them on the street at work, but I have to do a background check on any romantic partners for fear they may be siblings. So yeah, thanks, Dad.

Fabulous-Dark

My aunt abandoned her husband and toddler in our home country while bringing the newborn with her. My grandma had obtained a visa to work here.

But my aunt didn’t declare for her family so they could go with her. So she decided to leave for the USA without them, saying she would return for them.

She never did; she raised a newborn here in the USA and married another man. I don’t think she divorced her first husband.

AhnaBellaSmith12

​​My best friend's mom tried to have an affair with my dad. He told my mom, and that's why our families stopped hanging out, but they let me and my best friend hang out because they didn't think that was fair to us.

Then my dad went off and slept with tons of women because he said he was so sad. It also came out that my mom was in love with a different guy.

It was when she and my dad were dating, but the guy didn't want to be with her because she was pregnant. So that's why she stayed with my dad.

DeadUnicorn0229

One night, someone dropped a photo album off at my house. I looked inside, and it was an album of my mom's wedding, but it wasn't to my dad, and she never told me she'd been married to anyone else.

I didn't want to bring it up to her in case it was something compassionate, but the curiosity was bugging me, so I vaguely asked my dad (they're divorced). He told me I needed to talk to her about that, and he told my mom.

Apparently, she had gotten married to a man who was a severe alcoholic. One night, he was drunk driving and ran into a person in an accident and ran. He was found and sent to prison, and the marriage was annulled.

katfofo

That my mum was adopted, and that the WHOLE of her side of the family knew but kept it a secret for 60 years. Went to surprise her with a holiday, so sent off all her birth certificates and photos for a new passport.

She got a phone call saying there was something very strange about her birth certificate. Numbers had been scribbled out and written over.

They thought we were trying to get a fraudulent passport, so I rang up one of my mum's cousins and just asked if there was something the family wasn’t telling us about Mum. Because her birth certificate shows something is up.

The reply was an outstanding no! I rang my nan and asked the same question, the same answer, so I said she was an illegal adoption, wasn’t she? You bought her, didn’t you? And it went quiet?

She denied it and denied it (I wasn’t being nasty or pushy, by the way. This woman has done more than most nans do for a family), and she said yeah, it's true.

I asked who knew, and she said everyone on Mum's side of the family. Mum was pretty torn up about it, but we put it in a simple way. She has been your mum for 60 years. She CHOSE you, she WANTED YOU, anyway. Nan fell ill, and we looked after her at our home for the next seven years. Nothing changed.

Mum found her biological family, and things got weird. She has four brothers and twin sisters. They grew up on the same street, went to the same school, were in the same class for 11 years, and had been childhood friends who lost contact.

Mum always said that people would comment they looked identical, but nothing ever twigged because Mum's family is Jewish, and her sisters are Christian.

crazypepsicat

So, when I was about 2, my dad learned that my mother was cheating on him. They decided to divorce, and during the process, my mom and dad still lived together because of me.

Until I was 19, that was all I knew. At this point, I didn’t live with my dad because I moved in with my grandparents due to his alcoholism.

One day, my grandmother and aunt showed me a letter received in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It turned out that I had a half-brother I didn’t know about.

Initially, my brother and his adoptive mother were looking for my mother. But unfortunately, my mom passed. My brother is two years and seven months younger than me, so he must have been conceived when my dad found out about her affair.

The kicker here is that my mom was pregnant with my brother the whole time she lived with Dad and me, and he didn’t know. Then, one day, she told him straight up, “ I am going into labor.”

Talking to my dad about it was tough cause it broke his heart. My brother’s adoptive mom ended up buying me plane tickets, and I got to meet their family. It’s one of the best things that ever happened to me, and he looks so much like my mom.

lanadelbae22

When my grandmother died, she left our rental property (3 houses) to me in her will while making my dad guardian of the property until I came of age.

I only found this out years after I turned 18 because my dad never told me. I was going through old papers and found her will.

He'd sold one of the houses ages ago as if they were his. He also took credit cards out in my name when I was still a kid. My credit was screwed up before I even turned 18.

Ludwig_Von_Koopa1

My dog Max died about 13 years ago. He passed comfortably in his bed, just due to old age. I was the first to notice and notified my father right away. He "took" care of it.

Unfortunately, I don't know what he did with the body at the time. Whenever I asked him about it, he would give me the generic "don't worry about it" like some sort of 1960s gangsta. We are a full-fledged Portuguese family living in Canada.

Anyways, several years later, we decided to redo the backyard as the grass was going to mess up, my mom wanted a garden, and my dad wanted to do "something" (due to my new dog being much more energetic than my old one)

While redoing the backyard, my dad decided he wanted to make a pond with fish just to add value to the property. Well, I guess he forgot what he did with Max because after a couple of days of digging a hole, about 6-7 feet deep, there he was, my good little boy, just bones.

The big issue was my daughter, who was with me and only nine at the time. She was 2 when Max passed. When my dad (her grandfather) said, "Oh crap, this is where Max is," in front of my daughter, all the consoling in the world could not help my daughter's tears.

Being Portuguese, my father has no filter, but even then, he felt horrible. He tried so hard to console her, but she wanted none of it. She ended up calling my dad a dog executioner. We eventually had to sit her down and have a pretty awkward conversation about death.

To this day, if an animal dies in our household, she will always tell me. "DON'T BURY HIM/HER IN THE BACKYARD." Bear in mind that we only had one cat pass away last year, and we did it right. Pet cemetery.

Spthetoker

My grandpa has abandoned at least three (!) families. The first one was a woman he met when deployed in Germany. They had two kids.

Second was the one he started with his high school sweetheart. When they divorced, he basically cut out his three kids and didn’t see them for almost two decades.

The third family was the one with my grandma, in which my mom and uncle were the byproducts of. He’s abandoned them a few times, making a circle of women that he thankfully didn’t have kids with.

We just found out about the family in Germany within the last year. One of his cousins slipped up. Really don’t like that man, to be honest.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek12

None (yet) in my own family, but I'm currently attempting to uncover a dark secret in a family I have never met. My fiance's Grandpa was adopted in 1940.

There was no knowledge of the biological parents. Through Ancestry DNA, I have been able to find his biological family, although I haven't narrowed it down to the specific person.

Since it was so long ago, there isn't anyone living who knows a child being given up for adoption, but in 1940, it could have either been an embarrassing pregnancy or an unfaithful wife while her husband was at war.

My GUESS is early pregnancy, but once more DNA results from close relatives show up, I think we'll be able to narrow it down.

AlexKewl

Last year, I was trying to track down my grandparents' marriage license so my grandmother could get VA help with a personal care home.

Via Reddit, I found out that my grandfather spent several years in state prison for armed robbery. Just to clarify a bit, we weren't sure when my grandparents had gotten married, so I asked RBI to help me.

Someone there found my grandfather's prison records. From what I've pieced together since he got out, my grandmother got pregnant, and they went out of state to get married.

KringlebertFistybuns

Apparently, I have tons of siblings. He cheated on his first wife. He cheated on my mom (his second wife). He wanted to have as many children as possible.

He was a truck driver. I would probably want to demand a DNA test of any possible romantic interests in some geographical areas if I were actively dating.

My mother informed me of his infidelity when I got older. I suppose she didn't want me to lose my overly positive opinion of him as I grew up because I lost him at such a young age.

I struggled with this a lot. But, I ultimately decided that I couldn't judge his character based solely on that. So, now I just only allow myself to think of how he was toward me as a father.

TimTamz75

My father got a girl pregnant when he was 17, but he knew he had no way of taking care of the child. The girl's parents made my dad sign the kid away to the girl's parents because they were having a hard time conceiving their own.

The last thing they told him was his name and the manner in which they were going to raise the baby. They told him that they were gonna raise the child as if the girl's parents were the child’s biological parents.

It included telling him his biological mother is his sister. It’s been over 30 years, and I wonder if he’ll live his whole life without knowing the truth.

[deleted]

On my grandpa's deathbed, my oldest aunt revealed she was the only one who knew the real reason for his name. Grandpa's name was D.J. He was always told that was just it; he didn't stand for anything. His parents just liked D.J. by himself.

Well, somehow, D.J. found out the truth. His mother (great-grandma) had cheated on my great-grandpa while he was on a business trip.

She cheated with a traveling Cherokee salesman named David Johnson. As a way of reminding my great-grandma of her infidelity, my great-grandpa named my grandfather D.J...

It explains why Grandpa had solid black hair when the rest of his siblings had blonde/brown hair, and they explained his tan as "he played outside a lot" or "it's a birthmark."

After my aunt told my mom this story, she asked him before he died, and he confirmed it. "D.J." was really David Johnson Jr.

My poor great-grandfather, though, raised that boy as his own and still loved him. Stand up, guy, although I don't know the morality of naming the kid after the man your wife cheated on. But eh.

Avnaran

I read my sister-in-law's diary. She wrote about how hurt she was that my brother had cheated on her. She was so broken that he made her lie to their friends and families about the situation.

She felt so terrible that he forced her to let him move his mistress and love child into their home with their own two kids.

Then they got divorced. They told everyone that it was a mutual break in college that led to the love child, that it was the sister-in-law's hang-ups with her medical conditions and their financial difference growing in their shared business that led to the divorce.

But in the diary, it said it was because she couldn't live with a man who would sleep with his mistress in her house and then come share a bed with her.

I've not spilled all those exact details, but I have sown the seeds, particularly when pressed about why my relationship with my brother has faltered in recent years.

Pretty crappy. I looked up to him for so long, and he hurt that woman for selfish reasons. She's a pretty big wreck now, and they both neglect the kids they have together, which is very sad.

100percent_right_now

My whole life, I've known that when my very conservative grandparents were teens, they were in a pretty severe car wreck where their car ended up in a ditch.

Well, because of that, my grandmother broke her back. A couple of years ago, at our family reunion, my great-uncle let it slip that the reason they got in the wreck was because they were KISSING while driving!!

None of the younger generations knew this fun fact, and their reactions to the reveal were hilarious. But they should have been more careful.

Roonil_Wazlib97

My dad told me this just recently (27). I’ve always had a bad relationship with my mom. Since I was a kid, I knew she hated me.

I started telling my grandmother and said they were the only ones who loved me when I was eight, and I still believe that. But now it’s confirmed.

My parents were on the way home from a doctor’s appointment when she was pregnant with me. She wanted a boy but got me instead. Dad said on the way home, my mom started punching her stomach, saying she didn’t want this baby.

Dad had to pull the car over and physically restrain her. This might've hurt if I hadn’t already had such contempt for her. But honestly, it was just relief.

I knew she hated me, but she always put our issues back on me, saying I was terrible, difficult, whatever. Now I know it was not me causing the fights.

Learning this was the final straw that led me to cutting her off completely... something I’ve been feeling too guilty to do for years. My dad is now happily remarried, and my stepmom is the best role model and the most supportive person I’ve ever met.

savvyfreshhh

I'm my mom's only child (my dad's second). I got pregnant at 20 years old. Early in my pregnancy, the hospital asked me if I had any family members who had cervical cancer, problems conceiving, or miscarriages.

I answered yes to 2/3 because my aunt had trouble conceiving, and my mom and grandma had cervical cancer at some point (they're fine, though).

When my son was born, I was talking with my mom about miscarriages and how awful it is for women to go through, etc. Now, my mom is the most responsible person I know, and I've only ever known her to be with my dad.

We were talking, and it turns out she had a miscarriage when she was 20 years old to the guy she was first engaged to. It shocked me because I had always bugged her about giving me another sibling all my life.

I feel bad now about bringing it up. It turns out her ex-fiance got three other girls pregnant while they were still together, and obviously, she left that dude.

I'm pretty sure my grandparents didn't know either. It also makes sense why she was such a helicopter parent while I was growing up.

thorny_coconut

This wasn't my family but a good friend of mine. He had the same name as his father and told me to get his mail. I told him he had a letter from family services, and he told me to open it.

He didn't have kids, so I did. It turns out that his father had a child with another woman, and not even his wife knew. He had been making child support payments for years.

My friend and his two siblings confronted his father. He wasn't the nicest man, so he reacted harshly, but he couldn't be that mad because he had hidden a secret child, which was discovered by an honest mistake.

They eventually brought the sibling into the fold. I lost touch with them, but last I knew, they had a sibling relationship with the half-sibling.

throwtothestars7

In November, over Thanksgiving break, I got the opportunity to meet my bio dad, who, at the time, I hadn't seen in over a decade.

When I went to his house for the day, he apologized for running off when my mom told him she was pregnant, and it turned out that he was apparently going through a tough time and was homeless for a while at one point.

If I remember correctly, a couple of weeks later, we ended up talking for over four hours when I got home with my aunt, who was staying over for a few weeks.

She said something about how I might’ve been an accident bc my dad was young when my mom got pregnant (she didn’t remember) so he was shocked by that I'm guessing, bc they ran off for a week apparently.

When my mom got pregnant, he just vanished, and that led to my mom meeting my ex-step dad, who is/was berating her. Right now, they’re in the process of divorce, but my mom got a girlfriend, and my relationship with her got better.

mr_unwholesome

Found out at 11 that my dad was my stepdad. I mean, I had figured it out: his family's French and his hair ginger. I looked nothing like him and had brown hair and blue-green eyes.

My grandma let it slip at lunch once and confirmed what I knew. Turns out the guy found out my mom was pregnant with me and ended up jumping Provence.

My aunt and uncle adopted me, and here I am, got two sets of parents, two moms, two dads, and that jerk. I believe his name is Scott.

I tore up my stepdad when he talked about the whole thing with me. He asked if I wanted to see my "dad." I told him he was my dad, not the other guy. He broke down crying. I was too awkward of a kid to respond correctly, so I just hugged him.

Apparently, I've got a couple of half-siblings in Alberta, if, by chance, that might be the anon reading this. Hi! I'm your big brother from another mother.

Traendeth