11 Family Secrets That Were Never Meant to Be Discovered—Until Now

Secrets are hidden and untold for a reason. But what happens if you accidentally stumble on information that was meant to stay unknown? These people have shared the secrets of their family they’ve found or known that changed their perspectives or even their reality.

• The reason my dad’s brother doesn’t talk to him is that while my dad was married to his high school sweetheart, he had an affair with his brother’s girlfriend, my mom.
  The reason my mom didn’t speak to her sister for several years is that after my mom caught my dad having his 1000th (estimate) affair, her sister said, “That is how you got him.”
  There’s also been some weird stuff hinted about between my aunt (mom’s sister) and two of my uncles (neither her brother; one is my dad’s brother, the other is her other sister’s husband). © TallEnoughJones / Reddit
• There’s a family member who has more money than the other family members. Other family members basically formed a team to dislike the family member because the family member wouldn’t give them money. It just showed me how money can ruin relationships easily. © Ben5544477 / Reddit
• My mom has a sister I didn’t know about until I was 16. I found a school picture of a girl named Cathy, and my grandma snatched it away from me and said, “She’s NOBODY.” Asked my mom, and she had a full meltdown, told me it’s her older sister from my grandma’s first marriage who hasn’t had anything to do with them for years. Told my grandma off and disappeared from their lives. I wish her well. My grandma is not a good person, and my mom isn’t much better. © liztopia_dunit / Reddit
• Grandma’s secret recipe was the same as what’s on the box. :’( © rip1980 / Reddit

• I always knew my Uncle Jerry as a kid. He was a cool guy, but mostly a stranger who lived a few hours away from us and would only visit once or so every year. We were really close with the rest of the extended family, so this was a bit weird, but I never really thought about it.
  It wasn’t until later that I realized that Uncle Jerry was much older than my dad, who was allegedly my grandparents’ oldest child. Turns out, Uncle Jerry was my grandmother’s teen pregnancy, whom she had given up for adoption, and had reconnected with us when I was a baby. It was back in the day when these things were covered up, so she had gone off to the country to live with her older sister while she was pregnant and came home later, so even most of her brothers and sisters didn’t even know! Apparently it was a big shock when he came back into our lives, but they all welcomed him.
  He was lucky and had been adopted by a wonderful family. Now he’s just Uncle Jerry, who pops in now and then and sends Christmas candy every year. © TheSuspiciousNarwal / Reddit

• I have an aunt who pretty much disowned the entire family not long after I was born. I never heard anything good about her. They talked about how she was a snob to everyone and thought too highly of herself because she was a doctor.
  But as I grew up, I realized there is a clear hierarchy in the family. Golden children vs black sheep. Anytime a black sheep starts doing too well for themselves, the family finds another way to “put them in their place”. I found this out personally when I started doing too well for my place in the family.
  I ended up cutting out most of the family, just like my aunt did. This made me curious, so I looked her up. She isn’t some snob who looks down on people. She dedicated her career to providing medical care to those who couldn’t afford it. So while all the family was busy talking trash and hoarding their money for bigger houses and lavish trips, my aunt was actually helping people. © AlfalfaFlo*** / Reddit

• I went to my father’s ancestral country for the first time for a visit and decided to climb a mountain and scatter his ashes. A couple of days later, I met my dad’s cousin for the first time. She had a thoroughly documented family history and genealogy book. Come to find that same mountain where I scattered my dad’s ashes, I guess my dad’s aunt had gone missing there in the 70s, and her body was never found. Pretty wild coincidence when it was a small, unpopular mountain in the middle of a country with a LOT of mountains. © S14Ryan / Reddit
• My mother lied to me my whole life about my dad. They split when I was 3, and I was told that he deserted us and wasn’t paying child support AND that he never tried to get in touch. When he did start paying child support (and my mother won a legal case for back payments), she blew through 25k on...we still don’t know what. When I was a teen, she would show me receipts for child support payments under $20 as an excuse for why we were so poor.
  20+years later, when we sat down to reconnect, he showed receipts, returned sealed letters, and the divorce judgment stating I was supposed to spend summers with him and get to see him on other holidays.
  Those $20 child support payments? They were beyond what was required by the state, and the state chose to send them separately. So she would hide the fact that he was actually paying and paying extra to try to manipulate me further.
  Turns out he was the stable, sane parent, and I didn’t get to find out until after a work accident that left him with a TBI. I’ve gone NC with her and will not speak with her ever again. She will never get to meet her grandson. © Werrrnstrom / Reddit

• My grandmother, the uber judgmental person, gave birth to my father exactly 9 months to the day after they married. When they passed away, we emptied their home and found an old safe. It had smelly money in it, the deed to their home, and the marriage certificate...dated a whole month after they claimed to have gotten married.
  She actually had the audacity to criticize and find my mother wanting because she, too, was pregnant before marriage. © CarmenDeeJay / Reddit
• My sister accidentally came across a love letter between my mother and our dentist. My parents were still married. We later found out that it was a years long love affair ( my parents later divorced without my father finding out ) © shiningonthesea / Reddit
• Had an uncle with a happy family of 2 kids growing up. He died when his children were all grown up, around their late 20s. At the funeral, there were 2 people around his kids’ age, who, surprisingly, looked just like him. After some time, the whole extended family (including his kids) just found out that he had another family with 2 kids in a different city, so he had 2 wives and 4 children.
  Turns out, every other week, he’ll go to this city and be with his other family and raise the kids without his first family knowing. I guess his first wife had a hunch but decided to keep it to herself and not tell the kids, because how come you’re not suspicious with that routine getaway?
  All his life, he managed to lie to everyone, including his parents. He managed to keep the other family as a secret until the day he died, the true definition of “take your secrets to the grave”. © fluffydragon34 / Reddit

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