14 Stories About People Who Suddenly Became Other People’s Secrets Keepers

Imagine: you are living your life, and suddenly you learn an important secret about other people. You happen to see something you weren’t meant to see, or someone close to you shares something deeply personal. The feelings are intense, but so is the responsibility. We put together stories of people who were chosen by fate to guard other folks’ secrets.

• I have a friend who failed a class their senior year, so they were a single class worth of credits short of graduating and just never bothered to retake it. 25 years later, their very prestigious job had to run background checks on everyone to get a government contract and found out they technically lied on their resume. The job pretty much rolled their eyes and paid for my friend to attend the final class so they could quietly graduate.
  We used it as an excuse to throw a graduation party for them. Picture a bunch of middle-aged parents partying in a basement just for old times sake. © helloiamabear / Reddit
• I knew my boss was cheating on his wife. I didn’t tell her because I didn’t personally know her, and I’ve seen so many women behave toxically to the mistress in the scenario (who sometimes isn’t even aware that the man is married).
  Anyways, I became a target of harassment some time later and was told eventually that I was being demoted to part-time at a location that was 50 miles away from the one that I worked. I was told that I could quit if I didn’t like it. So I did, and then reached out to his wife to tell her everything about her husband. © Lilith_Learned / Reddit

• My husband has a sister. But I noticed that when he talks about their childhood, he always says “my mom,” not “our mom.”
  It turned out, the sister is not actually his biological sister, but his cousin. Her mother was gravely ill and passed away shortly after her daughter’s birth. Then my husband’s mother adopted her niece and raised her as her own daughter. © elenaki / Dzen
• My husband started staying late at work frequently, and I noticed he was logging into his account from the computer, so I became suspicious. We only had one computer at home. I found a demo version of a spy app online, downloaded it onto the computer, and left for work.
  When I returned, I turned it on, and all his network passwords were immediately displayed. I had no regrets about reading through all his messages. In them, he was making arrangements with a woman, planning when I’d leave for a day to book a hotel room with her.
  He was also visiting dating websites, flirting and meeting up. No shame whatsoever! I divorced him a while ago. © Irena Perovskaya / Dzen
• I always cooked well, experience helped me find the perfect combination of spices for different dishes, without using flavor enhancers. But my fiancé said he had never tasted a better soup than his mother’s. No matter what I tried to do, the verdict was always the same — tasty, but not like his mom’s.
  One day, as I started cooking, I realized I was out of the necessary spices, and I added a bouillon cube that stayed in the cupboard for who knows how long. I never received so many compliments for my cooking. So that’s what the secret was, mom. © Overheard / Ideer

• An old friend of a friend, let’s call him Devon, cheated on his now wife and mother of his child with my ex (we were already long broken up). Ex told me about it a couple of years later.
  Couple years later, I was on my way out of the friend group and decided to push my luck. I walked up to Devon and whispered in his ear, “I know you cheated on your current wife with my ex. Don’t worry, I probably won’t say anything.”
  The pure fury in his eyes scared the living heck out of me, but he didn’t say a word. I never told his wife, and I don’t talk to anybody from that circle anymore. Not really disturbing, but it feels nice to share it. © johndon720 / Reddit
• I accidentally found 2 sheets of paper, torn from a notebook, in a book at school. I began to read them and didn’t immediately realize that these were pages from a colleague’s diary. I learned a secret that could have destroyed 2 families.
  I thought, “Do I really want to be hated for talking too much?” I took these pages and destroyed them. No one will ever read them now. © Olga Bogacheva / Dzen
• My vegetarian friend took me out for burgers. She ordered one chicken patty and one vegetarian patty. But the server misplaced them in front of us.
  She kept eating and complaining that her burger patty was very chewy today. She never had chicken, so had no idea about the taste or texture. The moment I bit into mine, I knew I got the vegetarian burger. By then, she had already taken a bite and swallowed it.
  I knew she will get violently sick if I said the truth, not to mention very depressed. So I never uttered a word of it. It’s been 14 years since, and she still doesn’t know she ate chicken that day. © mulberry-icecream / Reddit

• Was at a gig a few years back. Saw an old acquaintance beforehand who was attending with colleagues.
  During the gig, I see him across the hall doing a look around to check the coast is clear before kissing his colleague. He’s married with 2 kids and his wife is the main breadwinner who supports all his whims. If she left him, he’d be toast. © AlchemicalTheorist / Reddit
• I know my little sister has a different father than me or my brother. My father knew, too. He was a stand-up guy and wanted a whole family, so he stepped in to be the dad.
  One thing he didn’t know though before he died, the father is his brother. My sister doesn’t know, and she doesn’t need to know. I am just going to let her have her happy life. © Candid_Speaker705 / Reddit
• Once, my mom bought a new blouse. Expensive, branded. She saw it and instantly wanted it. She didn’t tell Dad anything.
  He is the sole earner. He doesn’t really question where she spends money, but sometimes he asks her to be careful, saying they need to save for a vacation or renovations. At the time, Dad received a good bonus, so Mom thought maybe he wouldn’t notice. He really didn’t notice.
  The moment came when Mom wore that blouse in front of Dad. He suddenly asked what that item was, as he hadn’t seen it on her before.
  Mom didn’t hesitate and said, “What do you mean? I bought it 100 years ago, just wore it once a long time ago, so you don’t remember.” Dad backed off. Mom told me this secret many years later.

• A friend got married early, at 21, but I never saw any passion between her and her husband. They lived more like brother and sister. No matter how much I tried to talk to her, to find out if something had happened, it was all in vain. She said everything was fine.
  Then she had a son and then a daughter, and she went so deeply into loving and raising them that she seemed to forget about her husband entirely. She raised the children, got them educated, sent them to work. And almost the next day, she filed for divorce.
  I rushed to my friend, thinking she needed comfort. But I saw the happiest face. We sat down to have tea, and finally, my friend opened up to me.
  It turned out she never loved her husband the way a woman should love a man. But she really wanted children. And the doctors told her she had some issues with her health, each year counted, and she needed to have children soon if she wanted them.
  So, she practically married the first person she met just to have the long-awaited babies. I asked:
  — Why did you only divorce now?
  — Well, I got used to him, we lived well enough. And it’s easier to raise kids together with a husband.
  — So why decide now if everything was fine? You could have continued living together.
  — I looked around: the kids are grown up and managing on their own, the husband noticeably grew cold toward me, which was understandable since I wasn’t particularly affectionate with him because I didn’t love him, only felt gratitude. So, I decided to divorce and live for myself. I’ve been saving money for my entire life, because I wanted to buy a house in the countryside and start a garden. I’ve dreamed about it for a long time.
  I was stunned. It’s been about 3 years since then. Now my friend is 47, and she really bought a little house and is taking care of her garden, just as she wanted. She lives, by the way, not alone, but with her son. He brought his family there. But they don’t interfere with each other, the house is divided into 2 parts: one for the son’s family and another for the mother, so everyone has their personal space.
  But no one, except me, found out that my friend divorced her husband because she didn’t love him. She didn’t want to upset anyone. She told her husband and children that she just wanted a change in her life. Her husband agreed, apparently he knew the way it really was. And the children said that it didn’t matter what decision their mother made, as long as she was happy.

• My grandmother was pregnant with my aunt. Another pregnant woman approached her vegetable garden and asked for some onions, because there were many vitamins in them. Grandma gave her onions.
  But then a neighbor told her that she shouldn’t have done it because the woman was pregnant by grandma’s husband. However, the grandmother retorted, “It’s not the child’s fault.” My aunt had a brother from her father, born around the same time. © Valentina / Dzen
• A friend bragged about the phone her son gave her, because he bought himself the latest model. But she’s not very tech-savvy. She handed it to me, asking me to take a look. Her son hadn’t even wiped the data before giving it to her.
  So, I turn the phone on and find her son’s romantic chat with some other woman. And he’s been married for a long time. Now I don’t know whether to tell my friend or not. But I didn’t delete anything, letting her find it herself and decide what to do. © Helena Z / Dzen

And here are family secrets that read like a Hollywood tragedy.