Family and drama go together like oxygen and fire—one fuels the other, and while they can create warmth and light, they can just as easily spark chaos and destruction. So when Reddit user Rentinghappiness asked everyone on the platform to share the biggest secrets they discovered about their relatives, people used the opportunity to use the anonymous nature of the internet to vent their frustrations, confusions, and other kinds of emotional turmoil that they've experienced after unraveling the hidden layers of their relationships.
#1
My mom always told me my father had died in Vietnam during the war.
Imagine my surprise when he showed up to my High School graduation because he'd seen my name in the local paper (I graduated valedictorian and I'm a Junior). Turns out my mom had kidnapped me when I was a baby to keep my father from trying to get custody when they split up. He lived about an hour away from me the whole time I was growing up and neither of us knew it.
Image credits: stootchmaster2
#2
Grandma had a younger sister who she was told had died in infancy but was actually sent away to other family members because she was severely mentally disabled and the family was embarrassed to have an "abnormal" child around. We found her living with some of Grandma's cousins where she was regularly beaten up and even doused with boiling water when she misbehaved and was in her mid 50s then but had the mental capacity of an 8-year old. She eventually got out and ended up in a special needs nursing home where she was fortunately treated better, but the damage was apparent and she'd scream and throw a fit whenever the caregivers filled up a hot bath or made coffee or had anything to do with hot water.
Image credits: Heroic-Forger
In addition to the personal stories we see in the thread, we also have some quantitative data to go along with it. According to a 2020 survey that looked at secrets that Brits discover, the most common ones about family were:
An affair (29%);
A secret family (22%);
A secret revelation (22%);
Unknown friends (18%);
More money than expected (17%);
More debt than expected (13%);
A secret job (6%).
#3
I discovered that my siblings and I grew up in foster care since no family members were willing to help my aunt and uncle get custody of us. We were in Missouri while they lived in Michigan. They fought the courts with what means they had but couldn’t afford the legal battle. The system thought our mentally ill mother was the best choice even though we would only be home with her for a few months before going back into the system. Rinse repeat until my sister and I at 15&16 were homeless. Luckily we had an older brother that was adopted by a great family and found us. Sent some bus tickets to Detroit to come stay with him and showed us f****d up kids what unconditional love was.
Image credits: paperjockie
#4
That we weren't really poor; rather, I wore ratty clothes, never got any toys, and would frequently go hungry simply because my mom just didn't give a s**t about me. I was 18 when my mom told me that she started to panic when she had less than 50K in savings, this was in the early 2000s
Bright side, it taught me not to buy stupid s**t.
Darkside, nostalgia for games/toys/movies/trips etc. doesn't exist.
Image credits: UnemployedRacoon
#5
My best friend growing up was actually my half brother that my dad conceived with a family friend.
Image credits: Prestigious-Window28
Most of us would rather find out about these things before our family members pass away—almost 4 in 5 respondents said they wanted to discuss these matters face-to-face.
But when it comes to opening up to family, the study also found some subjects are considered far more taboo than others.
Sex is the most divisive topic, with less than half (48%) of us willing to disclose information about our sex lives to those closest to us. Compared to this, far more of us (59%) would be comfortable talking about our experiences with drugs, and 90% have no qualms about disclosing our finances with family.
#6
For years we laughed about how, one night, when my dad was little, his parents got drunk and played Russian roulette pointing the gun at themselves and firing. My grandmother’s turn, and she shot herself in the throat, and she lived. Both passed away years ago, and my dad inherited the gun. One night he was re-telling the story to my mom, made sure the gun was unloaded, and realized that even he couldn’t pull the trigger back with the weapon facing himself. There is no way his mom accidentally shot herself, but there is a very high probability that my grandfather shot her.
Dad then remembered that he was sent to foster care for several months after the incident, while the police investigated what happened.
Image credits: anon
#7
The one vacation I went on with my Dad, which I cherished as one of the few father-son bonding experiences of my childhood, was actually my Mom telling him “Take your son and GTFO for a few weeks while you decide if you want to be married or not”. Apparently there was a “work wife” situation brewing and my Mom was not having it. .
Image credits: ghostprawn
#8
Helluva lot lighter than 99% of this thread but I didn't find out until like 15 years after the fact that when my uncle divorced his wife and got with another woman was because they were swingers and the husbands decided to just swap wives. Now they're hardcore Bible thumpers.
EDIT: Yes, the swap was consensual by all parties.
Image credits: JCStensland
When looking at age demographics, the older generations were consistently more open. For example, 50% of over-65s are happy to discuss drugs compared to just 21% of those aged 18-24 and 20% of those aged 25-35. This trend of elderly honesty and youthful discreetness continues among topics like alcohol, money, and religious beliefs.
Maybe that's why we discover more things when we get older—others become more willing to admit them.
#9
I was a single child my whole life, then my dad died and I learned in my 30s, that my cousin was my brother, I had a half sister who lived across the country, had a sister down the street and another half sister who was like in her late 50s.
Image credits: Louisville82
#10
My uncle impregnated his twelve year old step daughter. He is serving a life sentence.
Image credits: labyrinthofbananas
#11
My mom and dad were real brother and sister but they didn't know it too until they had 2 kids.
Image credits: Sickdoctor07
#12
My father was on his death bed and I ran to the train station and hopped on a 5 hour train to see him in the hospital. When I walked in the room, there was two women (older than me by 20 years) holding him and calling him dad. A huge WTF, who are these people?!!!! went through my head and realized he had another family my entire life. He passed away the next day. I still am shocked.
Image credits: Krazaykare
#13
My father, a man of questionable morals, set my shy brother up with one of his mistresses. This woman, desperate to escape poverty, agreed to the arrangement.
Tragically, my father continued his affair with her even after she married my brother. This left my brother in a deeply troubled and painful situation.
My brother passed away at the young age of 50, leaving behind a complicated legacy. I'm unsure if the child he had with this woman is my sister or my niece, given my father's involvement.
My brother's life was marked by sadness and turmoil, a direct result of my father's selfish actions.
#14
My half-sisters were kidnapped by their (undiagnosed at the time) clinically insane mother who kept them from my dad for two years. He came home one day and they were all gone. He spent those years looking for them, but since it was the mother who took them, he didn’t receive much help from authorities. During those years, my sisters suffered at the hands of their mother and her numerous male companions. One day, their mother just got tired of them and sent them back to their dad.
I didn’t know any of this until a few weeks ago. It explains so much.
#15
Apparently my dad tried to strangle his ex wife and the only reason she survived is because she cut his arm with a kitchen knife. My mom and I got to find out that little fun fact together, because his ex called her to warn her that he was crazy when she found out he’d remarried. ? so there’s that.
Image credits: PurpleIsALady1798
#16
My parents always told us kids that my mom lost her front teeth because as babies we’d accidentally head butted her so often we knocked them out.
The truth of it was that when my parents drank (which was, and I assume is still, all the time) they would argue a lot. When my dad got sick of my mom’s voice he’d pop her in the mouth with the back of his hand.
He’s the one that knocked out her teeth, and then blamed it on us as babies.
Image credits: i_just_read_a_lot
#17
My mom's side of the family owned a couple family members from my dad's side of the family during the slave times.
Image credits: Tacos4Texans
#18
On of my moms sisters died of SIDS in the 50s. Years later it came out that my grandfather got tired of hearing her cry and frustratingly shook the s**t out of her. She actually died of shaken baby syndrome. I don’t know how authorities didn’t know (?).
Image credits: tatkat
#19
I knew Mum was sick… I had no idea how many times she tried to [unalive] herself.
Image credits: Hanox13
#20
My grandma's sister died when she was 15, hit by a car right in front of the family house, well my uncle bought the house years ago and found her hidden journal, turns out great grandpa was abusing her and she [unalived] herself...
Image credits: purpsoli
#21
I knew that my biological father had a sister that died when she was 6-yrs-old. It wasn’t until I was grown that I heard the full story. My Dad was 10 and Helen 6. He was supposed to be looking out for her while they were outside playing. They had walked to a neighbors house and Helen wanted to go home. Dad wanted to stay and told Hellen to walk back home by herself. She was hit by a car and died. My grand-parents blamed my Dad and he carried that guilt his entire life.
Image credits: Fernet59
#22
My great grandfather got his wife’s sister pregnant and f****d off leaving both women humiliated. With their mother and children the two women made a new life in Canada where no one knew of their shame.
Image credits: phoenixAPB
#23
My family fought in WWII
on both sides.
Image credits: No-Necessary-8333
#24
Great grandparents living in Europe lost all their kids in the Spanish flu epidemic; immigrated to the US and just popped out 5 more kids. Wild.
Image credits: Pitiful-Cancel-1437
#25
My grandfather was greatly displeased with his son Roland, who was mentally handicapped after an infection. So one day he gathered his 8 children in the yard, took out his hunting rifle and staged a mock execution of Roland to "teach him to be right".
My mom was maybe 10 years old when this happened.
Image credits: heffla
#26
My dad had a whole separate family with a daughter a year older than me. He ran the family business, and the lady that lived next door to the business had been his girlfriend since before my parents got married. When my parents got divorced I was about 11 or 12 and I didn't really know why. My dad and I barely talked all through high school but for some reason I talked him into letting me move in with him between my senior year and college to get to know him better.
What I found out about him was that he was d**k, a womanizer and alcoholic. The verbal and physical abuse i took as a kid was even worse now that I was older, resulting in actual fist fights a couple of times. I worked at his business and made friends with the lady next door who we'll call Wendy. She made me dinner all the time and really took care of me while my dad was too drunk to cook or do any parenting at all most of the time. I was 18 and the lady next door had a daughter about my age and we became friends. This is the daughter, we'll call her Dianne.
We hit it off that summer and neither of us knew that we were half siblings, and there was strangely something about her that made me really like her. Dianne was pretty but not crazy beautiful, but I couldn't take my eyes off of her. Something about her just drew me to her. I think she felt the same way, because we spent a lot of time together getting to know each other that summer. I couldn't get enough of her nor her me. We watched movies on VCR at night after work every night (I'm that old), and smoked a lot grass out on my porch. One night I took Dianne to a house party at a friends house and after a few drinks I was getting up the nerve to make a move when she kissed me. We ended up hooking up that night and messed around pretty good, but thankfully didn't have sex. I was kissing her good night on her door step when her mom came out screaming and yelling and told us we weren't allowed to see each other, and I never saw her again she wasn't around for the next few days. When my dad found out he flipped his lid too huge fist fight that night. It got so weird around there I just went back to my mom's for the few weeks left before college.
I mentioned to my mom, that Wendy was really nice and I really liked her, but I had screwed up somehow and pissed her off and I wasn't sure why. I never told my mom about messing around with Dianne, but I don't think she knew about her. She has dementia now so I have no chance of knowing if she did. Over the next few years, my dad and I drifted apart again, I had real hatred for him for a long time, and we didn't speak for almost 30 years.
Found out he was dying and I went to see him to bury the hatchet. It actually wasn't too bad. While we were catching up on the events of our lives, my dad told me the whole story. My dad had two girls Wendy and my Mom that he was dating. He chose my mom and broke it off with the other woman, and asked my mom to marry him. A few months later right before the wedding Wendy shows up very pregnant and tells him its his. My dad who was running his dad's business at the time, put her up in the property next to the business and took care of Wendy and Dianne. Eventually things rekindled with Wendy and he ended up in a relationship with her the most of the time he was married to my mom. He admitted the guilt was too much and he started drinking and over time the drink was all that was left, both my Mom and Wendy had eventually kicked him to the curb and moved on with their lives, so did I and so did my young sister and Dianne. It was a terribly sad story. For the first time the verbally and physically abusive monster had his mask pulled back and was human after all. I didn't completely forgive him, but I definitely understood him for the first time in my life.
Image credits: CaptJackHarkness5064
#27
I have an uncle who went to prison for [unaliving] a homeless man in the street with a few of his friends. They let him out early and he goes to family gatherings. He’s fairly close with a lot of the family and as kids we would have sleepovers at his house. At one of the sleepovers we overheard him abusing his wife thankfully they divorced but the family still invites him. But she’s the crazy one according to the family.
#28
Grandma didn't just disappear. Grandpa put her into an institution for what would probably be baby blues/ depression and irritation with a 5 year, 3 year, and a few month old kids, he was a trucker, so he was gone the majority of the time.
They gave her enough brain zap zaps that it turned her into a shell of a person, and she didn't even remember her kids. They visited only once when the youngest turned 18. She stayed there for 40 years completely alone, and no one knew or cared she died. She's just a random number in a mess of a graveyard they toss the wards of state in. She's less than two hours away in Minneapolis, but I won't drive in The Cities. I much prefer my small Wisconsin town.
Image credits: trauma4everyone
#29
That my father's arrest at a rodeo in his teens (that led to his mom kicking him out, complete estrangement from his mom and siblings and his eventual adoption by his best friend's family) was not just a little dustup. He beat another person so badly the victim almost died. He was fifteen.
Image credits: lurkeylurk123
#30
My great grandpa shot and [unalived] my great grandma because she was messing around at road houses. My grandpa was a baby.
He went to serve a few years in jail, then they offered him a job in the navy during WWII. After the war ended, he got clemency and lived a long life in Southern California as a free man.
Image credits: MsAnon
#31
My great aunt was a nurse at a mental hospital and fell in love with a guy being evaluated to stand trial for [ending people]. She helped him escape and they ran off to Florida. But the police tracked them down and her lover was sentenced to the electric chair. She got off easy, though.
Before all of that craziness, her younger sister had come to live with her and then [unalived] herself. My aunt worked in a distant city and promised her father that she would get her sister a job at the hospital and look after her. But the sister got pregnant by a married man who dumped her, so she jumped off a bridge.
I found all this out like 80 years after it happened while doing family research. My 90 year old mom reluctantly confirmed it.
Image credits: p38-lightning
#32
The first crush I ever had was the lifeguard at our summer vacation pool. He was 19 and I was 7. I just thought he was super cute and I had an innocent crush. I learned in my 20s after my parents divorce that my mom actually slept with him during that time when she was in her mid 30s. Ha like mother like daughter I guess.
#33
My narcissist mom set our trailer house on fire in 2003, used me as an alibi, and set my nonverbal autistic brother up as the fall guy. We were both in the 3rd grade. She got insurance money and lots of charity donations from the incident as well as hella sympathy from the community we lived in and the one we moved to right after.
#34
Growing up I was always told my grandad died of heart failure at 40, when my dad was 4, leaving behind 5 kids. I was never given any other details and my dad never wanted to talk about it, as it must be the most traumatic thing in his life. Flash forward to when my wife and I get married and she tells me "Wow, that thing that happened with your dad's dad sounds crazy" shortly after meeting my grandmother Obviously, I'm totally confused as to what she means.
Turns out she'd had a conversation with my grandmother who explained to her that my grandad was the local milkman and basically went around town shagging every woman in town on his route while working. Also turns out he was also a petty thief known to the police, and had a bad rep with them. Supposedly he was caught sleeping with a local police officer's wife on his milk route and was found face down in a puddle in a clearing well out of the way a couple days later with his heart stopped. The rumoured actual cause of death was that he was beaten to death by the police who made it look accidental.
Obviously, I asked if this was true and my parents/grandmother/family all confirmed it and just said they told the kids our age the simple "heart failure" explanation because we'd never be able to understand when we asked where grandad was. Crazy how much makes sense in hindsight, as my dad had zero tolerance/respect for thievery/stealing and infidelity when I was growing up. Had a hard relationship with him as well in my teens/twenties when I struggled with sex addiction and he didn't want to hear it or deal with it or pay me any mind. Coincidentally, I'm named for my grandad and I had a big problem with shagging everything that moved too. Weird (or maybe not so weird) how things like that line up.
#35
My eldest great aunt had actually lost her only daughter to drowning in a well. She grieved alot and had a hard time recovering, she was really wanted another daughter to dote on and to just be a better mother. She had even took a little girl who was lost back to her house and spoiled her for around three days until the actual parents came knocking on the door. In the end, she got another daughter after her younger brother or my great uncle had another daughter and couldn't afford another child especially since she was born sickly. My great aunt begged to take her instead of giving her up for adoption.
#36
My aunt was the wife of a preacher. He died in a car crash and then she came out as a lesbian.
Image credits: sillygreenfaery
#37
There was a dictator in power for thirty years in my country of origin. Both my great grandfather and grandfather did horrible things to innocent people. I wanted to write my grandfather’s memoir but he refused saying the survivors might come for our family if the truth of his crimes ever came to light. He never had remorse for his actions and was even buried in his uniform.
Image credits: fingertips-sadness
#38
So this isn’t as traumatic as most of the posts in this thread but it is still kind of disturbing.
Okay, here goes I found out a few years ago that the real reason my parents stopped playing Pictionary wasn’t that they didn’t like it. It’s that it caused multiple arguments where my parents ended up not speaking to each other for weeks at a time.
The first argument that was a big thing was that my mom did not know that Zimbabwe was a country.
The second was about whether goose pimples and goose bumps were the same thing.
And the third one was about whether a pig’s tail curls clockwise or counterclockwise. Apparently that argument led to my parents only saying “clockwise” or “counterclockwise” to each other for about two weeks.
My siblings and I all found out about this about ten years ago when my uncle came for a visit and reminded my parents of some of their legendary arguments (including the goose bumps/goose pimples one). Apparently my mom and dad used to play my aunt and uncle in different are games a lot and my parents had to stop playing Pictionary and a couple of other games because they got too heated. LOL.
Image credits: The_Real_dubbedbass
#39
My grandfather had an entire family in France back in the day he kept hidden from everyone in the family, including my grandma. He had a wife and a daughter. They got into a car accident and both died. He wrote his own obituary before he died so that's how we found out.
#40
My grandpa died when I was 7 and my grandma (his wife) died about 4 years ago. We found out my grandpa got someone pregnant 40+ years ago, and the kid came looking for my grandpa when he was an adult. My grandma and grandpa paid this guy like $40,000 to basically never contact them again and “not exist” to the rest of my family. We found all this out after my grandma died due to going through all her paperwork etc. when sorting her house. Wild s**t.
#41
When I was a kid my grandfather loved to tell me uplifting histories about effort being rewarding, his favorite one about how he used to ride his bicycle from morning to sundown, going back and forth to buy supplies that he would later sell on his village
Then with age he started to confuse me with my father, and stories changed to chases by the police and bribing cops.
#42
My uncle purposely [unalived] my aunt but claimed it was just a “Russian roulette accident.” Afterward, he attempted [self-harm], failed, and then applied for asylum in Canada, saying the cartel was after him and using his wound as proof. Now he’s a Canadian citizen with a new wife and kids. My cousins—his own kids—say he’s not a good person, but he actually comes across as really nice….
#43
On my father’s side generational trauma of physical abuse runs all the way to me. Apparently my great grandfather suffered the worst and my grandfather had basically emasculated him at some point in his life after standing up and beating him. My great grandfather lived a rough life, and when i was born he didnt die of natural causes, he ODed and never woke up again.
#44
I wasn’t the oldest child. Found that out at 37.
#45
My grandfather's mother (she lived well into my lifetime (made it to 99 y/o), never met her, due to how hateful she was. My grandfather has five siblings who I've also never met because they are about the same (as is he, it turns out). My grandfather's dad was a guy, named Raymond, when he walked out just before slamming the door the last time, he looked and said "one of you ain't mine" when his kids asked why he was leaving. Anyway my grandfather's mother would do things like leave a single can of soup for six kids to eat while she went and stood in the corner or did the "fell in a store" scam. Every year she had a brand new buick in her driveway, while her kids would sneak out over to the neighbors to eat since should basically would feed them. One day she found this out, and screamed at the neighbor for giving them a lasagna. But, what can you expect from someone who told her 3rd grade grand daughter (my mom) she hates her right to her face.
#46
My mother didn't want children. My mother said this to me.
I have never told my sister, and I won't.
#47
I knew my dad married my mom when she was 18 and he was 32. What I didn’t know (until I got my mom tipsy recently) was that my dad met her when she was 14 and he was 28. They were married 45 yrs until he passed in 2020 so he had good intentions but he basically groomed her.
