Discovering the hidden secrets of our parents can be both surprising and unsettling. Behind their everyday lives lies a web of unexpected truths they never wanted us to know. In a rare display of honesty, brave individuals have come forward to share the shocking secrets that their parents kept hidden. Get ready to be amazed, as we uncover the unexpected secrets that lurk within our own homes. A world where the untold stories of our parents finally come to light.
When I was a teenager, I went to use the computer to do teenage things. (i.e. myspace). I sat down and shook the mouse to bring it out of sleep mode. Up on the screen was an e-mail my mom was writing to her mom and sister (my grandma and aunt) about all the great things my brothers were doing and how I was “causing some issues”. Nothing positive about me. That was quite a shot to my self-esteem so I just left the computer the same way I found it and went back to my room. My parents don’t know I ever saw it, but it kinda set the tone for our relationship for the past 10 years.
My parents stayed together because they had me and my sister. My sister now has 2 kids and I wondered why my Mom was so obsessive over my nephew. Turns out that before me and my sister, I was supposed to have a brother. He didn’t make it and my Mom has felt ashamed of herself. I found out through my Dad when I asked him why Mom keeps wasting her money on my sister. When he told me, I just simply said, “So that’s why my room was blue”.
When I was a child, we used to be semi-close to my dad’s family. My grandparents came up (2+ hour drive) to talk to my parents about an “adult issue” and 10-year-old me was told to stay in my room with the door shut. After that, we never spoke to them again, except for one letter that I got from them expressing sympathy when my other grandmother (who I was very close to) passed away. I had no idea what happened.
Years later, I found a cousin on Facebook and we happened to go to the same college, so we met for coffee. I found out that the reason we no longer spoke was that my mom opened a whole bunch of credit cards and racked up a bunch of debt in my grandma’s name that she never had any intention of paying back. My cousin and I kept it between us and she has no idea I know.
When my sister and I were kids my dad would sell his valuable football cards and other stuff at pawn shops so he could afford presents for us for Christmas, Easter, etc. (totally not necessary, Dad, but I love you).
When my grandfather died he left approx 140k$ American in a trust for me. It wasn’t to be touched until after my parents passed away so that it could gain as much money as possible from the investments he had arranged. (My grandfather was an oil tycoon in PA and no one in the family knew it until after he died.) I got a call from the bank one day asking how I’d like to handle closing the accounts. I had no idea why, but apparently, my parents had been taking medical bills from themselves and altering them to have my name on them. Then submitting them to the bank to be “reimbursed” for paying my medical bills. They had bled the trust completely dry in less than 5 years. They used the money to remodel their home. I don’t think I have any recourse. But whatever. I’m 35 and I have my own retirement. It just makes me mad that they would steal from me like that.
Christmas 2019 I found out that I am a product of an affair. My mum cheated on her then-husband, and likewise, my dad cheated on his then-wife. I have several half-siblings from their previous marriages, and I knew something was up because me and one of my half-sisters (on my dad’s side) have very close birthdays, but I’d never felt comfortable asking about it before, and it just came out at the table at Christmas. I don’t know how I feel about it. They said I was born out of love, but my dad also told me that he took me to the school where they both worked (where they met) to parade me around and show everyone that the rumours were true. We all get on very well together, and we frequently see my half-siblings, as well as their mum! The whole situation is so strange.
I sometimes hear my dad talking behind closed doors to my mom who passed away suddenly years ago. He typically tells her our life updates and that he misses her. My sister got married recently and I overheard him from outside his room telling my mom how beautiful my sister looked and how great her husband is that she never had the chance to meet. About how they had always spoken of that moment, watching their child marry, and he wished she was there with him to see us. We rarely speak about my mom at home, but 14 years later she’s still very alive in his heart. It’s gut-wrenching at times.
My parents were cleaning out the attic and had a bunch of boxes full of their old childhood/high school keepsakes and memorabilia. I was 18 years old at the time and casually flipping through my mom’s senior memory book. She had pasted pictures to the pages and written captions to go along with them.
There was a photo of her and my dad (they started dating when she was 17 and still in high school while my dad was in college) at what looked like a party. My mom wrote something along the lines of, “I went to visit (my dad’s name) at (my dad’s college). That weekend was our ‘first time’.”
Not a huge deal to most, but I grew up in a very puritanical Christian church. Like, my youth group were made to sign “contracts with God” when we were 13 and wore True Love Waits rings on our ring fingers to symbolize our commitment to our virginity, the whole nine yards. Basically, having s*x before marriage was the worst thing you could do, so in my naive little mind I just assumed my parents had waited- because that was what they constantly shoved down my sister and I’s throats.
I was absolutely furious at the hypocrisy. I confronted my mom, and she tried to play it off like she meant it was their first time going to a party together. *eye roll*
When I was young, my dad was a very successful owner of a housebuilding business. In the early 90s, the bubble bursting hit us hard, we had to sell the house he built for our family and move into a generic suburb. Things were tough for a few years, but our family rebounded into a comfortable middle class.
About 2 years ago, during a significant life change and several emotional calls with my mother, she let drop that our family had actually lost *millions* at that time. I knew we had money back then, but I didn’t know we were multi-millionaires!
My sister and I (both in our twenties) only found out a couple of months ago that our dad wasn’t our biological father. It was one of those things that was shocking to hear but then later we both felt kinda dumb that we didn’t realize sooner. I knew they struggled to conceive, they just left out the sp*rm donor part. They chose a guy whose description was similar to my dad’s and just hoped we’d look enough like him to not ask questions, I guess.
Now I just look back and laugh at all the times one of us said “Isn’t it weird how [my sister] looks nothing like dad? Lol Genetics be crazy” and they must’ve been biting their tongues to keep from saying “no sh*t you don’t look like him” haha
Beginning of November last year found out my mother never actually ended her affair when she was able to convince my dad to get back together after close to a year of separation and an ongoing divorce. She’s still with him and now is completely cut out of my life because I just can’t be with her anymore. Haven’t done anything but responded to her stupid texts where she asks why I cut her off and she keeps denying it although we have proof and my little brother has seen her text thread. All the siblings know but we don’t want to tell Dad since he has heart issues anyway and has forgiven her for worse so it doesn’t change the outcome if we tell him but it will affect his heart.
I found out that the details around the way my parents started dating were kind of scandalous and quite contrary to the ordinary way my sister and I were told. The original story is simply that they “met in university.” We never cared about the details, and this story was always enough, until we asked more questions as we got older, and our parents told us more.
So my dad is 17 years older than my mom, and he was the TA of the professor for one of her final undergraduate courses. He was married at the time, with two grown children. About a week before he began teaching her class, he saw her sitting across from him on the train, and couldn’t stop thinking about her. (This detail kind of made me laugh because my mom would have looked like just another twenty-something student reading a book while commuting home. His interest was so unexpected to me, especially since she looked like a hundred other of his students.) So then, when he ran into her again as one of the students in the class he was teaching, he couldn’t just move on and forget about her. Anyways, eventually, when the class ended, he asked her out, started an affair, broke off with his marriage, and then married my mom shortly after…
When my sister and I first found out, we were both kind of uneasy, and felt kind of ashamed, especially because our parents raised us with a certain set of moral values, and punished us for lying, cheating, not keeping promises, etc.
Ironic…
This obviously must have been really messed up for my dad’s kids from his first marriage, but they always treated my sister and me as family and didn’t harbour any hostility, so we were really fortunate.
Growing up, none of these details of the story was ever mentioned, but my sister and I should have been weirded out at the fact that our niece and nephew are at least 1 year older than us, as they were the kids of my dad’s eldest son.
We’ve never met my dad’s first wife, but I know that she still hasn’t forgiven him and hates our whole family. Understandable. I’m close with my niece, and she sees her grandma very often but keeps our friendship a secret to not hurt her feelings.
My divorced parents are both cheating on their current spouses.
With each other.
I learned about my father’s gambling addiction during a conversation with my grandma and my aunt. My aunt just started rambling about it, I’m pretty sure she just pretended not to know that my parents never told me about it. She went on badmouthing him and then apologized when I started to cry (I think I was like 19 at that time and had already had a really bad day so it was just too much).
My grandma was completely shocked, just looked at the ground and mumbled “Her mom is gonna kill me”, which is still a hilarious and probably accurate reaction to me
I never told my parents about all of this, I know they just tried to protect me and keep stuff like that away from me, and apparently, my dad had been to therapy for his addiction.
Makes me see some things in a different light though, for example how he taught me how to play poker when I was 10 and told me not to tell my mom cause she’d divorce him if she knew lmao
My dad doesn’t know that I found paperwork of his from when he got discharged from the military and diagnosed with borderline personality disorder with narcissistic features. Everything about his behavior suddenly made sense but there was literally no way to bring it up to him without making him extremely (more) defensive or shutting down on me. It did give me peace of mind, though, and helped me work through a lot of trauma on my end after years of emotional gaslighting.
My biological dad died when I was two (car accident going to his next duty station), and not too long ago I got a box of letters he had sent my aunt, uncle and his parents. Since he died when I was so young, I didn’t really know him that well, but this treasure trove of letters gave me some real insight into who he was. It was a lot of letters from the time he was in the Navy before he married my mom, all the way up to not long before he died.
In one set of letters, he discusses with my grandparents how he and my mom aren’t getting along. He mentions that they might get a divorce, but he wanted their help in getting custody of me. I think mostly because my mom was born and raised in Ireland and not yet a true citizen of the US so he was afraid he’d never see me again if I went with her. Apparently, she was fine with him taking me. They reconciled, but it’s interesting to know that she would have given me up and I’d have grown up in LA instead of with her, ultimately on the East Coast of the US.
Well, my father sends me letters from prison assuming I haven’t heard the phone recordings where he admits to child r*pe. I burn everything he sends me. Also, I corroborated several claims against him when interviewed by the detective.
I just recently was told by my brother that he found a second birth certificate for my sister without any father listed. It predated my father and mother meeting by six months or so. My sister is 12 years older than myself and definitely looks different from the rest of the family. So my father is not my sister’s father and everyone in the family knows but no one has confronted them about it. Also what’s strange is I am raising my fiancé’s daughter and do not plan to have children of my own and this might be comforting to me in my current situation but not only did my siblings know five years before they told me but my parents have yet to even bring this up that my father raised a child that wasn’t his.
My dad wasn’t present at my birth because he was serving time for attempting to beat my mom to induce an abortion.
My grandmother told me in a drunken stupor a few years back. Somehow everyone in my family knew and still forgave him. My parents have been married for 22 years now and other than a couple petty fights, I’ve never seen them at odds with each other.
I haven’t told them I know, but it definitely soured my relationship with him.
My mom does not know that I know she has been struggling with depression for years. My dad told me. It amazes me how much she has put up with over the years. Hard sh*t even for someone without depression. The funny thing is for the longest time I considered my mom a very chill, happy-go-lucky person who wasn’t easily frazzled. This came as a complete shock. I guess she is trying to protect me? I’m in my mid-twenties. It’s f*cked up.
My parents were in their 30s when they met (my mom had me at 35 and my dad was almost 40). So it’s understandable that they both would have had previous relationships and love lives before they met.
When I was a teenager, I discovered via a drunken relative that my dad was engaged before he met my mom. He was in his 20s living in AZ. He and his fiancée were typical struggling young people living paycheck to paycheck and didn’t have a car. His fiancée was pregnant and was going to walk to the corner store while he was at work. She got hit by a car and died. The drunk relative who told me this story only knew because my dad had called asking for money to help with the funeral.
I cried after I learned that. I felt so sad for my dad and couldn’t imagine the heartache of that. He’s never spoken about it, and I have no idea if my mom knows, but I suddenly understood why he was so protective of my mom and me.
That my grandma has a picture of my mom. My parents separated when I was like two. My dad told my grandma to get rid of everything about her and we never spoke about her growing up. My grandma showed me the only picture she kept that my dad doesn’t know about. It’s the only picture of her I’ve ever seen.
My dad took off when I was about 2 and I was left to be raised by my mother, who was in no mentally healthy state to raise a kid by herself. My dad swears he wanted to just take me and he always wanted me, but lo and behold he never showed up to the hearing deciding custody over me. My mom swears my dad has never paid child support and he’s a cheap b*stard, but lo and behold I find all the receipts of her receiving child support. She just didn’t want to admit she was gambling it away and that’s why we were dirt poor for most of my life. They’ve been each other’s scapegoats for years and I just don’t have the patience or heart to tell them I know and I don’t care anymore.
My father and stepmother met through an adult online dating website 15+ years ago.
My stepmother doesn’t know my dad asked for my help to make an online profile for him since he was computer illiterate back in the 90s. The first couple of times they chatted I kind of ‘supervised’ until my dad got the hang of using the chat/message system. Although nothing too interesting, the flirting was cringe-worthy.
It’s not a secret anymore but my parents got divorced when I was like 5 and for almost a decade I continued to ask why they got a divorce every so often. My parents always said they would tell me when I was older but when I got to about 15 I kinda figured I’d just never find out and stopped asking.
Eventually, in my early 20s, I was going through a tough time in my life and had a real heart to heart with my Mom and asked again why they divorced, turns out my Dad is gay. I couldn’t have cared less and neither could my brothers after my mom told them. We kept it to ourselves for a few years and figured our Dad would tell us when he was ready.
He told us a few years ago and cried when he realized we knew and still loved him and stuff. He’s been so much happier since he came out to us. The sad thing is he never told his parents. They passed away not knowing he was gay and I think that still weighs on him a lot.
My sister found old journals that belong to my mom, and in one of them, she wrote that if she could do anything she wanted she’d kill her kids and leave her husband (my dad).
I think she wrote that when I was young, maybe 5 or 6. 22 years later and my parents are still married, and my sister and I are still alive and doing well.
I think she wrote that because she was unhappy with the way her life was going, and I think she was probably unhappy with her life for large patches of my childhood, but she was almost always a good mom. She could be insensitive, especially towards my sister, but I don’t think she did anything especially selfish or vicious towards my dad, sister, or myself. Still, it’s weird to think that my mom had the desire for me to not exist at some point.
When I was younger my parents were living apart from each other. My dad was working on projects in Kenya while my mom was living with my brother and I in the States. My parents weren’t divorced just work had caused them to be separated for a bit. My brother and I would go to visit my father every single summer while they were apart. One summer when we were visiting my Dad, he introduced us to this woman named Aunt Rose. Rose was so much fun and she would take us out all the time, amusement parks, movies, game drives, beach trips everything a 12-year-old would love to do, we did it. It was not until 7 years later when I was having dinner with one of my cousins and Rose’s name came up that my cousin informed me that Rose was not my aunt but in fact my father’s mistress. According to her, all this information was public knowledge to the whole family except for me. According to her, it was, in fact, my brother who had found out the following year after we had met Rose. After finding out this information my brother had become very distant from my father, constantly rebelling and later turning into a drug addict to cope with the heartbreak of the man he’s always looked up to letting him down. My whole family knows all of this information except me, my cousin made me promise to never tell my parents I know since they are still together now so they must have come to some sort of agreement. But Hearing that information really changed my opinion on my father and I’ve struggled to look at him the same way. I now only talk to him when I see him in person, which is usually once or twice a year.
I was about 5/6, and I walked into my parent’s room to find the bed soaked in blood and my mother crying. My father rushed me out of the room, telling me to forget about it.
After I had my second miscarriage at 21, with my first happening at 17, it clicked in my head what happened that day. My parents became overly protective and pushy for my success, to the point of abuse, and it all made sense of what I saw that day. I wasn’t meant to be an only child.
I don’t speak to my parents anymore, but I wonder if the reason they turned out the way they did was because of my lost sibling.
My dad has a sister that he never talks about, whom I have never met. Don’t even know her name.
I found out about it over dinner one night when my grandma was over. I don’t remember the context but my grandma made a comment to my dad along the lines of “Your sister really enjoys this type of food”. I looked at my dad in confusion, I had always thought he was an only child. My dad kinda just stared down at his plate and stayed quiet.
I still haven’t mentioned it or asked my dad about it, so I’m assuming my dad thinks I have forgotten about the dinner conversation. So yeah, I have an aunt out there somewhere whom I have never met, nor do I know her name. It’s pretty weird.
My dad did, or might still have a secret family.
My parents were divorced for a multitude of reasons. But I was left in the dark about it for a while. But after hearing occasional whispers from their few talks on phones and chats (mainly child support and divorce agreements.) I began to investigate a bit. My father traveled a lot, about 50-60% of the time. And then after the divorce, he “travelled” all but two weekends a month. Which were the weekends we got to see him. Apparently, he had another house in his name with another woman up north (around Chicago) that he was visiting and then virtually living with. I verified by finding an electric bill in his car for a place that wasn’t his apartment. I couldn’t nail down a timeline and I couldn’t find anything on potential other children though, just a woman from what I can find. But now he’s settled and married to another woman locally and she’s an amazing stepmom. But he still is only home two weekends a month and has missed the last 3 Christmases which causes me to wonder if something similar is happening. But I haven’t found anything so far.
Also, my mother was petty as well. When he was getting married to my stepmother, my mother used friendships with the church to get the priest to cancel on the day of the wedding, causing a huge scramble.
Both of my parents present themselves well, work jobs and support their families, they were also decent parents (when around). This information blew my world.
I know my parents were told that I landed on the autism spectrum. They never took further tests to learn what learning disabilities I actually have. They did take the time to warn my wife before we were married and to keep it a secret from me.
My mom purposely stopped taking her birth control to have me so that she could prevent my dad from joining the Navy. He joined anyway. She got mad about this, so she made it hard for him to see me and he basically became estranged. I found out when I was cleaning out a storage locker of hers and I found some letters they wrote to each other while he was overseas.
When my brother was still in the marching band, their performances were sometimes featured on the local news. He wanted to record the show on TV using VHS (DVR was widely available but not seen as a worthwhile investment yet) so he could show his friends. The replay of the performance happened around 11 pm or so and he left the TV running and the VCR recording. My pops who sleeps downstairs (mom is not a fan of the log sawing) saw that the TV was left on. Not knowing that the VCR records exactly what was being shown on the screen, he decided to open up the cable menu and look around. He scrolled up and down, all over the menu until he stumbled upon the no-no channels. He watched the no-no channels for about 30 minutes before returning the tv to the replay of the football game after the band performance. My brother showed me this after he wanted to see what the VCR recorded. The tape is now appropriately marked “The Evidence”. My pops is oblivious that we both know what he did and plan to use it to get him in trouble one day
When I was about 11 my dad accidentally ran over one of our kitties in the driveway. It was totally not his fault: we all knew that those kitties loved to play chicken with cars pulling into the garage, running up under the car and avoiding the wheels. That day, little Delta misjudged and Dad ran him over.
I only know this because my Mom told me years later after Dad died. That day, they told my brother & me that Delta had gotten sick, they’d taken him to the vet, but the vet couldn’t help him, and they’d had him put to sleep.
I’m sad that Dad thought it necessary to lie to us about this.
My Mom was kidnapped. I don’t know any details, and it’s never come up. When I found out about my Mom’s behavior my entire life completely made sense.
Her best friend of 30+ years told me when she was drunk. I don’t know if she remembers telling me TBH. I’ve thought about asking my Grandpa for details but I don’t want it getting back to my Mom. If she wants to tell me she will in her own time.
My mom married my dad in late ‘92 and a couple of months later they had me. After me, they had my middle sister. After an even longer time, my youngest sister was born. My parents got divorced finalized in 2001 and then my mom passed in 2007 from breast cancer and she took a secret with her to the grave. A secret that I had long ago sniffed out. My mom had an affair with this man she had met and been in love with since she was 14. She introduced him to the family as her “lifelong best friend” and sometimes he would take us all out to his cabin in Nevada and we would stay with his wife and daughters out on the lake. We would take this trip about once a year and beyond that this man would just pop into our lives and stay with us for about 3 weeks out of the year. Spending so much time with this man I started to notice things about him and his family/life. I noticed that my youngest sister looked a lot more like his daughters than she did to me and my other sister. I also notice that he was only attentive to her, super nice and generous- always hungrily asking about news on how her life was going and sometimes he just hold her and sing to her. He even bought her clothes and shoes and special treats. Normally my mom would have been upset at any of us 3 receiving preferential treatment but she was oddly silent about these displays. My mom’s refusal to acknowledge this was what spoke the most to me. I knew my mom regretted marrying my dad from almost day one. She married my dad because she got pregnant with me and I could tell it made her miserable so I never could bring myself to confront her about something that clearly brought her some joy. My dad loved my mom more than anything but he wasn’t the most admirable father/husband. He was an alcoholic and pretty absent most nights. Anyways, I have since confirmed what I always suspected and it was that my youngest sister isn’t my full blood. She’s only half. Not that it matters, I never think of her as anything less than my baby sister. But because she was obviously my mom’s favorite child (the child she had with her “soulmate”) it really messed her up when our mom passed. They were so dependent on each other. I’m still the only person in my family who knows about this and it’s mainly because I know that if my dad were to ever find out he would definitely disown her. He’s just like that. He hates my older brother because my mom had him before they met. I could never do that to my family. Even though they kind of keep me at arm’s length since I was 16, I like seeing them stick together after all these years.
I’m aware that my dad is pretty convinced that the reason my grandpa (his dad) does not love him or have any interest in his life is because he’s male. My grandpa is active with his daughters and granddaughter, but not my dad or any other male relatives, despite having tons of means and opportunities. My dad doesn’t know I’m aware of his thinking and I won’t tell him because I know it would crush him to hear anyone agree with him. I think he would prefer there was some concrete reason for a breakdown rather than the idea that his dad never really loved him and simply felt obligated to provide for him.
My dad was and is very vigilant about letting my sibling and I know we were and are loved, regardless of gender or personal disposition. He’s tearfully, drunkenly confessed that one of his deepest fears is us not really understanding or believing that he loves us.
When I was 11, I accompanied my mom to a doctor’s appointment. The doctor ran through my mom’s medical history, and I heard her say, “And you got an abortion last January?” I was old enough to understand what the term meant (I don’t think they thought I was), and honestly it shook me up for a while because I never saw it coming.
My mom had to do some soul-searching for AA. She wrote a list called “life resentments” and Having Kids was the first bullet point. Found it while I was looking for my social security card to apply for my first job at 16… She kept it in a safe.
My mom separated from and divorced my dad quickly and unannounced, and I never knew why. She suddenly started going out at night when she thought I was asleep and coming back in the early morning before I would wake up. I found out pretty quickly she was in a relationship with an old coworker. Now he’s at our house all the time but they’re not openly in a relationship. She really must think I’m stupid lol.
I found my dad’s journal one of the entries is about how he wished he never had a girl.
Both of my parents were in love with other people when they got married. They were in an arranged marriage for sixteen years…and they are first cousins.
My grandfathers are brothers. And yes, this means that my parents are also my second cousins.
It was a normal thing in our culture back then, but I still find it f*cking weird. They don’t know that I know, but I found out when I was around 15 or 16 years old. They’re divorced now.