Yep, you guessed it – we’re talking about those jaw-dropping secrets that folks swear they’ll take to their grave. From juicy confessions to wild escapades, this is where things get real. So buckle up as we crack open the vault of hidden tales and explore the uncharted territories of human experiences that are just too crazy to share openly. It’s time to spill the beans on the stories that make you go, “No way, they did what?!”
I’ve never mentioned this to anyone, but I am a man who feels like a woman trapped in a man’s body, but I don’t like men. I once ‘joked’ that I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, but it’s actually fairly accurate. There’s just something about the female form, so captivating and beautiful, that I wish I could be that way, which can never be the case. I would never act on this desire, but I want it so desperately sometimes… I have a wife and son, and I don’t think I’d ever be able to look them in the face if this got out.
I once helped out my female friend’s family by taking care of their cat for a week. Every day for a week, I would go over there and snoop around their house. I found my friend’s diary and proceeded to read the entire thing. I used this information to get her to like me, and she is currently my wife.
I run a cake business. I charge people hundreds for wedding cakes… Every last one is made using Pillsbury cake mix I buy for $1 a box at Walmart. I suck at baking. Every time I’ve ever tried to make a cake from scratch it sucked. But baking is like. My whole deal. My friends all call me the cake girl. It’s like my whole life is a lie. People compliment my cakes all the time. Telling me how delicious they are. Telling me it’s so much better than box mix cake. Telling me they could never bake a cake so delicious. Well, guess what? For $1, they too can make a cake just as delicious. Just add oil, eggs and water. In my defense, I love cake decorating. I make all of the frostings and fondant from scratch. I just hate baking f*cking cakes!! I base my prices mostly on the decoration of the cakes and not on the cake itself if that makes sense. Still… No one knows about this except my husband. Even my best friends think I f*cking slave over the oven mixing and baking these d*mn cakes. I have been doing this for YEARS. If anyone knew my business and reputation would be in the toilet for sure. :/ I keep telling myself I have to learn how to make the d*mn cakes without the box mixes, but I never do it. I feel like such a sham sometimes.
I told my best friend’s boyfriend to go look for her during a party once when I knew she cheating with some other guy. HE DESERVED TO KNOW. But that would easily ruin our 20-year friendship if she ever found out.
But no one deserves to be cheated on, ever.
When I was 11 I was told to take out the trash and I did but (for context my family had a grill with a box of matches next to it and it was fall) but I burned some dead leaves for like 2 minutes then I stomped on them to put out the fire but all did was push it right next to our house and then the house went up the flames and my parents had very well paying jobs so they were able to pay for the damages but when the authorities came and firefighters put out the fire, they were wondering how it started and the authorities suspected someone jumped to the fence and lit up the leaves to burn our house down. Our parents scared for my life moved somewhere else and they lost their jobs and lost a lot of money moving to our new house and for the next solid 7 years, we lived like sh*t. and my parents still do not know that I’m the reason they have to look like that.
What secret could ruin my life?
I secretly take off my hijab.
On social media, I wear the hijab. In front of all my parents, other family, and most of my friends, I wear a hijab. Here’s my story: When I graduated two years ago I decided to look for a job, and I wasn’t able to land anything. I came up with the idea to start interviewing without wearing one, and once I get an offer I’d start wearing it again. I ended up getting two great job offers (which made me really sad that my theory of taking it off and easily finding a job was true). I took one and haven’t worn it to work at all. I don’t know what happened in the mix of things. I guess I started to like the attention men gave me and I actually felt like I belonged/normal with my peers. It was a feeling I’d never felt. Everyone started treating me differently as if I was worth speaking to. I don’t get weird looks anymore, I don’t get asked weird questions.
I’m too afraid to tell my parents about it because of disappointment and I’m even more afraid of the Muslim community finding out. Bullying and talking sh*t happens a lot to girls who “take it off”. I wear it to family functions, and when I’m at a place where I know I can run into someone I know.
So yes in essence I guess I am living a double life. Say what you want I’m okay for now living like this. I keep changing my mind on what I permanently want to do.
I’ve pretty much been a f*ckup all my life. when I told someone I was suicidal, they talked me out of doing it, but I laid on them a b*llsh*t story about being abused as a child and just generally made myself seem so pitiful and helpless, they took me into their home and treated me as one of the family: fed me, clothed me, everything, and never once asked me for anything in return.
I still live here with them 10 years later, I work in the garden and help the 5th grader with homework, I do all the grocery shopping and cooking and I live here like this all based on a pack of lies. I guess I am mentally ill somehow, but I don’t know if I can ever get better w/o telling someone the truth. It makes me feel sweaty and sick in my stomach to even think about telling anyone this story.
Well, it’s more of a secret to my friends that I’ve made recently. Some background first: I don’t like being touched or hugged, and I’m incredibly uncomfortable with intimacy in general.
When I was in the 8th grade, a bunch of girls in my class convinced me they had a friend who fancied me (they said she had seen me somewhere and thought I was cute). Faked an MSN account and they talked to me every night for a few months, invited me out to the movies and (obviously) didn’t show up, then revealed to the whole grade that I had been tricked into having an ‘imaginary’ girlfriend.
I was mocked viciously by everyone in the grade and ever since then, I can’t really trust women. I also can’t believe that a girl may have feelings for me. Even when they explicitly tell me they have feelings for me I can’t help but feel like they’re trying to trick me. It’s caused a lot of insecurity, and I can’t get ‘attached’ to people easily. I’m terribly afraid to text, or message people first because I’m convinced I would be annoying them. What’s worse is that when I think about it, I know it probably isn’t true; but I can’t help but feel like it is.
Even though it was grade 8, it was around the time when attraction to women was just starting to get ‘real’, so to be hurt at a time as delicate as that has really done some damage.
The secret of course is that I had been dumb enough to be tricked. As you might suspect, the whole thing has left me afraid of being vulnerable. To have this found out by my newer friends (as in, university friends) would put me in a really uncomfortable place. I probably wouldn’t be able to be their friend anymore.
Thanks for reading, you’re the first people I’ve told about what this event has actually done to me.
Two and a half years ago I was in dire financial straights, so I sold my home to keep my struggling business afloat. I neglected to tell the owners that they have an 800 sq. ft. bunker on the property that I built about seven years ago. The bunker that I’ve called home since I sold it. The entrance to it is well-hidden, but I still come and go very early/very late in the day.
I’m a single man who keeps to himself. I’m now in a situation where I could move somewhere else, but I love this hidden paradise so much.
I am basically living a lie. I told my entire family I was able to transfer out of community college and into a university, but I never finished up the requirements. So since I live at home, every day instead of going to school I go to the local library and bs. My lies are so extensive, that I even go to the campus and meet my girlfriend for lunch sometimes. I’ve made fake transcripts to show my family, and to make it look like I’m actually studying I go to MIT OpenCourseWare to look up facts that I “learned in class” that day. I have become a remarkable liar. I hope to be transferring in the fall and then I look forward to living a normal life. Coming clean is not an option at this point.
My father recently went to prison for a white-collar crime that he pleaded guilty to. he didn’t commit this crime, but the alternative was fighting a highly sensationalized, media-obsessed, scapegoat case and potentially getting 20+ years.
while he was in prison, I read his little blue book, which I knew contained all the missteps of everyone he’s worked with. he has always been an extremely scrupulous man, so these offenses were something he took seriously enough to note. I have information on countless state employees, incredibly prominent and wealthy community members, numerous elected city/state officials, and police officers. this information could ruin lives and start political controversy.
my father is an incredible man and is not vengeful whatsoever. he will never use any of this info against these people, despite the fact that most completely turned on him and stayed uninvolved at all costs or started pointing fingers. when I picture my aging father sitting in a maximum security jail cell sleeping on a metal sheet without a mattress (he wasn’t given one until his 5th night), I am filled with rage for these people who could have stood up for their friend and prevented this, while he still continues to be loyal. I still haven’t decided which campaigns, if any, I’m going to ruin in the upcoming elections.
I have a blind brother. When we were young, I used to get so frustrated at all the extra attention he received and how I had to be more responsible with my siblings than my peers. So, when my brother and I would go play, go to the store, or just generally go anywhere without adults, I would abandon him somewhere unfamiliar to him. Then, I would stand off quietly and watch the anxiety set in as he tried to figure out where he was and what was going on.
Also, I was really intelligent as a child and knew that was my ticket to attention. When I would “help” my brother with his homework, I would teach him all the wrong answers, so that I could continue being the smarter sibling. Today, my brother is my best friend. He goes to college and lives by himself. He’s become one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever met. I’m trying to make it up to him now by being the best big sister ever, but I still feel so guilty about how I found him to be a burden when I was a kid.
I faked having a chronic pain condition for 5.5 years in order to not have to attend middle school and high school (I was placed on a homebound program — NOT homeschooling — and allowed to study at my own pace from home). I was able to fool a team of medical professionals, my family, my teachers, and my friends into believing that my symptoms were real. Also, I racked up over $100,000 in medical bills for my family (that’s just what the insurance didn’t cover) during those 5.5 years (I did not realize the extent of the medical bills until late into my lie and it was one of the main reasons I decided enough was enough). Upon graduating from high school and getting accepted into a good university, I decided that it was time for my “pain” to go away. No one has questioned the fact that my symptoms vanished overnight, my medical team attributed it to the fact that I was nearing the end of puberty.
What I did was a d*uchebag thing, and my family is continuing to drown in debt from medical bills (I plan to pay them back someday). I simply started the hoax because I was a 12-year-old who absolutely loathed middle school. I attempted to end the lie at the beginning of every school year, but eventually fell back into saying my “pain” prevented me from attending school. Today I feel horrible about what I did, and I desperately want to tell everyone that it was a lie, but I know that I cannot because I will never gain credibility back again.
My mom died when I was 17 and when it comes up I use it to garner attention for myself. In reality, I never met her and she has never meant anything to me other than a name.
I feel so empty.
When I was about 12 I went with some family to the family dollar. My mother and cousins went off to look at generic groceries so I decided I would just spend my time hanging out in the toy aisle. In the toy aisle, there would always be these bags of marbles that other kids would open and leave lying there so I decided to fling marbles across the floor and one just happened to reach one of the far-off aisles. So about two minutes later I heard a loud crash and someone screamed: “Somebody help this man!”. Being the curious child I was, I ran over to see what the commotion was about and I found everyone gathered around this guy who seemed to have fallen from the ladder as he was getting something off the top shelf. The guy is seizing. My mother whisked me and my cousins away and we left. The next time we went we talked to the front cashier and she said that they called the paramedics but by the time they got there he had died. Apparently, the cause for the fall according to the front cashier was that he had put the ladder on a marble and didn’t check it before he got on it. When I heard what the cashier said I just stood in disbelief thinking I was going to jail, I tried telling my mother many times but all she did was say that I imagined it.
Five years before my stepdad died of Alzheimer’s and Leukemia, I noticed he was very quiet in the evenings when I visited him and my mom. I asked him “Why don’t you want to talk a bit more?”, to which he responded, “If I don’t say anything I can’t say anything wrong.”
I took it to mean that he was afraid of conflicts with my mom and said that I would want to hear anything he had to say.
After he died I realized why he said what he said. I was at a lunch with them when he tried to ask me something but put in completely wrong nouns, and nonsense choices, and every time he did that my mom started laughing and said “Hahaha, now you’ve totally gotten things weird!”.
She didn’t know she was being condescending because she didn’t know he was getting advanced dementia (none of us knew then), and she just brushed his mistakes off as being silly mistakes. She couldn’t know it shamed him so much that he stopped talking, since he didn’t trust his words anymore, nor his sense of balance.
I will never ever explain this to my mom, not even if I am super-angry. I would do un retractable damage to my relationship with her, she mourned him deeply.
I hid the extent of my alcoholism from everyone since I was 15, I’m now 35 and 8 weeks sober. No one knows I’m sober now as they’ve never known I had an alcohol issue.
Got busted with a lot of computers from my work, about $25K worth, and plead guilty to Grand Theft (F). They spelled my name wrong, wrong birthday, and I never gave them my DL or SSN. “I don’t remember it,” I said over and over during my 90-day incarceration.
That was 34 years ago and I background check my name every few years with a racy heart each time.
Nope. Not there.
I’m only working half of the time at work.
I have managed to create a facade that makes it look as if I would work full time on the project I was assigned to but it actually takes only half of the time. Sometimes it gets a bit stressful but most of the time I manage to organize everything in a way that allows me to do anything but my work at the office. On home office days I mostly play video games.
If I get asked how it’s going, I lie and deceit to make it look like I am fully tied to my work and the schedules and deadlines etc… I got really good at this, I guess I could lie about nearly anything now and most people would believe it.
If my coworkers or my boss would find out that I get paid for a full-time job while only working roughly 20 hours a week I’d get fired immediately. Additionally, I live in a small town and that would probably ruin my reputation at any potential new job.
I’ve been doing this for 2 years now.
A good friend of mine is Indian and gay, which she knows her family won’t accept. She is about to have an arranged marriage to a man, who is also gay. Neither of their families knows the truth and is excited about the upcoming wedding. The groom’s boyfriend is part of the wedding party. They plan to have children via IVF at some point.
A while back, I was cheating on my wife with a coworker. It went on for months, and I never really cared for the woman I was cheating with. She was super hot, though. After a while, my coworker started getting really crazy and threatening to tell my wife (whom I had a child with and a baby on the way) about everything. Obviously, I kept trying to cut things off because I realized I was making a mistake. She lost it one night and was freaking out and texting me telling me she was going to come to my house, and a drunk driver hit her. She died instantly. No one knew I was having an affair, and my family went to her funeral.
I’ve stolen at least 90% of the clothes I currently wear. I can afford to buy it, but I choose not to. My family and girlfriend all think I spend too much money on clothes but they have no idea.
I don’t care about the company or my work beyond a professional level (I do my work well because I’m paid, but I’m not working extra for free), I don’t buy into “the mission” at all and the only reason I don’t want the place to go belly up is so I don’t lose my job.
If corporations heard this, it could ruin your life because a lot have bought into/force-fed the delusion that work=life. Heck, I know people who have been clearly shoved out of companies because of this (tech is real bad about it). This isn’t to say that I don’t work hard for my time, but I get paid for 40 hours, and I work hard for 40. Do you expect 60? Pay me and I’ll do it, but I don’t care about the company or “changing the world” so I won’t do it for free.
So my secret isn’t something earth-shattering… I am just completely, utterly ashamed about it. This is going to be long because I feel so much better writing this out… Nobody knows so I figured that I might as well jump on this bandwagon and tell Reddit. My girlfriend, let’s call her Jill, and I have been in a good relationship for many years now. We are planning on getting married. She will do anything for me and is just the sweetest girl. The thing is… well. Let’s back up.
When I first met her, she was sort of overweight. More than chubby, but not like obese or anything. I thought nothing of it and tried not to be shallow, but I just could not be myself to be physically attracted to her. But she was absolutely wonderful in all other respects, so I just told myself that I was a d*ck and to stop thinking like that. But when we progressed enough in the relationship and we were both ready to be intimate, I could not do it. I couldn’t get it up no matter how hard I tried. I just saw her body and went limp. Now I know that you’re thinking that I am a complete a** for this, but I tried. I really did.
I didn’t want to tell her that I was unhappy with the way she looked, because it really shouldn’t matter, and I’ve heard about other women and their crazy self-esteem issues. But she could tell. She noticed, and she brought it up, and she asked me if it was because of her weight. I hemmed and hawed around because I didn’t want to admit to being the d*ck that I am, but she figured it out. We broke up shortly after.
But then, out of the blue, Jill calls me. She wants us to meet. She tells me that she has been missing me so much and that she wants to see me. I feel the same way, and I agree. So on that second date, I can barely recognize her. She lost so much weight, just for me, just so I would be attracted to her. We got back together immediately, and now everyone assumes that we are in a happy, idyllic relationship. But we’re not. I am afraid that I ruined her for life, and that she is somewhat anorexic because she constantly asks me if she is “skinny enough” and obsesses over food all the time. She thinks nothing is wrong with herself. I can’t believe what she did for me, and I feel completely and totally awful for what I did to her. But she holds no grudges and tells me that I couldn’t help that I wasn’t attracted to her before.
This is a secret that I will take to my grave.
I’m a nurse. I take care of people for a living. In real life, I can’t even take care of myself.
My house is literally falling apart because I was super depressed and let the little things turn into big things. My only hope is that the whole thing just collapses or something.
I’m broke. I make good money now, but before I was a nurse I lived well below the poverty line. I still have debt up to my eyeballs that I’m trying to dig myself out from under.
I wish bad things to happen to my ex. I love my life now, but he ruined it for a long time. The ways he hurt me and my family left their marks forever.
I’m very funny and outgoing at work, my patients love me, but I’d rather sit silently at home.
So, nothing too crazy, but maybe enough to lose my livelihood, thus ruining my life.
I still carry a flame for the girl I fell for when I was 14.
It’s been 20 years. We are entirely different human beings with separate lives. She probably doesn’t even think of me. But if she one day showed up out of the blue, I can’t say that I wouldn’t leave everything I have behind.
I’m a renowned chef (to an extent). I don’t have my own TV show or anything but I have been featured on a few FoodTV shows as well as a few shows on The Cooking Channel. Anthony Bourdain has stopped by one of my restaurants in the early days of No Reservations.
My Secret: I absolutely HATE most of the food I cook. I cater to the rich snobby crowd and it’s amazing how sheep-like these people can be. I could take a f*cking pile of dirt but as long as I say it’s been ‘braised’ and finished off with some ‘truffle oil’ served with a tbs of ‘caviar’, they’ll “LOVE” it because of those random keywords thrown in there.
These people are so pretentious.. they only buy name-brand items and their minds work the same way with food. As long as I’ve got certain keywords on the menu and certain ingredients in the food they’ll claim to love it. Most of these people who claim to have high-class taste and an advanced palette are full of sh*t.
I’m trying to sell my share of my two restaurants to my business partner or other investors and get out. I just want to have a small joint making fried chicken wings, not goose liver and fish eggs.
If my son knew the truth of his birth.
I pretty much paid a pregnant woman to add me to his birth certificate and then surrender custody to me. I told my son that me and his mom had a brief relationship and she got pregnant and I offered to raise him.
My son is now 10 and looks nothing like me. He has blond hair, blue eyes, very fair and skinny. I don’t. I’ve literally had people coming up to me and asking me if I’m a babysitter.
I have ZERO regrets over what I did. My son is becoming his own person and values honesty. It breaks my heart knowing that I’m lying to him. I just hope he’ll forgive and look at the situation as a whole and what a wonderful life I’m providing him with.
I wish I’d never had kids and often fantasize about life without them. I love them, and they have a way of warming my heart on bad days, but I only had them because we were expected to after getting married. We’ve sunk so many thousands of dollars into childcare over the years that I wonder how much more financially stable we’d be. Trying to arrange dropoff/pickup is a pain when we have to work long hours or have irregular hours, and having to plan any outings well in advance to make sure someone can watch the kids sucks as well. I try to instill good values but they still act like spoiled whiny brats at times. But I do try and make sure and let them know they are loved every day.
I stole a bunch of money from my in-laws. In my mind, I feel justified and have tenuous plans to make it right one day when I can. However, if it was found out my wife would probably kill me and I’d never be able to face my in-laws again.
The basic story is that my father-in-law had made our life and his family’s life a living h*ll for many years. He was an alcoholic who would get drunk every day, verbally harass his family, and occasionally beat his wife. My wife lived with him while we were dating and I was glad to have removed her from that situation once we got married and moved into our own place.
However, I soon learned that this would not let us be rid of him. Though we moved to a new house, we were still in the same city as my in-laws. One night we were surprised by a knock at the door at 1 a.m. to find my father-in-law, stinking drunk, wanting to come in. He had been kicked out of his own house and my wife let him in, out of sympathy, and we had to endure his drunk ramblings for the next few hours until he finally fell asleep.
These late-night visits would become a regular occurrence for the next four years. Even after my wife and I had a baby, he would come over late at night and insist on receiving food and an audience for his drunk ramblings, leading to many sleepless nights. Occasionally, I’d refuse him entry, only to face threats from him and consternation from my wife for being so unsympathetic. After all, in her mind, he was suffering from a disease and I should regard him as a victim of illness.
The only respite we would have was when he would go to jail. Sometimes for domestic abuse and sometimes for other charges related to his drinking.
I remember being generally pissed off at the time. Much of it aimed at my in-laws, who just decided to lock him out every night, knowing he would eventually wander to my house and become our problem. I also remember being resentful of my mother-in-law for not calling the police on him more often. The only time police were called was when circumstances were extreme and one of the kids would call. However, I was most pissed at the judicial system, who continually let this obvious menace out of jail to repeat what he had been doing for years.
This is where the money comes in. My in-laws don’t own cars and don’t drive. So, being the good son-in-law, but mostly caving under pressure from my wife, I would always be the one who’d have to take him to court dates, to lawyers’ offices, post bond, get him from jail, etc. Sometimes I’d have to take entire days from work to take care of his legal problems.
Well, one day we learned that he had beaten another drunk almost to death and was charged with attempted m*rder. The bond was $10,000. The family spent several weeks getting the funds together from their money, but also from extended family. They were so used to posting bond and losing it that it’d become routine.
Long story short, my father-in-law was convicted and sentenced to several decades given his long criminal history. I remember breathing a sigh of relief that we wouldn’t have to deal with him for the foreseeable future. However, due to some court technicality, the bond was returned. Since I posted the bond, the check was in my name for $10,000 and interest. The in-laws, who were used to losing their bond payments and quite legally/financially illiterate, would have no idea.
So, I decided to pay myself. I know it was their money, but I felt justified given the time I had to give and the emotional hardship I had to go through when they refused to clean their hands of this matter.
Again, I don’t feel right about it, and if I can get that much money at one time again, I want to make it right. However, that day is not today.
I lied about having cancer when I was 17 (I’m now 27) because I was a deeply insecure person who couldn’t just be okay with who I was, and I convinced myself I needed to have a tragic story to be interesting to my friends. It didn’t last long, I realized how serious something like that was soon after as there was a hideous pit in my stomach 24/7 while trying to maintain the lie but keep it a small, corralled “secret.” I downplayed and downplayed until I was “fine” to get myself out of it but not before my family found out I had been lying because one of my friends concernedly asked my sister if I was okay.
To this day I am deeply ashamed of this. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done and will ever do. I know it’s not normal and a deranged thing to do at this point and I now consider myself a well-adjusted person who doesn’t lie anymore out of fear for my mental health. I occasionally have bouts of intense guilt because I no longer recognize the person who did this, but I’m still friends with a couple of the people I lied to. I feel like I can’t tell them because it would ruin our friendship (maybe deserved) but at the same time I want to because I feel like it’s constantly at the back of my mind whenever I interact with them.
At this point, I have many other friends and live a good life but the fact that I did something this weird and unethical still haunts me.