From the father of the family that kept his other family a secret, to the mother that took advantage of her husband's money, people share the messed up secrets they know about their parents.
[Cotent has been edited for clarity.]
Life Resentments
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“My mom had to do some soul searching for AA. She wrote a list called ‘life resentment’ 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. Reading that sent me into a frenzy trying to prove myself to her and then fueled my resentment for her and her drinking. It’s been a rollercoaster 5 years since I’ve read that, but it’s helped me be a better person by recognizing and letting go of my own resentments.”
Why Grandpa Is A Touchy Subject
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“My dad doesn’t know that I know how my grandfather (his dad) died.
I had always wondered why I never knew my grandfather but it was always a touchy subject so I never asked. I knew my dad basically grew up without his father but I never knew why. When I was about 22 or 23, my brother told me what had happened. My grandfather had committed suicide in front of my dad when my dad was about 8 or 9 years old.
He came home and his father called him into the living room, told him he loved him and put a loaded weapon in his mouth.
From that moment my dad took care of his 3 sisters and mother.
Even though I know now, I still won’t bring it up.”
A Son’s Unconditional Love
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“I uncovered everything. Sleeping with co-workers, Craig’s List postings, even a mistress in another state. I was in college and living at home and did not know how to handle the situation. I used to be really close with my dad, but I just started hating him for all the lies. I was scared enough to not do anything about it WHICH TORE ME APART with feelings of guilt. All I would do is collect evidence in case my folks got divorced. My mom had not worked for 40 years and does not really understand how a budget works.
Fast forward to the year I graduated college and moved out. My mom finally found out about it and it nearly killed her. She said she was going to divorce him at which point I told her I knew a few things which actually made it easier for her. I finally confronted him and told him that he was a role model for me most of my life, that I knew everything, EVERYTHING, and I didn’t know if I wanted him to be in my life right now. It was the only time in my life that I remember him crying. After that, I didn’t talk to him in for a few months. My mom told me that they were going to try and ‘make it work still.’ He said he left his ‘girlfriend’ and is committed to his family. We gradually started to talk again and I went to family Christmas. A few days later was my birthday and he called me for a bit and I told him I think we can move past everything.
3 days later I got a call from my uncle saying that my father just died. I found out that he died at his girlfriend’s house during the act. No one has told my mom yet and I have to…
It was horrible but I managed it. It was a touching couple of months, but it really was just the worst things I’ve ever had to deal with. Plus I found out his girlfriend was my age. I still kind of hate him, but I am glad my last words to him were I still love him.”
A Very Sick Family
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“My father’s side of the family is riddled with a grab bag of severe mental illnesses. My father and his older brother, in particular, got the lion’s share. While my father has a progressively worsening, untreated paranoid schizophrenia, NPD, etc, his brother is likely a bona fide psychopath.
When we were 11-12, me and my cousin (psycho’s son) spent a summer together because my parents were on the outs and my uncle had a large house in the country and I fit right in with their gang of kids. At first it was awesome, I spent a whole summer running barefoot in an idyllic Indiana sleepy nowhere town. Then right before school was starting back up and I was about to go back to live with my parents, I was helping my uncle and cousin clear up some old farm junk left by the previous owners behind the barn. My cousin cut himself on rusty farm equipment and my uncle sent him back to the house to have his mom clean him up and maybe go get stitches. When we were alone and saw my cousin get driven to town to get stitches with the other kids in tow, my uncle took me into the barn and assaulted me.
I never told anyone and found out years later that my dad knew his brother was like that and willing shipped me off to spend a summer with him. Even worse, my uncle paid my dad in cash to take me off of his hands for a few months so he’d have free reign to abuse me.
I wish I had an explanation for what happened or why, but all I have ever come up with is my father (man who raised me; I’m not biologically his) loathed me for existing and found some way to benefit from my being alive while taking care of his ‘real’ kids. Opportunistic greed at the expense of something he didn’t care about.”
Dad Didn’t Fall Down The Stairs
“My dad died when I was 14 and everyone refused to speak of it. My grandparents said he ‘fell down the stairs,’ and they’ve maintained that to this day. My mom told me that he ‘accidentally hung himself’ and she’d tell me when I was older.
It took 9th grade me all of about three days to figure out he had died of autoerotic asphyxiation. She confirmed it years later.”
These Selfish Parents
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“When my grandfather died he left approx $140K 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 their medical bills 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 also used the money to remodel their home. I can’t believe they would steal from me like that.”
A Side Family?
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[1]: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Daxiao Productions
“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 ‘traveled’ 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 could find.
Today 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), so this information blew my world…”
Shouldn’t Be Blamed For This
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“I found this out from my dad’s old college roommate as my dad has never wanted to talk about this with me. Pops was working in the financial district during 9/11 and was in charge of emergency evacuation for his floor (way high up in one of the bank buildings). He saw the towers fall and had to herd everyone off his floor and out of the building.
Apparently, someone had a heart attack and collapsed behind their desk. He didn’t find this person and they ended up dying there in the office. I think my dad might blame himself at least partially which, on top of the trauma of witnessing the towers fall firsthand, has led him to lock that part of himself away from the world.
One day I want to tell him it wasn’t his fault and he did the best he could.”
She Thought Marriage Would Be Her Escape
“I know that my mom got pregnant at fifteen on purpose. She was constantly being shuttled between early ’80s foster care and her own terrible family, and she felt like her only way to escape was to get emancipated through marriage. She knew my dad from school and thought he’d make the perfect husband – smart, funny, from a seemingly good family, and he had protected her several times. So she seduced him, knowing their parents would insist on marriage if she got knocked up, and she did.
Unfortunately for her, he turned out to be a substance dealing, mentally ill teenager from a dysfunctional family with a major drinking problem. The marriage lasted only a few months, but she did get her escape. My mom has no idea that I know this, and she’d be devastated if she knew.”
What Really Happened To His Best Friend
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[1]: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Pikul Noorod
“When I was seven, my best friend died. My parents got a phone call the morning after he passed and I remember watching the color drain from my mom’s face when she answered the phone. I asked her what was wrong and she assured me that I didn’t need to worry and she would tell me after school. She did, and my heart broke. He lived about an hour away from me at the time, so we didn’t go to the same school and nobody that I knew knew him, so nobody had heard anything about his death, which was probably a good thing for both me and my parents.
I found it odd that I wasn’t allowed to go to his funeral. I don’t even remember the excuse my parents gave as to why I couldn’t go with them, but I figured it was because they didn’t want it to make me upset, so I pretty quickly shrugged it off.
Well, later that year I bought a cheap little heart-shaped locket from one of those quarter machines you find at pizza places and roller rinks. I decided I wanted to put his picture in it, so I’d always carry him with me and never forget his smile. When I got home I typed his name into Google Images, and among the top results were a few pictures of him, including one from his memorial. I found one of him with a big toothy grin and clicked on it, and my heart dropped. Next to the picture was the headline from the article the photo came from. It read ‘Police Arrest Mother in [friend’s name] Death.’ My heart beating three times its normal speed, I read the article. And then another. The woman I thought of as my second mother had killed my best friend. The woman who called me Cubby and made me hot chocolate and introduced me to The Jungle Book murdered my brother. I think I kind of went into shock for the next day or so. I couldn’t believe it.
Anyway, I didn’t tell my parents that I knew for six or seven years. I think I was scared of the conversation that would ensue after they found out I knew, or maybe I just knew they hadn’t told me because they felt I wasn’t ready and wanted to tell me on their terms, and I had taken that away from them. When I did tell them, it broke their hearts to think that I had been carrying that knowledge with me for so long alone, and that broke mine.
I still wear the locket. I bring it with me everywhere, and ever since he died, I try to live my life for myself and for him. He deserves the life that was stolen from him.”
The Real Reason Why They Are No Longer Together
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“I know my dad cheated on my mom several times using AIM/AOL (how ’90s is that?). He would talk with women online and never mention how he was married or that he had two children. When my mom was out at work or asleep, he would call these women up and flirt, talk dirty to them, etc. He would make excuses as to why he couldn’t meet with them, but continue to pretend like he was super into them and really did want to meet them.
I only put it together later once I remembered coming into my dad’s office while he was ‘working’ and seeing nothing but AIM/chatrooms with women’s names. There were a couple times I woke up at night and heard him talking to someone in a hushed voice in our kitchen and I KNEW my mom wasn’t up.
The real clincher was when I started to walk downstairs while my parents were arguing. My mom shouted, ‘You don’t even want to sleep with me anymore! You’re so much more interested in playing games, talking to women online, and pretending like your children and I don’t exist!’ I heard a pause and then he tried to play dumb, to which she responded, ‘Don’t lie to me! I see the phone records! I called one of them and she told me everything!’
I have never so promptly turned around, went back to my room, and pretended to be fascinated by Mr. Potato Head so fast in my life.
Mom never talked about it or let on that it happened. Neither of them had any idea I overheard them or put the pieces together, but they are no longer together. They got divorced shortly after when my mom found out that while she had been working three jobs, he had been sitting at home, not doing anything to find a job, racking up a ton of debt, and secretly bought himself a motorcycle which he kept in a storage unit away from home. She came home early, grabbed the mail before he could, saw the debt notices, then opened the garage and found a shiny motorcycle sitting there. He hadn’t had time to return it to the storage unit because he wasn’t thinking she’d come home early. That was that.”
This Totally Irresponsible Mother
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“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.”
Sacrifices Of A Father
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“My dad used to talk about growing up really poor, having to get food from food banks, etc. It’s one of the reasons that now that he owns his own business, he donates to food banks and all sorts of charities all the time. Paying it back.
Well, it turns out that my father’s father owned a massive construction company, and made millions of dollars (in the 50s and 60s). My uncle was selling massive amounts of illegal narcotics and got busted. My grandfather bankrupted himself paying off judges and lawyers and all that to keep my uncle out of jail for most of his life. That’s why my dad grew up with nothing.
He has no idea that I know.”
Getting To Know Him Through Letters
“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.”
Jumping From One Wife To Another
“I found out my dad switches partners faster than Zeus. I came from a broken home at a young age and every leap year I would end up with a new stepmom. Everything would be nice then poof ‘things didn’t work out. Let’s give Denver a try, or maybe Aurora.’ Turns out he would cheat on his current wife for years with other women until they caught on and when the current wife kicked him out he would move in with a new wife.
Well through the years of cheating he fathered 10 kids (I’m the 5th child, 3rd son) so I decided I’d ask my older siblings if they made the same connection. Turns out my father has been doing this since he was in high school. Same partner, same timing. Just before me. Welp, now he’s 50 years old on wife number 10. Oh and the child count is on 11, he made another one.”
A Terrifying Situation
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“My dad kept a secret from me and my sister for nearly our whole lives, over 30 years, until he told me and my wife just last year.
In the late ’70s he owned his own pharmacy (he was a pharmacist) and they were one of the few in the city that dealt with methadone for recovering addicts.
Well, one night a junkie broke in while my dad was closing up shop, and tied up my dad and held him basically hostage for hard medications, occasionally cutting him with an ax.
It explained so much about my dad’s behavior over the years – how he always internalized things and had some bouts of drinking. Back then, PTSD wasn’t really a thing.
My sister and I knew something happened at some point that had really terrorized our dad, but we didn’t know exactly what.”