Everyone looks up to their parents, but we all forget that they're human too. These people took to Reddit and shared the tales of how they found out the hard way that nobody's perfect. Content has been edited for clarity.
Rollercoaster Of Emotion
“I found out one day as I was looking for protection in my parents’ bedroom (I was young and couldn’t afford my own). I found a letter my mother had written to my dad as my mother has always been more comfortable addressing issues written than verbal.
I knew I shouldn’t read this, but something in me couldn’t put this letter down. The letter basically said something along the lines of ‘I can’t handle anymore that you have mistresses. I tried to have my own affairs on my own but I couldn’t really enjoy it. I called [InsertRandomGuyNameHere] today to tell him we were over, and now I’d like you to do the same with the other girls. Please think of our children, we need to talk about this.’
I was in shock. I put the letter back where it was and went back to my bedroom. My girlfriend asked me what was wrong and I told her everything I just read. We talked about it for hours. Everything suddenly made sense. My father was always out of town since I was a kid, and left my mother and me alone almost every evening. I saw him several times go on vacations with female friends for entire weekends, heck, even weeks sometime. Some of his female friends even had dinner at our home, with my mother, me and my brother being here. I don’t know how my mother managed to handle this for years…
After talking with my girlfriend, I decided to never talk about this to anyone else. The day after this one, my girlfriend and I both went to my house and found my parents on the couch talking and stopping as soon as they saw us. My father had tears in his eyes, and my mother was looking at her feet. We acted normal and left them alone. The situation began to change a little after that. My parents looked happier, and my father was a lot more present in our everyday life.
A few months later, my parents announced during dinner with my brother and me that they wanted to divorce. My brother (younger than me) was shocked and had several issues about this for months (cause he was just becoming an angry teenager), but I knew what was going on. That was tearing me apart the most. My parents decided my brother and I would stay in our house, and they would take turns to live with us. They each found a cheap flat to live in when they weren’t with us.
That uncomfortable situation went on for a few months until we began to see both of my parents home at the same time. At first, the official reason was that our house was more convenient for my father to go to work on a specific day, but my mother then began to stay longer at our home cause ‘she was too tired to go back to her flat.’ And in a few weeks, the familial situation was pretty much back to normal, everyone was living 24/7 in the same house until they announced they didn’t want to divorce anymore.
This was a few years ago, and now I think everything is forgotten and forgiven. My father changed his job and is now at home almost every evening, and my mother started to smile again.”
Their Dad Needed Some Serious Therapy
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“I was 17 and my family (my dad, mom, younger sibling, and I) took a winter vacation to Gatlinburg TN. While there, I used my dad’s computer to pull up Facebook to post some photos and updates about our trip, but my dad’s Facebook page was logged in – one I didn’t know he had. On the page, he was flirting with other women via posts on their walls, things like ‘you are the most beautiful woman ever.’
I was mostly in shock and spent the rest of the trip antisocial and quiet. I didn’t tell my mom because my dad had always hammered it into my head not to tell on people. I later learned he had substance abuse problems among other things, so telling me this from a young age was probably a way to save his butt in case of relapse.
My mom eventually found out the spring after. I remember because I saw her looking through his phone in their bathroom before she was supposed to leave one day. I heard angry whispering and she curled up on the couch and started crying. My mom never cried, it just wasn’t in her normal range of expressing emotions. I left for school and cried there because I hated seeing my mom like that. When I got home she hadn’t even left. I asked and she said she didn’t feel well. I told her I knew and I was sorry I hadn’t told her before. My mom not going to work was a huge flag for me. She had gone to work awfully sick before, so just proof of how bad she felt about it.
I later learned even more. He’d cheated on my mom before they were married. They had gotten divorced 6 months after getting married because he cheated. Then they had me and it stopped a bit. He did it again before my sister was born. My mom is pretty sure he has a son out there somewhere with an old friend of his from a year or so before I was born. The girl kept calling my dad and showed up at the house once asking for him with a little boy who she claimed was his. I tried to find her a few months ago but no such luck.
There’s a lot more to my dad’s ridiculous issues but that’s just the infidelity bits. Despite this, we were always super close even after I learned. We were practically the same person in mannerisms and interests and academic interest, only I managed to avoid the substance abuse use and infidelity issues.”
All They Had To Do Was Look At Their Dad’s Browser History
“I caught my abusive dad on a dating site when I was about 15. I was a really sick kid growing up so I was homeschooled at the time and woke up one morning and saw him on the office computer while my mom was at work. I was asking him about something and he must not have realized that I was reading the screen behind him. He had already been caught having an affair a year prior to my mom so I wasn’t that shocked.
He was violent towards me and my mom so I wrestled for weeks on whether or not I should tell her. Every moment I was alone with her it’s all I could think about until finally, one day at the grocery store, it just came out. I told her the exact conversation I had read and that he told the woman she could come over and sleep in their bed.
Eventually, about a month later, my mom told him and all heck broke loose. It was terrible and per usual, when that kind of fight would happen, she sent me to live with my older sister for a few months. They ended up staying together for about 3 more years with my mom putting up with the same thing and me basically living with my sister for good. She finally was able to leave him when I was 18 and now I have an amazing stepdad who could not be a better human being.”
A Sticky Situation
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“It all started when I was 10.
My father has Multiple Sclerosis and has had it for the last 26 years. He was also a Corrections Officer and worked the graveyard shift. My dad was the Vice-president of the Disabled Drummers Association at the time and was tasked with completing a new website. Now my father, to this day, needs help doing most things on a computer. My mother had the idea of asking one of the guys at the local computer store, where we bought our desktop, for some books on building websites because she was going to attempt to do it herself. This is when a young man, around the age I am now (28), offered to help my parents build the website. My mother at the time was about 36, and my father was 42.
Chris, the young man, started coming over around 5-6pm while both my parents were home and they would work on the website. This website should have only taken a week, or two tops – it was just supposed to be something simple and informative. Weeks turned into months, and Chris came over later and later as time went on. I started getting a weird feeling about everything. I had a much different perspective of events because the computer was on the bottom floor of our house, and I was the only one that lived downstairs. The computer was in our family room, a mere 30 feet from my door. I was 100% certain something was going on about 7 months into this charade when I heard them upstairs watching Saving Private Ryan. I could hear them making out and to me, I remember it sounding like a sloppy mess and heard them….. rounding 2nd and then 3rd base. Needless to say, I still have not watched that movie.
I heard their conversations slowly progressing as the nights went later and later. To the rest of my family, apparently, he had just become a ‘family friend,’ even coming to my Elementary graduation when I was twelve. Yes, this affair was going on for years, whether my father was oblivious or chose to believe nothing was happening, as she had cheated once before, a guy named Bob, when I was 6, of which I also knew about, but that story is for another time I suppose.
So two years later, three years later this dang site still isn’t done and he’s still coming over, now waiting until after my father goes to work at 9 pm. One day, in 7th grade, I was 13 at the time, and it was about 1 month before Thanksgiving I finally decided to mention something to someone. I decided to tell my sister, who was 11 at the time, what I knew. She didn’t understand and just kept saying ‘mommy loves daddy.’ Oddly enough, later that night, my father opened the cell phone bill, which he never did. My mom usually ‘managed’ the finances. He saw a bunch of calls to a number, while everyone was home. My mom had been having undiagnosed ‘bladder issues’ and had been going to the bathroom constantly. He put two and two together and it finally clicked in his head. He FLIPPED HIS LID that night. He found out 2 hours before leaving for his 9 pm shift on. Had his uniform on and everything. He leaves at his normal time of 8 pm because he worked about a half hour away and always liked to be early.
9 pm rolls around and I’m still sitting next to my sister, and she seems quite confused. My mother sits us down on the couch upstairs and tells us to pack. I tell her I don’t want to leave but she gets angry, starts crying, to guilt me into following her orders. Chris shows up and he and my mother basically kidnap my sister and I and we drive to Chris’s little apartment in town. It’s the middle of the night so I cannot see street signs. It was a weekend so I didn’t have to go to school for a few days, so we get forced to stay inside a couple days. I still remember the musky smell of his dark upstairs apartment. He had dating books all over his bookshelf as well. I remember hearing them fool around while my sister and I attempted to sleep on the couch.
Sunday rolls around and my mom decides to take us to see the first Pokemon movie, as I was a huge Pokemon nerd, and it had come out earlier that week. Bad idea, because I learned where we were because I saw the local ice rink, Kennedy Ice Arena. I asked to call my dad because I missed him and the first thing I did was tell him where I was. At that point, my mother offered to take my sister and I home because she didn’t want my father knowing the exact location she would continue to stay at.
The next week my mom rented her own house in town. I keep saying in town because I lived outside of a city, and so you had to drive into town to get anything. Anyways, she rents this house and comes and gets all of her stuff within a week. My sister decides to go with my mom, as my mom was doing a ‘buy your love’ tactic and I wasn’t falling for it. Thanksgiving rolls around a couple weeks later and my father and I make baked chicken, with stuffing and mashed potatoes, in our empty house. By this time it was more populated with our pets: 3 cats and a dog, then it was with humans. Christmas time rolls around, and for the last month, it was a string of broken promises from my mother that she would make time for me, and promising me she was done with Chris.
I finally agree to go spend the night in the spare room at my mother’s place and she promises me that Chris won’t show up. I agree to go on a night my father didn’t work, just in case. Around 11 pm Chris comes. Perfect. There is a phone next to my bed, so I call my dad and ask him to come get me. I’m wearing no shoes, no socks, just shorts and a t-shirt. I walk past Chris and my mother on my way out and wait for my dad. It’s quite mild for mid-December, so this blizzard is more slush than snow. I stand at the end of the driveway for 45 minutes while Chris and my mother are standing all bundled up in the garage yelling at me to come inside, not once making an attempt to even brave the weather to come force me inside. My father finally shows up, and luckily has some blankets in the Astro van, so I put those on and on the way home I being spewing out the most hateful and cuss-filled rant I have never beat to this day.
My parents eventually ‘work things out’ which I believe my dad bit the bullet due to the impending disability the MS would strike, which he is currently in the hospital from a broken hem and new lesions on his spinal cord. Which in the end was really the best for him, as my mom does take good care of him when needed now. I have moved on from the situation and put myself into therapy a few years ago to learn how to better control my emotions over the situation and we have a good relationship now.
I have had great suspicions that my mom still cheats on my father to this day, as I have found somewhat circumstantial evidence that I never dig too deep into anymore. As long as she continues to help take care of my best friend and hero I can deal with anything she decides to do.”
Sometimes It’s Better To Just Say Goodbye
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“My sisters figured it out, and showed me their evidence, and I didn’t believe it.
My father was always a moody person, and would often have hissy fits and want to be on his own, so it took a while for us to notice anything was off. There were little hints here and there, like when he was suddenly defensive of an adulterous family friend that he’d previously condemned, or when he was writing moody and sappy love songs on his guitar.
He started getting phone calls most days around dinner time, and my sister overheard a woman’s voice wailing ‘I love you, I love you!’ on a couple of occasions. Then she started to snoop through his emails and search history and found out that when he’d been at a ‘conference’ in Vancouver, he’d booked a very expensive hotel in Seattle with my mum’s credit card (she was always the breadwinner).
I was living away from home when this all happened, and as I’d not seen it in person, I didn’t believe my sisters when they told me. My dad was always a bit controlling with my mum and worshiped the ground she walked on.
Well, it turned out they were right. He randomly got a job offer halfway across the country, conveniently in the city where a female ‘friend’ of his lived. It was a big blow to all of us, but a blessing in disguise. When he left we started talking about his behavior and finally admitted to each other that he’d abused each of us separately.
He’s married to his mistress now, and she’s completely unhinged. I haven’t spoken to either of them in years, and I have finally managed to get my mental health and self-esteem under control. My mum has an amazing partner now, and I’ve never seen her so happy.”
It Was Too Little, Too Late For This Family
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“I was sitting in the back seat of the car while my dad ran into the store for something, and my mom was sitting in front of me. I looked over her shoulder at her phone not expecting to see anything interesting, but to my surprise, she was texting another man about how in love they were. I acted like I didn’t see it until I worked up the nerve to confront her about it a week or so later.
Once she knew that I knew, she told my father. She didn’t want to end the affair but also didn’t want a divorce. My dad and I told her it was us or him, and she should leave if she wanted to be with him. She left that night but came back the next day saying she chose us. We all knew she kept seeing him secretly, but my dad said he’d rather have part of her love than none. I hated her for a while, but we started to make up and become okay with each other about a year later. About a month after we actually became close again, she unexpectedly passed away. I wasted the last year of my mother’s life hating her over that guy, and I will never regret anything as much as I regret that.”
“And That’s When I Saw The World A Lot Differently”
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“My dad started going on these long walks every weekend. Like clockwork, he would have a couple drinks and smoke while he ‘walked up to the country club and back’ which was roughly 1 mile away. It happened so frequently it became routine after a while and no one in my family suspected anything at the time, because at that point in my dad’s life, he and his brothers were on this smoking Cubans kick, and my mom hated the smell of them, so he used that as his excuse to go for a walk.
I was about 15 and just got done running a track meet and my oldest sister (21) treated me to a Wendy’s frosty, and told me that her friends/reliable sources had informed her that they suspected my dad of messing around with a girl who was 22 or 23 at the time who went to HS with my sister.
As soon as I heard this I immediately suspected something was weird about all of his long walks. Some nights he would get home really late and I’d be up on the computer when he got home, so naturally, I would get in trouble for being up too late on the internet, never thinking, ‘Why is my dad coming home from a 4 hour long walk at 2 am?’ I was so naive.
Finally one day my sister gets a tip from a friend saying that they saw my dad talking to this young girl at a restaurant. So my sister essentially tracks her down in her car, follows her, and then corners her on some street near my house. She calls me up and I drove down and met this woman face to face while my sister had her cornered.
My sister is getting in this chick’s face while this woman was on the phone with my dad saying ‘You need to get down here Brad (my dad’s name), I’m being threatened by your kids.’ My dad shows up, and all of a sudden my heart sank and at this moment it all became real. Everything up to this point had been hearsay and rumor, but this was finally real, my suspicions were validated at that moment. I told my dad to go away and to eat dog crap. I also told him he raised me better than that, and something mellow dramatic to the effect of ‘You’re not my dad.’
It was a very emotional night as my sister and I told him, ‘Either you tell mom now, or we will.’ So he did, and he packed up a bag and lived in an apartment for about 6-9 months. It wasn’t an emotional affair, just merely my dad was looking for more intimacy. The whole thing sucked but my parents worked through it and are still together today and surprisingly are doing pretty dang well for a couple in their 60’s. It’s not something that gets brought up a lot since it was over a decade ago, but if ever there was a moment in my life I could say ‘and that’s when I saw the world a lot differently,’ that would be it.”
They’d Do Anything To Stop This Affair From Continuing
“I am not proud of myself. I suspected for years that my father was having an affair (he was not very good at inconspicuous texting or lying and he would disappear for hours at a time with no explanation). However, I was only 14 and he was intimidating. He was a drinker, prone to bouts of physical violence and outbursts of anger. I was too afraid to tell my mother, for fear of what might happen if I were wrong.
One day I happened to have his phone in my possession and I couldn’t resist checking and the texts I saw confirmed my suspicions. I was still too afraid to say anything so I started sabotaging small things around him. I would secretly delete texts from the other woman before he could read them and watch him become irritated by her lack of response. He had a gluten intolerance so I put bread in his calcium supplements. I thought he should be punished as often as possible. I’m not proud of what I did and I wish I had spoken up because I could have spared us years of pain.
He ended up throwing us out of our home after the other woman called my mother to tell her what was going on.
We’re a lot happier now.”
His One Selfish Decision Made Their Entire Family Live Through A Nightmare
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“I was like…18 at the time I think.
Dad runs an auto repair shop so a lot of the time he drives customers home when their cars break down and he has to fix them (For the record, he’s freaking crap at fixing cars). One day while I was out with him I found a smoke butt in the car that wasn’t his. Dad said it was from an old lady customer, but I wasn’t so sure.
Turns out it wasn’t, of course. He was having an affair with an addict lady of the night that he found sleeping in one of the cars on his lot. Mom and I found out the truth at the same time when he left a note on the kitchen table on my mom’s birthday telling her he was leaving. It gets even better from there: Mom had a complete mental breakdown and spent months alternating between begging him to come back and screaming at him. She went down to the business daily to try and stop it. I had to call the cops a few times when Dad beat her up for it. This went on until one of the girlfriend’s dealer’s friends smashed her car windshield with a rock and she finally stopped going down there. While all this was going on I had to deal with strangers calling my cell threatening me if I didn’t leave the girlfriend alone because Dad was a freaking moron and gave her my number, which meant her bad friends got a hold of it. Life was crappy and it messed me up pretty good. I should probably see a shrink for it but money, no insurance, etc.
All in all, it lasted a couple years. I wish I had the inspirational ending to tell you where we lived happily ever after and Dad withered away, but alas it isn’t so. Dad threw away the family savings on smack and drinks, then the girlfriend left him and he came back home. He’s a drinker and we’re not on good terms. I still live at home for a myriad of reasons: health problems, money problems, the resulting mental problems from this nightmare, and the fact that if I leave Mom alone here I worry Dad will accidentally kill her one day while he’s wasted. She also depends on me for emotional stability, I fear she’ll spiral back into her self-destructive depression if I’m not here. One day I’d like to move out of state to the area all my best friends are at but I have no means to at the moment. It’s gonna take another year or two of saving/working probably.”
Their Dad Became The Ultimate Catfish
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“My dad has a Twitter account where he calls himself a different name, says he’s 34 (he’s actually 62), and comments suggestively to a lot of women’s photos.
He’s had this account for years! Acts like a charming, friendly guy who can’t catch a break. Meanwhile, IRL he treats my family like we’re absolute crap, and behaves in an entitled way. It sucks to see your dad be super nice and fun, meanwhile, he’s got no job and calls us stupid. It feels like a betrayal.
I only found out by complete accident this past Father’s day. We got Star Wars shirts and were doing a family photo. I was going to exit out of his camera app (we used his phone) and saw his twitter next to it. I sent myself some screenshots secretly to further investigate. I was sick to my stomach all weekend.
I ended up telling my mom after a lot of worrying. She didn’t want me getting involved because she knew he’d treat me worse than he already did — only there was no way to make it look like we found out without involving me in it. Nobody has access to the phone. I still haven’t brought it up, but I’m just waiting for the day.
I also tried to mess with his mind, which worked. I sent him memes he recently retweeted, which made him concerned for a little while. I sent the link to my friends so everyone could see. I tried to hack his account, just for the ability to make a tweet saying he lied to everyone.
Ironically, he always is suspicious of me because he thinks I talk to creepy people online. He watches catfish specials, too.”
These Parents Turned Against Their Own Children
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“My mother began seeing an old friend of hers, just to hang out and be friends and do friend things. But she’d go out ALL THE TIME with this guy, sometimes we wouldn’t even know where she was or when she would be back.
My sister gets suspicious and looks through her phone and lo and behold, we find intimate texts and implications of meeting for such activities and so forth. We freak out, get upset, consider telling my father, who at the time was hunting up north and wouldn’t be back for a few days. We decided to wait and, as my sister can be pretty rash, then decided to confront our mother.
My sister does most of the talking, but mother gets angry at us for going through her phone, then accuses us of trying to ruin her marriage and tells us we’re awful basically. It was pretty terrible and honestly, I don’t remember most of what was said but I ended up making a speech about how it’s her own fault if her marriage gets ruined. She tried to say we don’t love her and what do we want her to do?? Move out, go away?? We told her to tell father or we would.
She does and wouldn’t you know it, he tells us not to tell anyone and gets upset that we went through her phone. They’re still together and we pretend nothing happened.”