Family and drama go together like oxygen and fire—one fuels the other, and while they can create warmth and light, they can just as easily spark chaos and destruction. So when Reddit userRentinghappinessasked everyone on the platform to share the biggest secrets they discovered about their relatives, people used the opportunity to use the anonymous nature of the internet to vent their frustrations, confusions, and other kinds of emotional turmoil that they’ve experienced after unraveling the hidden layers of their relationships.This post may includeaffiliate links.
Family and drama go together like oxygen and fire—one fuels the other, and while they can create warmth and light, they can just as easily spark chaos and destruction. So when Reddit userRentinghappinessasked everyone on the platform to share the biggest secrets they discovered about their relatives, people used the opportunity to use the anonymous nature of the internet to vent their frustrations, confusions, and other kinds of emotional turmoil that they’ve experienced after unraveling the hidden layers of their relationships.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
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Grandma had a younger sister who she was told had died in infancy but was actually sent away to other family members because she was severely mentally disabled and the family was embarrassed to have an “abnormal” child around. We found her living with some of Grandma’s cousins where she was regularly beaten up and even doused with boiling water when she misbehaved and was in her mid 50s then but had the mental capacity of an 8-year old. She eventually got out and ended up in a special needs nursing home where she was fortunately treated better, but the damage was apparent and she’d scream and throw a fit whenever the caregivers filled up a hot bath or made coffee or had anything to do with hot water.
In addition to the personal stories we see in the thread, we also have some quantitative data to go along with it. According to a 2020surveythat looked at secrets that Brits discover, the most common ones about family were:An affair (29%);A secret family (22%);A secret revelation (22%);Unknown friends (18%);More money than expected (17%);More debt than expected (13%);A secret job (6%).
In addition to the personal stories we see in the thread, we also have some quantitative data to go along with it. According to a 2020surveythat looked at secrets that Brits discover, the most common ones about family were:
An affair (29%);
A secret family (22%);
A secret revelation (22%);
Unknown friends (18%);
More money than expected (17%);
More debt than expected (13%);
A secret job (6%).
For years we laughed about how, one night, when my dad was little, his parents got drunk and played Russian roulette pointing the gun at themselves and firing. My grandmother’s turn, and she shot herself in the throat, and she lived. Both passed away years ago, and my dad inherited the gun. One night he was re-telling the story to my mom, made sure the gun was unloaded, and realized that even he couldn’t pull the trigger back with the weapon facing himself. There is no way his mom accidentally shot herself, but there is a very high probability that my grandfather shot her.Dad then remembered that he was sent to foster care for several months after the incident, while the police investigated what happened.
That we weren’t really poor; rather, I wore ratty clothes, never got any toys, and would frequently go hungry simply because my mom just didn’t give a st about me. I was 18 when my mom told me that she started to panic when she had less than 50K in savings, this was in the early 2000sBright side, it taught me not to buy stupid st.Darkside, nostalgia for games/toys/movies/trips etc. doesn’t exist.
Most of us would rather find out about these things before our family members pass away—almost 4 in 5 respondents said they wanted to discuss these matters face-to-face.But when it comes to opening up to family, the study also found some subjects are considered far more taboo than others.Sex is the most divisive topic, with less than half (48%) of us willing to disclose information about our sex lives to those closest to us. Compared to this, far more of us (59%) would be comfortable talking about our experiences with drugs, and 90% have no qualms about disclosing our finances with family.
Most of us would rather find out about these things before our family members pass away—almost 4 in 5 respondents said they wanted to discuss these matters face-to-face.
But when it comes to opening up to family, the study also found some subjects are considered far more taboo than others.
Sex is the most divisive topic, with less than half (48%) of us willing to disclose information about our sex lives to those closest to us. Compared to this, far more of us (59%) would be comfortable talking about our experiences with drugs, and 90% have no qualms about disclosing our finances with family.
My best friend growing up was actually my half brother that my dad conceived with a family friend.
The one vacation I went on with my Dad, which I cherished as one of the few father-son bonding experiences of my childhood, was actually my Mom telling him “Take your son and GTFO for a few weeks while you decide if you want to be married or not”. Apparently there was a “work wife” situation brewing and my Mom was not having it. .
When looking at age demographics, the older generations were consistently more open. For example, 50% of over-65s are happy to discuss drugs compared to just 21% of those aged 18-24 and 20% of those aged 25-35. This trend of elderly honesty and youthful discreetness continues among topics like alcohol, money, and religious beliefs.Maybe that’s why we discover more things when we get older—others become more willing to admit them.
When looking at age demographics, the older generations were consistently more open. For example, 50% of over-65s are happy to discuss drugs compared to just 21% of those aged 18-24 and 20% of those aged 25-35. This trend of elderly honesty and youthful discreetness continues among topics like alcohol, money, and religious beliefs.
Maybe that’s why we discover more things when we get older—others become more willing to admit them.
My uncle impregnated his twelve year old step daughter. He is serving a life sentence.
I was a single child my whole life, then my dad died and I learned in my 30s, that my cousin was my brother, I had a half sister who lived across the country, had a sister down the street and another half sister who was like in her late 50s.
My mom and dad were real brother and sister but they didn’t know it too until they had 2 kids.
My parents always told us kids that my mom lost her front teeth because as babies we’d accidentally head butted her so often we knocked them out.The truth of it was that when my parents drank (which was, and I assume is still, all the time) they would argue a lot. When my dad got sick of my mom’s voice he’d pop her in the mouth with the back of his hand.He’s the one that knocked out her teeth, and then blamed it on us as babies.
My mom’s side of the family owned a couple family members from my dad’s side of the family during the slave times.
Apparently my dad tried to strangle his ex wife and the only reason she survived is because she cut his arm with a kitchen knife. My mom and I got to find out that little fun fact together, because his ex called her to warn her that he was crazy when she found out he’d remarried. 🙂 so there’s that.
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I knew Mum was sick… I had no idea how many times she tried to [unalive] herself.
My dad had a whole separate family with a daughter a year older than me. He ran the family business, and the lady that lived next door to the business had been his girlfriend since before my parents got married. When my parents got divorced I was about 11 or 12 and I didn’t really know why. My dad and I barely talked all through high school but for some reason I talked him into letting me move in with him between my senior year and college to get to know him better.What I found out about him was that he was d**k, a womanizer and alcoholic. The verbal and physical abuse i took as a kid was even worse now that I was older, resulting in actual fist fights a couple of times. I worked at his business and made friends with the lady next door who we’ll call Wendy. She made me dinner all the time and really took care of me while my dad was too drunk to cook or do any parenting at all most of the time. I was 18 and the lady next door had a daughter about my age and we became friends. This is the daughter, we’ll call her Dianne.We hit it off that summer and neither of us knew that we were half siblings, and there was strangely something about her that made me really like her. Dianne was pretty but not crazy beautiful, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Something about her just drew me to her. I think she felt the same way, because we spent a lot of time together getting to know each other that summer. I couldn’t get enough of her nor her me. We watched movies on VCR at night after work every night (I’m that old), and smoked a lot grass out on my porch. One night I took Dianne to a house party at a friends house and after a few drinks I was getting up the nerve to make a move when she kissed me. We ended up hooking up that night and messed around pretty good, but thankfully didn’t have sex. I was kissing her good night on her door step when her mom came out screaming and yelling and told us we weren’t allowed to see each other, and I never saw her again she wasn’t around for the next few days. When my dad found out he flipped his lid too huge fist fight that night. It got so weird around there I just went back to my mom’s for the few weeks left before college.I mentioned to my mom, that Wendy was really nice and I really liked her, but I had screwed up somehow and pissed her off and I wasn’t sure why. I never told my mom about messing around with Dianne, but I don’t think she knew about her. She has dementia now so I have no chance of knowing if she did. Over the next few years, my dad and I drifted apart again, I had real hatred for him for a long time, and we didn’t speak for almost 30 years.Found out he was dying and I went to see him to bury the hatchet. It actually wasn’t too bad. While we were catching up on the events of our lives, my dad told me the whole story. My dad had two girls Wendy and my Mom that he was dating. He chose my mom and broke it off with the other woman, and asked my mom to marry him. A few months later right before the wedding Wendy shows up very pregnant and tells him its his. My dad who was running his dad’s business at the time, put her up in the property next to the business and took care of Wendy and Dianne. Eventually things rekindled with Wendy and he ended up in a relationship with her the most of the time he was married to my mom. He admitted the guilt was too much and he started drinking and over time the drink was all that was left, both my Mom and Wendy had eventually kicked him to the curb and moved on with their lives, so did I and so did my young sister and Dianne. It was a terribly sad story. For the first time the verbally and physically abusive monster had his mask pulled back and was human after all. I didn’t completely forgive him, but I definitely understood him for the first time in my life.
My family fought in WWIIon both sides.
I have an uncle who went to prison for [unaliving] a homeless man in the street with a few of his friends. They let him out early and he goes to family gatherings. He’s fairly close with a lot of the family and as kids we would have sleepovers at his house. At one of the sleepovers we overheard him abusing his wife thankfully they divorced but the family still invites him. But she’s the crazy one according to the family.
My grandfather was greatly displeased with his son Roland, who was mentally handicapped after an infection. So one day he gathered his 8 children in the yard, took out his hunting rifle and staged a mock execution of Roland to “teach him to be right”.My mom was maybe 10 years old when this happened.
My great grandfather got his wife’s sister pregnant and f****d off leaving both women humiliated. With their mother and children the two women made a new life in Canada where no one knew of their shame.
Great grandparents living in Europe lost all their kids in the Spanish flu epidemic; immigrated to the US and just popped out 5 more kids. Wild.
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So this isn’t as traumatic as most of the posts in this thread but it is still kind of disturbing.Okay, here goes I found out a few years ago that the real reason my parents stopped playing Pictionary wasn’t that they didn’t like it. It’s that it caused multiple arguments where my parents ended up not speaking to each other for weeks at a time.The first argument that was a big thing was that my mom did not know that Zimbabwe was a country.The second was about whether goose pimples and goose bumps were the same thing.And the third one was about whether a pig’s tail curls clockwise or counterclockwise. Apparently that argument led to my parents only saying “clockwise” or “counterclockwise” to each other for about two weeks.My siblings and I all found out about this about ten years ago when my uncle came for a visit and reminded my parents of some of their legendary arguments (including the goose bumps/goose pimples one). Apparently my mom and dad used to play my aunt and uncle in different are games a lot and my parents had to stop playing Pictionary and a couple of other games because they got too heated. LOL.
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