12 People Shared Family Secrets That Unfolded into Real Drama

All that is hidden becomes evident — everyone knows that. Our heroes today experienced it firsthand when a family secret unraveled, turning their lives upside down. Sometimes, it’s unclear what’s better: discovering such a secret or living peacefully in ignorance.

• My husband of 18 years told me he was having an affair. The therapist made it very clear that if we were to work on the marriage the affair had to be over. My husband swore it was. The next morning, he told me he was “going running with Kevin”. Later I was making the bed and moved his iPad to the nightstand. An email had popped up on the screen confirming his reservation for the Doubletree in Dunwoody at 9:30. How sordid do you have to be to meet at a hotel at 9:30 am? I was beyond devastated at this point. I called the hotel and they put me through to his room. He was needless to say shocked. He hung up on me but raced home after that to “apologize ”. © Bonnie Schwartz / Quora
• “When I was seven years old, I remember my mom was really excited and telling me I was gonna have a little sibling. Then one day she suddenly stopped talking about it. I kinda just assumed she made a mistake and really wasn’t pregnant. Fast forward to last month and she told me that pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.” GrilledCrabCat / Reddit
• “My pet rabbit got attacked by something a couple years after I got it. My parents found it dead and replaced it before I found out. I just thought my rabbit lived super long but it was actually two rabbits. This happened over 10 years ago and I found out last year.” imissfrostedtips / Reddit

• “My aunt’s close friend that she lives with is actually her girlfriend. Was about 22 when they told me. Never even thought about it until it was said. Weird how I was completely oblivious to this for so many years.” rugje / Reddit
• “After my mom died I found out the real story behind my parent’s marriage. She came to my father’s country to visit some of her relatives. Met my father and after just one week she asked him to marry her so she could stay in the country. My father accepted because he had no one else and his parents were pressing him to get married already. But the highlight of the story is that over some time, the two of them fell in love with each other. Their love only grew over time and they were really happy together. My mother spent her last days very ill, and she would accept only my father by her bedside. He swears to this day that she was an angel sent from god to take care of him. I am shocked that they got married just like that, out of the blue and ended up loving each other so so so deeply. I can only hope to have as good and loving marriage as they had.” Amendris / Reddit

• “My Welsh great-grandmother had passage booked on the Titanic in 1912. She ended up not going because she ‘fell ill’. Turns out it was actually an out-of-wedlock pregnancy that gave her such bad morning sickness, she couldn’t go. She lost the baby. She came the following year in 1913 and met my great-grandfather. She only told my mom (who she helped raise during the summers) who then told me.” sassy_steph_ / Reddit
• “My brother and I are only half siblings. We didn’t know that my dad isn’t his dad until I was 10 and he was 15. The only reason he was told was because my mom was trying to manipulate him into choosing her side in the divorce.” WhenwasyourlastBM / Reddit

• “My grandmother’s cousin married a man she met in college. They had a daughter and were married for maybe 40 years. 3 years ago, he passed with cancer. We were not shocked at this. After all, he was approaching 70 and had a bad form of cancer, and it was spreading fast. We were prepared for this. What we weren’t prepared for was that after he passed, his wife found a journal of his which explained that for 35 years, he was having another relationship with a man. It was a shock to all of us. He was so committed to his wife, that he never left. But at the same time, it must have killed him to stay silent for such a long time.” Pozzik / Reddit
• “My dad had a daughter before I was born and never admitted it to anyone in the family. He was basically on his death bed when he admitted it to me. I was able to track down my half sister a few years back and we were to meet but she was very emotional about the whole thing and she backed out at the last minute. I have since left her alone.” Hamfiter / Reddit
• “I didn’t know one of my cousins existed until I was about ten years old. Turns out he was diagnosed with Leukemia as a child and I was a very sensitive kid, so my family decided not tell me until the treatment was successful and he recovered. It would have been okay if they told me as soon as he was healthy again, but I guess they forgot so the first time I met him, I was wondering how exactly I managed to forget the existence of a whole person.” monopoppi / Reddit

• “My step great-grandfather and great-grandmother never actually married. They put on a fake ceremony of sorts but didn’t legally wed so she could continue getting her deceased husband’s social security, life insurance, etc. Didn’t find out until great-grandma died. They had lived together for around twenty years.” victorioushack / Reddit
• Recently my grandma submitted her DNA to ancestry. It linked her to a sister she never knew she had. She found out that the sister she found had more siblings, one of them, we’ll call her Edith, was born the same day and year as grandma and in the same city. My grandma found out that Edith’s parents were sure there was a mix up because Edith looked nothing like the rest of the family. They contacted the hospital and the hospital said this was impossible that there’s no way they would have accidentally switched Edith with another child. So they dropped it but they always suspected Edith wasn’t theirs. Edith’s sister exchanged photos with my grandma and the resemblance is absolute uncanny. Edith looks just like great grandma and grandpa and my grandma looks so much like Edith’s family. © lesueurpeas / Reddit

It may seem like scenarios from a soap opera rather than real stories. Nevertheless, there are plenty of such stories in real life.