People Are Sharing The Shocking Family Secrets They Were Let In On Once They Were Older, And They Range From Heartbreaking To Wild
Recently, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the secrets their families had kept from them, and man did they have things to get off their chests:
1."I was born intersex and surgically assigned male. The medical standard at the time was do the surgery and never tell the patient. Even doctors refuse to talk about it (what are these scars about, I have never had a surgery) they just say 'don't worry about it.' I was in my forties and interviewing surgeons for reassignment before I found out."
—Anonymous
2."My entire family on both sides kept the secret that the woman I knew as my sister was actually my real mother. I was about 14 when they finally told me, the reason I was finally told was because my family was fighting over telling me the truth. My real mother was threatening to tell me, so my grandparents, who I thought were my adoptive parents, told me one Friday afternoon after I was home from school. Talk about a screwed up weekend. I suddenly realized I couldn’t trust anyone. Everybody on both sides of my family knew. I was the big secret from myself."
—Anonymous
3."That my aunt killed herself and her three kids before I was born. She married my dad’s lifelong best friend and they had three kids. All I know is my grandparents despised her husband (my dad's bff and now brother-in-law) after their deaths and talked nonstop crap about him. The guy moved 18 hours away, and my dad’s first wife ended up taking my older siblings and following the guy out of state — revealing that she'd been cheating on my dad with his brother-in-law/best friend. I was born five years later and had no idea I had once had three more cousins. I knew my aunt had died young because she was in my dad’s childhood pictures and when I asked who she was, that’s what I was told. My mom told me everything I know on my 16th birthday. When my grandmother passed away, I found the news article and tried to ask my family about it."
"No one would tell me anything except show me pictures of my cousins. My older sister did tell me she remembers my aunt’s husband being around after they moved away from our dad."
—Anonymous
4."That my dad and a family friend had an affair. The affair partner was older than my sister and I, although much younger than my dad, and she was staying with our family for the summer before I started college. The day after my parents and older sister went home after moving me in, my sister walked in on our father and the affair partner in the middle of the act. My sister told our mom right away, but my mom didn’t want to tell me until we could all go to family therapy, so she and my dad and sister hid it from me for about four months. It sucked."
—Anonymous
5."During my childhood I had an adopted cousin. She was pretty sexual and attracted to me. We started dating after she divorced her first husband. When she became pregnant we learned that she was the out-of-wedlock child of my grandmother’s sister. We had the baby (who was fine), married, and were together several more years until we divorced."
—Anonymous
6."My older brother joined a sex cult (not that well known one) a few years back. The organization is billed as a therapy group to help members build intimacy skills through a series of three day group retreats. As a retired cop, I was curious and did the research. It turns out the 'therapy' is just a series of desensitization experiences beginning with optional nudity and ending (the last retreat) with an orgy wherein all boundaries — all boundaries — have been erased. Not that I care if my brother is bisexual, or has group sex, but this is the secret he keeps from the family. I won’t tell and I won’t ask about it. He will share if he wants to."
—Anonymous
7."I found out as an adult that my biological father date-raped my mother. After that, everything made sense — why she told me when I was six that she was going to have an abortion but it was too late. Why she never liked me. Why I only met my biological father when I was 14 (I was born in 1972) and why he hated me. I've thrived, despite both of them."
—Anonymous
8."My mother recently passed away because of multiple health issues and also had increasingly significant dementia. My mom was in her eighties and my parents had been together just shy of 60 years and had a very strong and loving relationship. A few weeks after my mom’s service, my dad got into a new relationship and shortly after had his new partner move into my parents house. He didn’t tell me and my siblings anything about it outright so we had to ask questions and guess. My dad’s new partner is a man in his thirties, fifty years younger than my dad. That’s a lot of life to not be living it authentically. While it’s shocking on many levels, he seems very happy."
—Anonymous
9."That my father killed his stepson for molesting and impregnating my 14-year-old sister."
—Anonymous
10."To start off, my family history is a little weird. My bio dad is in prison with a life sentence, and my bio mom has been running from the police for years, and is banned from the state I live in. I lived with my ex-stepmom for 13 years ( I'm 18) until I moved out a few months ago. My ex-stepmom was pretty abusive and emotionally and mentally neglectful. She stole my savings from me ( about $10,000) and she would kick me out when she wanted to. She never told me anything important. Like, when I was diagnosed with cancer (stage 3 melanoma, atypical) she lied to me and said that the doctors were wrong and just wanted money. I think one of the things that hurt the most (the big secret she kept from me) is about my grandma."
"My bio grandma would send money and gifts and would take me out to dinner. One day, I was supposed to go to dinner with her, and I got dropped off to wait for her. She never showed up. That was eight years ago. I hadn't heard anything from her, and no one told me the truth. I was told that she didn't love me anymore. I had been looking at obituaries for an assignment in school, and found hers. I confronted my stepmom, and found out that she had overdosed on pills. That night she didn't show up for dinner was the night she died. She left money for me and my sister, and we never got a single penny of it. She had been dead for eight years, and I had no idea. I really grew up thinking that I was unimportant and unlovable. I'm still hurt by it, but I have cut off contact with my entire family."
—Anonymous
11."I always knew my mom was different. What I didn't know was that my mom was a highly functioning special needs individual as she lacked oxygen to her brain at birth. My grandmother decided to tell me about my mom's situation in my forties."
"I was so angry. I couldn't believe my highly religious, honesty-preaching, goodie-two-shoes grandmother would lie/omit something that big. Not too long after my grandmother finally let me know about my mom, a woman contacted me telling me she was my sister. When I approached my mom about it, she was so happy she could tell someone about it. She got out a box of things that had all the baby stuff from my sister's birth and pictures from my sister. ... When I brought it up to my grandmother, she told me that I didn't know what I was talking about. I told her that my mom had told me everything, but she kept telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about. My grandmother laid into my mom for telling me and my mom wouldn't say another word about it. My life would've been so much better if my grandmother had practiced what she preached."
—Anonymous
12."My grandparents got divorced not long after their last child was born. My parent is the oldest sibling. No one would say why they divorced, and they seemed to get along just fine all their lives. One night after my grandfather had passed away my parent drunkenly told me why. The youngest sibling was assaulted as a baby and everyone thought my grandfather did it. After going to court of some sort and taking a lie detector test my grandfather was found not guilty and even the judge apologized to him...something was said to the effect of my grandfather being a simple man who wasn’t capable of such a heinous crime. My parent only just pieced together memories of it being their babysitter’s horrible teenage son."
"I can never tell anyone, our 'family' is so far gone anyways but the younger ones don’t deserve this burden. I’m the only person who knows all of this, other than my parent, and it weighs heavy on me. I just wish I could hold my grandfather and tell him how sorry I am. He was the best man I’ve ever known. He deserved better. I don’t believe in an afterlife but I talk to him sometimes in hopes he can hear me say that."
—Anonymous
13."During my parents' divorce, my mom was committed to the mental ward (at the hospital where she actually worked). I was told then, age 12, that my dad had her committed as a divorce tactic to gain leverage. I hated him for that (and other reasons)."
"I recently found out 40 years later that my mom actually overdosed back then in an attempt to kill herself. She did end up killing herself by a fatal overdose when I was 28. Then, when I was 40, I was informed by an attorney that my dad also killed himself (self-inflicted gunshot). Both were destitute and couldn’t face their demons. To me, it all originated from that lie when I was 12."
—Anonymous
14."My parents told me that my brother was extremely successful. They had a carefully crafted long explanation on how he became so successful. But the truth is that they helped him marry a 96 year old woman at the age of 55 so he could inherit everything she had. ... I was shocked and disgusted by what they did to help him — they were not the parents I knew. I would've never found out, but a day after my mother was buried my brother decided to show me videos and explain where his money came from...without me asking. I wish he would have just let them die with their secret."
—Anonymous
15."There’s 20ish years between me and my siblings. I very obviously knew that my two siblings and I didn’t have the same dad. But when I was in middle school, my sister finally spilled that none of us have the same father. My brother’s dad was majorly abusive and tried to killed my mom, so she said 'no thanks' and left. Then she met my sister’s dad. Everything was good for several years, until Mom got a call one day that he did more than business when he had to go to Germany for work one time. So my sister has another half-brother in Germany."
—Anonymous
16."Everyone thinks my mom is an absolute angel, but she’s actually a full-on covert narcissist who hid the fact that my stepdad was a massive opioid addict and she knowingly supported his addiction financially, to the detriment of everything else, to keep him tied to her, and I didn’t find out until she let it slip in an argument three years ago. That information rewrote my entire life story, because it explained how she made good money but we were literally 'eat or buy shoes' poor. I had to walk a paper route to buy my own food and clothes when I was 11, and put cardboard in my shoes until I’d saved up enough for new ones, because my mother prioritized paying for his drug use over caring for her child — and then sold me a story about how that experience only made me stronger."
"She lied and manipulated for 35 years, and then actually got mad at me for being upset when I finally found out. She even stopped talking to me over it (and yet still expected me to take care of both of them and their house — I was their only retirement plan), thinking the silent treatment would bully me into apologizing like it had my whole life. Joke was on her, though, because that fun revelation followed by the first peace I’d had in years gave me the push I needed to finally acknowledge that my entire relationship with her had been abusive so I got into therapy, cut off contact with her, and the last three years have been the best of my life."
—Anonymous
17."I didn’t know my stepfather wasn’t my father until I was ten years old. Turns out my biological father was cheating on his wife with my mom and when mom found out she broke up with him. A couple of weeks later she found out she was pregnant. When my father found out early into the pregnancy, he wanted to have a secret relationship with me without his family finding out and my mom rejected the idea. My grandparents found out I existed when I was eight and my stepmother when I was ten, which is when he reached out wanting to meet me and I refused. I met the whole family when I was 16, around the time my younger siblings found out about me. Nowadays I don’t have a relationship with what would’ve been my direct family because they’re terrible people and I haven’t spoken to my father or siblings in 11 years. My aunts, grandfather and step grandmother are great and I see them all the time, though!"
—Anonymous
18."When I was 18, my mom told me I actually had an older sister and brother from her first marriage and had to give them up for adoption. I still don’t know anything more than that."
"And when I was 44 (last year), I learned from my dad that he was mom’s third husband, and not her second as I’d always believed."
—Anonymous
19."That my beloved maternal grandmother was actually an abusive, narcissistic monster to her children. There’s even a famous story about her making up excuses not to come to the hospital when I was born (complete with a fake car accident and street fair) just to spite my mom. Why she forgave her, I have no idea and I sometimes resent that I was allowed to bond with, love and mourn her for the nine years of my life that I knew her."
—Anonymous
20."My mom was a single mother of my oldest sister and I in the '60s. She had another child out of wedlock and gave her up for adoption when I was three. I found out when I did a DNA test looking for my father, 57 years later."
—Anonymous
21."I got a phone call one day when I was 13 from a lady that said 'Your father, XXXX, would like to talk to you.' My who? I had a dad. One that raised me from when I was one year old. As soon as I learned the truth, my step-family was relieved they didn't have to include me anymore. I learned at a young age that the people who are supposed to love you the most will QUIT YOU. I'm 45 now and barely recovering from the abandonment issues."
—Anonymous
22."For the longest time, I thought that I had two siblings (one full, one half). My biological father had had children with two different women (my mom one of them), which is nothing too out of the ordinary. When I was in middle school, we got into an argument. My dad broke down, and that’s when the truth slipped out. I have an older half-sibling (who he’d had with an entirely different woman in between my half-sib and I) that I never knew existed. My brother doesn’t know the truth about his biological past, about me or my other siblings. His step-father raised him as his own, and he doesn’t know that my father (his biological one) exists. We have no connection other than blood, and in the end we’re not 'family' now, but sometimes I still think about him. I hope he’s doing well."
—Anonymous
23.And finally: "Not to me but my dad to my mom. They divorced when I was 10 years old. When they got married my mom was 23 and my dad 31. They had married with shared assets (idk the exact term) but when my mom asked for the divorce, thinking she would get half of what we had, she found out they were under a separate assets marriage and was left with nothing, not even the house. My dad’s brother was a lawyer and he helped him change the type of marriage behind my mom’s back soon after they had married. Me, my brother, and my mom had to move out after he told her the house was for his kids (meaning we could live with him) but since she was the one that wanted the divorce she had to leave. She obviously took us with her but she was never able to own a house on her own because we went through hard financial situations."
"My dad has been a very present father and has helped us me and my brother financially over the years. But growing up, it was very hard to reconcile how good of a father he was versus how he was also able to be a terrible husband to my mom. I confronted him when i was a little older but he has never fully admitted it, saying that things weren’t actually that way but also never explained because he said those were things between him and my mom and i shouldn’t get involved. He never realized how much that affected us. We lived with my grand-parents, in rented apartments, then my mom remarried and we had a home for a while but then moved out again for college, etc. I was 10 years old the last time we had a home, I'm 29 now. My dad and mom have a good relationship now, but it was very messy for many years."
—Anonymous
What secret did your family keep from you? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
