Every family has a secret, but not everyone has a secret family. It must take a lot of sneaking around to hide another life for years—sometimes decades. But every secret gets out eventually, whether it’s a casual slip of the tongue or a dramatic reveal.
1. First Day Of School
This happened to one of my grand aunts. She was in 3rd or 4th grade and it was the first day of school. During roll call, they called her name and she and another girl responded. It turned out they both had the same first and last name (different middle names). They became instant friends because of the shared names and started talking about their families. That's when it all took a dark turn.
They then realized that their dad also shared the same first name and last name, even middle name, and looked very similar as well. Once my aunt got home and told all this to her mom, all chaos broke loose. It turns out that her father had been fathering children around the neighborhood and letting the women use his last name for the baby.
I think it came out that he had like 20 children altogether.
2. Happy Valentine’s Day!
My 29-year-old father met my 19-year-old mom at a bar she worked at during his separation around Valentine’s Day. They hooked up once and my mom got pregnant. But there was a huge problem.
He was married. Apparently, he slept with his wife recently as well because she was a few weeks pregnant too. He decided to stay with his family and hid my existence as his from them.
I tried to contact him once and got the typical "It’s possible I’m your dad". Like, you were AT MY BIRTH.
3. Welcome To College
My mother had me and my brother before she knew my father had a real family (so technically, we were the secret family), but we have a pretty good relationship with him despite that. Then a week ago, my mother and I visited the college I’ll be attending this fall. In the middle of the two-hour trip to the university, out of the blue, she dropped a shocker on me.
She told me that the father I know is not my real father, just my brother’s. Turns out she had an affair and had me with another man while they were still together. I met the man once when I was nine. He randomly (but now I know, not so randomly) gave me a birthday gift after just meeting me. Turns out, he has a family of his own with I think three kids and a wife.
They know nothing about me, and I want it to stay that way. My mother also told me that he sends us money every month for my expenses, but I have no idea what dear old mom does with it since she doesn’t give me an allowance and my "father" (brother’s biological dad) pays for most of our bills. I cried for about an hour in the car after she told me and all she said to me then was "Stop crying. It changes nothing".
I didn’t speak to her during the tour or on the way home, and now she’s continuing to act like nothing happened and everything’s normal. My brother and "father" have no idea and I still don’t understand why she told me then or why she said anything at all.
4. Always Call Ahead
My sister worked with a lady who had a long-term boyfriend (around 14 years together). She was in her early 50s, and for all I knew, they didn’t have kids. She would sometimes have to miss out on family events due to her work schedule, and this time it was an event for his family. They were all going out for dinner to celebrate something, and she wasn’t able to go because of work.
The night of the dinner, something ended up changing at work, so she ended up leaving early and deciding she’d join them for dinner. This was before mobile phones were commonly owned, so she didn’t call ahead or anything like that. When she got to the restaurant, she made a disturbing discovery.
Her boyfriend had brought another woman. She quickly found out that he had brought this woman to many family events and that everyone in his family not only knew about this other woman, but they all decided to keep it from her. No one wanted to "get involved" in it, but they were okay with him bringing his mistress along and lying to his girlfriend. It had been going on for years.
He was dumped very quickly.
5. Too Close For Comfort
This happened to my wife's friend. The father was a fireman and his two daughters lived down the block. It turns out he had a second family, also with two daughters a few blocks away. The second woman knew he had a wife and kids, but they never told their daughters. But one day, the fireman messed up big time.
He did one of those safety talks in school and gave a hug to one of the daughters from the second family before he left. My wife's friend witnessed her father hugging a girl in another class and asked about it at dinner. Things went downhill from there.
6. In Her DNA
My friend's mom had a DNA test done and the results said she had a ton of siblings and cousins, which is weird because she had one brother, another adopted brother, and no cousins. Turns out her mom was having trouble getting pregnant so she went to see some really well-renowned specialist and then became pregnant.
But all this doctor did was take some of the husband's sperm and mix it with his own and then they would get pregnant. So he fathered a ton of children, many of whom probably still don’t know.
7. High School Sweetheart
This happened to my best friend's mom. This is interesting, as they were the secret family. My best friend's father passed when he was young. His mother, who owned a business at the time, was raising her two kids a year apart. While they weren't struggling, her business was unable to grow since she had to pay herself so much to keep care of the kids.
A few years later, she runs into her high school sweetheart, and they re-establish a connection and eventually start dating. He has two kids, near the same age as both of hers. His wife had passed a year prior, and he works as a regional manager for a very large, very profitable company. So he was rich and sad. He eventually helped them buy a house under her name, which was previously owned by an average-paid NFL player, with bedrooms for both sets of kids.
He bought her a boat. He bought her a car. You name it. With his purchases, She was able to reinvest capital into her business and it took off fairly well. Two or three years go by, and she's able to afford much nicer things by herself. Around junior year of my friend's high school, things got even more serious and she starts asking to get married. That's when things started to get a bit suspicious.
My friend's sister viewed him as her dad, practically. (Never called him that, though). I jokingly called them mom and dad because I spent a good deal of the summer at their house. She knew about his two kids, but the two kids did not know about them. However, after three years he still had never told his kids about his secret family.
He explained to them that he was traveling, even during week-long cruises. This continued for another two years despite her nagging. He justified it by saying he wanted all the kids to graduate high school. This past Christmas, after five years, everyone had graduated high school, my friend's mom had had enough.
She dug into his friends' lives and they eventually told her that he was still married. His wife was still alive.
My friend's mom kept her house, and several other things he had bought under her and her kids' names. Her business is now in a great spot and easily provides for her kids' college. This man had two full families and spoiled both of them rotten, and kept it a secret for five years. I'm still mad.
8. Graduation Gift
My husband mentioned that his dad was married once before he met his mom. His first wife had a daughter while they were married, but he divorced her and claimed she wasn't his child. (He was in the air force at the time, so I'm guessing maybe the timing was suspicious). My husband found out when he was in middle school because his ex-wife sent her daughter's graduation announcement to him.
So it seems like she wasn't under the same impression that the daughter wasn't his. I asked my husband for more information, but that was all he knew. His mom told him when he saw the announcement in the mail, but his siblings don't even know. His parents divorced when my husband was in college and now he has a third wife and basically never talks to my husband.
9. Slow Burn
In WWII, my grandfather was part of Big Red 1, and had, in a manner of sorts, put his relationship with my grandmother on hold during the European theater. After the war, my grandfather was still stationed in Germany and hooked up with a German woman and got her pregnant. Nine months later, the woman gave birth to a healthy baby girl (my aunt whom I have never met).
My grandfather named her after my grandmother back in the United States. He was eventually shipped to the Philippines, got malaria, and was very sick for a while. When he finally got back to the US and was discharged, he kept in contact through letters for a period of time, but after a while, the letters stopped coming.
10. No Accidents
Grandma found out at her father's funeral that he had a second, secret family. As well as my grandma, her brother, and her mother, he was also paying for and living with another woman with whom he had at least one child. He gave this child, a daughter, the same name as my grandmother to ensure he didn't accidentally use the wrong name at any point and arouse suspicions.
My grandmother is very proud and speaks highly of her father, so must have forgiven this transgression, to some extent. She doesn't know I know and would be mortified to find out that I do, I can't possibly mention it. It's hard to explain why but I just feel like it'd hit her really hard, she's just that kind of person who wants to maintain appearances.
11. Aunt Or Sister?
My great grandfather had an affair and the woman had the baby but I’m not sure why she didn’t keep her. My great grandfather brought her home and my great grandmother raised her as her own. The baby was the same age as my father. So although she was his "aunt" they were in school together (which is common more now, but not back then).
She never knew about it. But the whole family knows. My grandma always treated her as a full-blood sister. She recently passed from cancer never knowing that she was an affair baby. It’s crazy to think about.
12. Who Are You?
This happened to my wife's grandmother. She's still alive (in her 90s) and her father had a secret second family. However, eventually, both families met.
They met at his funeral. When the secret wife saw the life this man had built and lived with his public wife, the secret wife said: "I always knew there was someone else, but I didn't know that I was the someone else".
13. Not a Secret
I'm the second "secret" family. My dad was already married and had four sons. He really wanted a daughter and his wife couldn't have any more kids. He met my mom at work and they started seeing each other. After that, they had me, all while my dad was still married. The weird thing is he never really kept me a secret.
I've always known his now ex-wife, who I also call mom because half the time she was helping raise me, and I know all of my siblings. None of us are very close but I know who they are and I see them every once in a while. My dad and his ex-wife got divorced the same year my mom broke up with him, this was when I was 10.
My dad and "stepmom", I'll call her, still live in the same house because my dad has some health issues. They were "staying together for the kids" which just made everything worse. My mom HATES my stepmom and dad and almost didn't come to a bunch of things when I was a senior in high school because they would both be there.
My stepmom tries to be civil with my mom but my mom refuses to be nice to her, even though she didn't do anything wrong. It really all just messed up our "family" and no one is close to me or my parents. My brothers hate my dad more than I ever have. The whole "wanting a daughter thing" didn't work out too well for him, considering we aren't close because he screwed everyone over in the process.
14. Double Standard
My dad was mean towards my little sister, my mom, and me growing up and just made things very hard for us, but treated us with lots of trips to the mall and vacations to make up for it. Then slowly the vacations stopped, then the shopping sprees, and he would randomly come home late from work at weird times (but he has always had flexible hours so it wasn’t too off).
Then one day, my mom got a weird feeling. She followed him out when he said he was going to get a drink with friends and found him with his fiancée and her kid at a restaurant. After that, he basically abandoned us and left us homeless. But it just hurt a lot knowing how well he treated his fiancée compared to my mom and how much he respected the other woman.
15. Brotherhood
I'm adopted and at age 19 I decided to look for my biological mother. I found her and reached out. Turns out I have three half-brothers (we all have different dads). One brother is older than me, the other two are younger. She never told anyone in the family about me and just dropped off the face of the earth for nine months until she had me and gave me up.
I'm not sure why I was the only one not kept in the family. Everyone, including myself, was pretty shocked. I won the lottery out of all my siblings because I have the best parents and the most opportunities. I'm glad I was given up but the question of why never goes away. I asked about my bio dad and I'm 99% sure she doesn't even know who he is so I stopped asking and I don't talk to her anymore.
I do talk to my brothers pretty regularly along with my grandparents and aunts. So yeah, I was the secret.
16. Just Get A Divorce
After my parents' 10-year anniversary church wedding, someone called the church registrar saying that she was the legal wife. The secretary from the registrar proceeded to call my mom to inform her about it. My mom did investigations on her own a full week after the event. And eventually found out that my dad now has a daughter with his mistress, and has been staying with them five days a week.
His excuse was always "work is hectic so I might as well stay at someone's place". Yeah right. Mom decided to break the relationship (Annulment is expensive from where we live. Divorce is being discussed in the supreme court), and the whole family was in chaos. Grandparents (father's side) wanted custody of the four of us (me and my three brothers).
We fought until they gave up because we saw how distraught our mom was and she only had us for support (our aunt and grandma were living a bit far from where we were). They had a final "meeting", asking why my dad decided to cheat for the nth time. He said because "I am a weak man and you are too trusting so I decided to cheat on you again".
A few years later, he decided to take away our educational plans and life savings because of his gambling addiction. His parents were holding it for us at that time because my brothers and I were still minors. He forged their signatures and was able to cash all of it. So, yeah. 15 years after that, we barely have contact with him, but we know he has a new family (again).
We actually saw him again during my second brother's funeral two years ago, but didn't communicate as much. Mom is doing okay. My brothers and I are doing okay. But they do have terrible trust issues.
17. Not an Aunty
Growing up in Jamaica, it was kind of normal for a man to have a second family. I was probably five years old when I realized my mother, my sister, and I were the second family. My father was always around so it didn’t feel like a secret or a shame. All my life I’ve known my dad’s ex-wife, she accepted my sister and me.
We called her Aunty Sylvia and she called us by our names, loved us, and kissed us goodbye whenever we left her house. This was normal. One day, I left my backpack at her house and Aunty Sylvia called my mother to let her know. I was in the other room when my mother hung up and rushed to call her friends to gossip about the call.
She was surprised by how nice Aunty Sylvia was to her knowing about her and his kids. I later asked my mother if she didn’t like Aunty because she didn’t think she was nice. She sat me down and explained that Aunty was really daddy’s wife and that was that. Years later, my dad and Aunty divorced and since then he’s been married to my mother.
This kind of always messed me up: knowing my mother was the other woman, but knowing she got her man in the end.
18. Sharing Is Caring
My father had a second family. When I was a little kid, my father was away a lot because he was in the army. He deployed and while deployed, he did something scandalous.
He hooked up with another soldier, and she got pregnant. Daddy came back and lived with mom after that like nothing was wrong but he started to have to go away a lot for training.
Mom got suspicious and found out there was no training, he was just staying at her house. She knew about us and didn't care and thought it was okay. In fact, she tried to talk to my mom about sharing him. He dipped out after that and we never really saw him again. 20 years later, my mom has a nice wife and lives in the country and has a nice quiet life.
19. The Internet Is Forever
My father was married to my mom and was dating another woman. They were serious apparently. He told my mum he was taking us to the park once and took us to her parents' house for three days and she didn't know whether or not to file missing person's reports. So anyway, she finds out he's literally engaged and planning a second wedding with this lady he's been with for years.
But when it all comes out in court, even more secrets come out. Not only is he married to my mom and engaged to this lady, but he's also dating four people.
He only had my sister and me with my mom (as far as we know) but he stayed with the lady he was engaged to after all the court divorce. They ended up getting married and have two sons now. So he kept his secret girlfriend and made a public family.
Then he ran for some position within his company and posted a write-up someone had done about his life and his parents immigrating from Britain and growing up in private school, and that he now has a loving family. I see it has over 200 likes, presumably from people within the company who support him, and over 300 comments all saying they'll be voting for his position or whatever. That's when I decided to get my revenge.
I let every one of these people who had previously liked and commented know the truth. I wrote a quick comment that everyone would see. I simply said, "Why didn't you mention the two daughters and wife you abandoned to be with your mistress and have children with her"? I got a lot of replies of disgust from people calling ME out.
Like they didn't realize I wasn't some angry ex trying to air dirty laundry or make up rumors, but his 13-year-old daughter who genuinely wanted to know why his happy life story didn't include her.
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20. Welcome To Bolivia
My immediate family lives in Virginia. My grandfather lived in Bolivia and passed at the age of 90. Heartbroken, my mother traveled to Bolivia immediately to be with her mother and arrange the funeral. On the day of the burial, many people showed up including a half dozen strangers who REALLY seemed to be messed up over his passing.
After the ceremony and burial, my mother goes to them, thanks them for coming, and asks who they are. The woman looks at my mother and says she was the daughter. My mother was talking to her adult mid-50s completely secret half-sister. My family was disgusted and angry and there was a court battle over his estate that we won because American dolla dolla bills y'all.
21. Repeat Offender
I did an Ancestry DNA test—and got a huge surprise. I found a very close familial match to some guy I didn't know. After contacting him, I found out he's a twin, and they were both adopted but I still couldn't figure out HOW we were related.
Eventually, I found the right records and it turns out they are my mom's older half brothers, only nine months older, from her real bio dad. I don't think she even knew she had a different dad because it looks like the champ did it again and bailed on my grandma before my mom was born, just like he did with the twins, and pulled the same stunt a few more times.
Confirms that my mom's side is even more messed up than we already knew, and now I have two new uncles and a slew of cousins I didn't have for 35 years.
22. The Other Woman
Background: He wasn't truly my father because he's not my biological father and he never married my mom, but they dated for most of my childhood and he was basically a father to me. I found out after I left for college. My mom told me during one of my trips visiting for Christmas that she found out he had another family, but to act as though I didn't know.
She said she found out from a friend that tipped her off that he was married to some other woman. Basically, it came out that my mom was the other woman, and that he was cheating on his wife with her. I kept my mouth shut when I was back home visiting, but told him I knew what was going on a few days later after I got back home, and that I would talk to him when I felt like it.
A year goes by, and we make contact again. He says he wants to try and make this work with me and my mom. I meet his wife and go to his real house, which was definitely an interesting experience. After some time though, his wife calls my mom and yells at her for still spending time with her husband, because of course she does.
My mom cuts off contact with him completely, and I decide to stop talking to him as well (due to this situation, and the fact that he was not a good guy during my childhood). I realized that I didn't want to have contact with him anymore, and this all kind of sealed the deal for me. This all happened between 2011 and 2014, and I haven't spoken with him since. I don't plan on it anytime soon.
23. Family Secrets
As a child, my dad's brother was our cool uncle. He was at our house often, always treated us well, and would hang out with my siblings and me. He had a wife and three kids, younger than me and my siblings. When I was about 18, my then 19-year-old brother got a message on Myspace from a guy with the same exact name as him.
This also happens to be the same exact name as our uncle (my brother was named after our grandfather and so was our uncle). Our last name is unique in America so it was odd. The man went on to inform our brother that he was looking for our uncle, who had abandoned him and his two siblings when they were young. We were shocked.
He never spoke of having any other children other than the three that lived with him. He had no pictures of other children in his home, or any type of indication that he had other children. I eventually brought it up to my mom and she told us the truth and it all made sense because my mom never liked his wife and didn't like when he came to our house.
She would often even keep us from visiting him. She said that he had a wife and three kids before I was even born, and then he went abroad for several months, leaving his wife and kids with my parents, and just never came back and didn't contact his wife. His wife eventually moved away with the kids and then a year or two later he popped back up in the states with a new wife he met abroad.
He never mentioned his old family again. Apparently, when he met his new wife abroad, she knew he had a family back in the states and encouraged him to leave them, and that's why my mother never liked her.
24. Baby In A Basket
Happened to my aunt. Somebody did the movie thing of "put a basket on the front door and ring the bell". Well, inside the basket was a newborn and some heartfelt letter about how the mother could not raise the kid. They were a well-known Christian family in the town (at the time, her husband had a seat in the town's parliament).
So, they raise the boy with their older kids, never telling him he's adopted, until one day, about 17 years later, in a family lunch, one of the matriarchs (a great aunt of mine that was in the early stages of Alzheimer's) casually says: "Oh, he's so handsome and resembles you (to his father) in every way. Would you mind if I take a picture to show his mother"? That's when the awful truth came out.
Well, turns out the boy was actually my aunt's husband's son with another woman, and he knew it all along. He's actually the one who instructed his bio mother on the basket thing.
25. Irish Exit
Growing up, our family lived next door to an old couple. They were so good to us six kids. The woman would have us come by early on Halloween to get special candy bags she prepared for us. The man would entertain us by flipping his false teeth out to our horror and delight. He would give us quarters and we thought we were rich.
The woman passed soon after a fall that broke her pelvis. The man was on his deathbed talking to his son, who had brought some photos by to ask who was in the pictures. The man said, "That’s my wife". The son said, "No, dad, that’s not mom". The man said, "No, the picture is my first wife". The story is that the man had a wife and children in Ireland.
The wife and kids passed, and the man left Ireland behind. He lived a simple and honorable life in the US as a groundskeeper. He married the woman we knew and had a boy and a girl. Before his son asked about the picture, he had never told anyone about his first wife and children. The son investigated and found that he was telling the truth.
26. Handsome Boys
My father’s girlfriend added a picture to her Facebook of my dad and my younger brother that she had taken off of my mother's Facebook with the comment, "Look at my handsome boys". Neither my mother, my brother, nor I had any clue who she was. After some serious Facebook stalking, I had to confront my entire family with my findings.
The lies were so elaborate and it had been going on for so long that my brothers didn’t believe me until I actually showed them the physical evidence. We walked up to this women’s house and knocked on the door. She answered with the most dumbfounded look on her face. I asked her children, who were sitting in the living room if they knew their stand-in father (my dad) was married.
None of them knew. It was a nightmare. Not to mention this all happened days before Christmas. The mistress pretty much went off the deep end after my dad broke it off. Harassing all of us at our workplaces, in our homes, and on social media. In the end, after cutting it off and a few orders of protection later, my parents are still together and in couples counseling.
27. Funny Joke
My cousin's dad (my uncle by marriage) had a secret family. He worked in Houston during the week and came home to the family in Harlingen, Texas on the weekend. It was kind of always a family joke between my cousins and her siblings. You know, like, "Wouldn’t it be funny if dad actually had a secret family and that’s why he’s never here"?
Then they found out it was true all along. A wife and three kids, just like my cousin, and of very similar ages. The two families had almost identical lives. My uncle had been married the whole time to both my aunt and this other lady. Everyone thought it was some sick joke when they found out. But nope, it had always been true.
28. Double Secrets
My dad was born in MD in 1968 and adopted when he was an infant and moved to MI. When he finished his three-year enlistment from the army in the late 80s, his biological mother contacted him. They meet for the first time and she kept putting down his adopted mother: "She did a good job but mommy’s here now, you don’t need her anymore".
This offended my dad so he didn’t keep in contact with her. When he was adopted, the agency told his adopted family that the reason he was in the system was because his biological mother was strung out and he was taken away from her due to safety reasons.
Years later (around 2012), when he finally agrees to reconnect with her one more time, shocking new information surfaces. He finds out that his mother was having an affair at age 15 with a married 30-year-old man who had other children.
When the wife found out about the affair and pregnancy, she convinced his mother (my grandmother) that since she was too young to give the baby (my father) to her, and she would take care of it. Turns out she did not do that. She instead turned my dad over to a local agency and said she found the baby from a strung-out woman.
The wife stayed with the husband until he passed. The wife and her children have nothing to do with my dad. We did not attend his funeral. He passed before I graduated high school I think. It is my assumption that my grandmother went crazy and never recovered mentally from having her baby stolen from her.
So when she met my dad the first time, her excitement of finally meeting her only child came off in a manner she didn’t intend it to. Upon hearing the truth of my father's adoption, I took it upon myself to have a relationship with her. Whenever I got the chance I would visit her. She gave me cheap jewelry and random plastic crystals with excitement.
We had a wonderful relationship. I was supposed to go visit her in the summer of 2014 but something happened and my trip got postponed. A few days after I was scheduled to be at her house, we found out she passed alone over a week prior. Had I gone when I was supposed to, I would have found her body.
She luckily passed in her sleep so she wasn’t in pain and I’m always happy I spent what time I could with her so she had some sense of peace and love from her bloodline. The first crystal she ever gave me still hangs in my car today.
29. Slip Of The Tongue
My mom is very close to our uncle. When her father passed, my uncle stepped up and told her that she is his daughter now, and I’m his granddaughter. He has treated us very well and trusts my mother SO much. My uncle has a daughter with another woman that NO ONE knows about. There are two people aside from my uncle who know, myself and my mother.
My mom slipped up one day. I said, "He has four kids, right"? She corrected me and said, "No, five"! And that’s how I found out about his fifth kid. My uncle is an older man, I think late 70s, early 80s. He’s been married twice. His first wife (who he had his kids with) passed young. He has been with his second wife for 25+ years. All his children are adults well into their 40s and 50s.
A few years back, my uncle confessed to my mother that he has a "love child". He claims the woman came onto him, and the rest is history. He asked my mother to tell his wife and children about his other daughter when he passes away. I have no idea if my mom will go through with it. That’s a pretty large burden to put on someone.
30. Apple Doesn’t Fall Far
I found out my father kept the entire family he had before mine a complete secret. How I found out: four years ago, I was having an extremely bad migraine and my aunt called my phone. I told my partner to answer it and let her know what was going on. I was in and out of sleep for the next couple of hours when I heard him intermittently, still talking with her.
Once they got off the phone, I had enough strength to walk out of my room and ask him what they were talking about. That’s when he told me that my aunt somehow spilled out that my dad was married before he met my mom. I couldn’t find words because I always suspected something happened with him before he met my mom, as he is a lot older than your average parent would be.
I turned to Google for more information, searched his name as it wasn’t too common—and found the result that changed everything. He had two kids with her. The children and ex-wife have our last name. The children are in their 40s and I’m in my late 20s now. It made me more upset than it probably should have. I wanted to call her and ask questions, but I refrained.
He’s always been a good liar, but then I found out a couple of months ago that HIS father had a secret second family. The apple apparently doesn’t seem to fall far from the tree here. I told my siblings and they didn’t seem to care too much, their reactions were nonchalant. One thing that really sticks out is that he never showed me his yearbooks from the 60s, no matter how much I asked.
I guess they were high school sweethearts. I never confronted my dad. I concluded that with how long ago it was and him not telling me, there was probably a reason.
31. Keeping The Secret
I have a half-sister that will never know she has another sibling and that her dad is actually my dad. I have thought about telling her, absolutely. For the longest time, I thought that I had no right in telling her, but realized that as her family, I have every right to. But, what keeps me from doing so is that her mom and "dad" are still happily married to this day.
Both of them know that she is not "his" kid. Or at least I'm pretty sure he knows anyway. Doesn't stop him from loving her just as if she was his actual daughter, though, despite the circumstances of her birth (her mom and my dad cheated on their respective spouses, though mine later divorced for unrelated reasons).
I was still a kid myself when she was conceived, maybe 14 or 15, and I'm 44 now, so lil' sis is a full-grown woman by this point. Lived her life with loving parents, gotten married, and started a family of her own. I don't want to ruin any aspect of that for her. As her brother, unknown as that fact might be, her being happy is the only thing that matters to me.
If it comes out later, through whatever means, then so be it. But until then I feel that maintaining my radio silence on the matter is for the best.
32. Bonus Sister
My neighbor and I moved together from Staten Island to New Jersey and bought houses across the street from each other because our dads were best friends. I used to play with the daughter every day and we practically grew up together and acted like cousins. Fast forward seven years and my family moved to Florida.
Then we found out that the dad had a daughter with another woman. The little girl I grew up with ended up becoming a big sister/best friend to the daughter her father secretly raised. Parents get divorced obviously when everything came out. But I see her on Instagram and she's always posting photos of her and her half-sister she discovered when she was 12.
She writes the nicest captions too. "My soulmate is my sister", things like that. I think she was happy to get a sister. The other girl is just a dark-skinned replica of her too. It's adorable and it turned out okay in the end, except for my friend's mom, who never got over it. I don't blame her.
33. Welcome To Adulthood
So growing up, I had a typical two-parent family. Unfortunately, my dad was not good to us, and I hated him. I wished and prayed for years that I wasn't related to him. When I was about to turn 18, I went to find my birth certificate to get my ID so I could legally buy adult things. Oh boy, I found my original and new birth certificate.
My dad had abandoned me and my mom at this point, so I called my mom at work and asked her who Albert Novinger S was. Turns out I was half-adopted. My mom is biological but she had me from her first marriage. Turns out my dad had a few marriages before us as well and I have a half-sister via adoption, who I met.
My biological father had five children before me that I won’t get to meet since he's passed now and my mom never told me their names.
34. Road Trip Tip
When I was 18, my father and I were on the road together, and after a long period of silence he blurts out: "Your mother had a son 10 years before you were born, several years before we knew each other. She gave him up for adoption. He recently contacted her through a third party for relevant medical information". And then he went back to silence.
I was immediately like, "What? Why? How"? It was devastating to hear. I've asked my mom to try and make contact with him to let him know that he has younger siblings that want to meet him. She has not expressed any desire to do so. I've often wondered about reaching out to him but I don't know how to start the process.
My mother has stated that she went through the Catholic church for the adoption and every knowledgeable person I've spoken with regarding the subject has told me that if he doesn't want to be found, you ain't gonna find him.
35. Thanks, Oprah
Around 1994, my dad was sitting in the living room watching Oprah with his mom (my grandmother). Oprah had some special guest on her show who discovered she had a long-lost sibling or something like that. As the story goes, my dad jokingly said to my grandma "I don't have any secret siblings, right"? to which my grandmother seriously replied, "Oh, just the one".
Turns out his father (my grandfather) had been separated from my grandmother for a few years between 1977 and 1980. In that time, he saw another woman and they had a daughter together. The funny thing is that it wasn't even supposed to be a secret, it was just that somehow no one had ever thought to tell my dad. Nothing really "happened" afterward.
36. What They Didn’t Deserve
My father had a wife and two daughters in the 1960s that he completely abandoned. I didn’t learn of their existence until he passed in 1999 and found his first marriage certificate. Did some sleuthing via early Ancestry.com, and when I tried to contact them in the early 2000s, they were understandably mad that he had a daughter he didn’t abandon and that he had been alive that entire time.
I still love and miss my father, but I have such a hard time reconciling what he did to them with the father I knew. We’ve never tried to contact each other again. To those two girls in NJ, you deserved better.
37. It’s All On Paper
So, I found out just after my mom did. It was my birthday. September 2nd, the night before I went to my sophomore year of college (for theater, oddly enough, suffice to say I was just a barrel of laughs) and we had just moved from Florida to Tennessee because we had to sell our house because of the 2008 crash. This was now 2011, and my dad had been living in Tennessee while my mom was trying to sell the house.
So I’m downstairs (where my room was) and I start hearing just an insane about of screaming from upstairs. Apparently, my mother had found his other cell phone because my father was asleep. She is going berserk. She also then brought out all this other paperwork and photos (apparently, I didn’t check, I was just sitting on the bottom steps listening to my family fall apart).
I hear my father blame the passing of my step-sister (half-sister of my half-brother, both were significantly older than I was by eight and 15 years respectively, sister being the eldest) on the fact that my mom wouldn’t allow my step-sister to live with us anymore because she was apparently hurting me and my sister (I don’t remember at all) so she made her go live with her mother.
Her mother pimped her out because she was an addict and so was the girl. She ended up passing in an alleyway by a stranger with a blunt object in 2000, which was never solved. Needless to say. My mom flipped even more. I decided to intervene after I took some breaths and I drove us to a nearby scenic view. She cried and cried. I told her it was gonna be fine.
Eventually, we decided to go to the airport and wait while she talked to her parents and booked a flight to South Carolina where her parents were. Before I left, and the last thing my father ever said to me before I didn’t talk to him for six years was, "Sorry about all this", while he handed me a hundred-dollar bill.
38. Plenty Of Fish
My dad was gone basically every weekend of my life. Even around the holidays. He was awful so my mom saw it as a break and never really cared about what he was doing. He told us he would go on fishing tournaments with his friend every weekend. That he was part of some fisherman's club. Whatever, he's not at home, who cares?
Well, my mom starts talking to some guy from high school (who has a wife and a kid). They never did anything physical as far as I know, but my mom was emotionally invested. I can't really blame her that much, dad was a mean guy, I get it. I just wish they'd got divorced a long time ago. But dad finds out my mom is talking to this guy and he just ups and leaves.
Dad comes back one day with divorce papers and gives my mom pretty much everything, the house, the car they just co-signed on. A while goes by and this random dude messages my mom on Facebook. Turns out this dude is the ex-husband of this chick that my dad used to work with back when I was a baby.
This lady was around a suspicious amount of times then but my mom gave my dad the benefit of the doubt back then. Even though he was always freaking out that my mom was the one cheating. Turns out my dad JUST married that chick from back in the day, this guy's ex-wife. This guy fills my mom in that my dad and this chick never really stopped talking and have always been together to some degree.
My dad told this chick that my dad and mom were separated. How she believed this, I don't know considering she only saw him on weekends, but I suspect she knew the truth but just didn't care. This lady's ex-husband told my mom how my dad had gone on family vacations with them since forever. This lady and her ex weren't married very long, got divorced when their kids were like two and three (they're in their early 20s now).
So when she started to see my dad, he'd come along on trips with them. My dad would take these week-long trips every year, saying he was going somewhere to fish. Turns out he was really at Disney World. He's been there more times with them than he took my mom and me. The only piece of hard evidence is his insurance sent a change of address and the address matched this lady's address that's been in my mom's address book since forever ago.
She was also the "friend" he was "fishing" with every weekend. I stopped talking to my dad. I cut him out of my life. He screwed with me psychologically and he only cares about getting his way. The only thing he would talk to me about after he moved out was how I need to tell my mom that she needs to get his name off the house. A process I'm not responsible for and he won't speak to my mom.
39. Important Business
I remember when I was 16, my then-boyfriend’s mother was dating this guy for about seven or eight months, and he gave her all this nice stuff like a sports car and new phones for her whole family (there are three kids). I don't remember much, but she said that he traveled a lot and he could only come on the weekend.
On the weekdays, he had to go on "business trips". Big red flag. The guy actually proposed to his mom, she said yes, and they were going to move to another house until she looked at his phone records and noticed he called this specific number numerous times. So she called that number and found out it was his wife.
Basically, they got together at the wife's house and waited for the guy to come back home and confront him. Let's just say it did not go well.
40. Mutual Agreement
My grandfather's brother has had a very odd time dating. This happened some 40 years ago but he had been married once and had a divorce, no kids. He came back to the dating scene and met this woman. They dated for a while and then she broke it to him. She had only been dating to find someone to be the perfect father for a child.
She said she wanted to find a good-looking guy with other good qualities to have a child with and then leave. She didn't want a man in her life. It all seems kinda primal. And he agreed. So they had a daughter and they split. He doesn't pay child support or anything. But this went undisclosed for years. Only until my dad was at a restaurant and went to pay the waitress.
The waitress looked at the card and asked to speak with my dad in private. Having read the cardholder's name, she proceeded to tell my dad who she was and how they were related. So then my dad proceeded to ask my grandfather about it (brother to the father) and he said it was true. He had only told my grandfather. I guess the woman told the daughter who her true father was.
So now we all know about it to some extent but never really talk about it. All really really weird.
41. Two Grandmas
My grandad had been planning to divorce my grandmother until she had a stroke. This left half her body paralyzed vertically (one arm, one leg, one eye) and unable to care for herself. So they stayed together. During one of their hospital visits, grandad is at the bar by himself, meets another woman, and this, in turn, becomes a secret affair.
All of this occurred before I was born when my dad was in his 20s. I grew up knowing this other woman as granny, and I was told to never tell my grandma about granny. I didn't really get it but it seemed like a big secret. The real kicker, granny would frequently stay in the same house as grandma, and grandma never knew about granny's existence, being unable to travel much on her own in her condition.
This continued for over 20 years but grandma eventually passed. Soon after this, granny and grandad get married and have been so for the past 10 years.
42. Never Liked Her
My mum at the age of 60 discovered her father had a secret family before he met my grandmother. He had previously married and had five kids. Growing up, my mother was very close with my grandfather but was not very close with my grandmother. My grandmother would often say to her when she was mad, "You’re just like your father's sister Rita, and I never liked her".
Turns out the so-called father's sister was ACTUALLY my mother's sister, that’s why my grandmother didn’t like her (Rita) because she wasn’t blood and my mother looked exactly like her father's other children. This was a huge shock to my mom as you could believe, but my mum also had five siblings she grew up with, so in total my mother now has 11 biological siblings she’s now aware of.
We only found this out recently because my mother's sister Sheryl (whom she grew up with) did some research on Ancestry.com and found all the records. Well, my grandmother wasn’t impressed that a secret she kept for 70 years was out of the bag (she’s 95) and she ended up cutting Sheryl out of the will, but things are slowly recovering.
43. Trust Your Gut
My dad started a job on the other side of the country I live in, and he only came home on the weekends. Eventually, he stopped being the supportive, great dad I ever knew. He started being rude and my mom started peeking at his phone whenever he came home after he had been drinking. She confronted him about being with his female co-worker.
My dad’s co-worker talked to my mom and denied saying she had been with him that night. My dad then asked my mom for a divorce, saying that he couldn't tolerate her and her "trust issues". However, it turns out my mom was right. And right after we moved out of my childhood home, he ignored my calls for eight months straight.
In one of my early teenage days, I ran away from home since my mom wasn't paying attention to me because she had depression. I was 12 almost 13 and when I saw another kid in my childhood home, then I knew. He was dating a co-worker three months after he started that job, and that woman had a kid. He replaced me. I had depression and anxiety for a while.
That changed my life and I became someone I never imagined I could be. Sometimes it still amazes me whenever I think of it. So, if you are married and think of cheating: you are trash. You are ruining somebody's life and I hope you never get anything good out of it.
44. Don’t Date Musicians
My father was a touring/studio musician when I was growing up. My parents divorced when I was about seven. My mother and older brother both got identical letters in the mail 15 years after my parents split. They were from a woman who said she had a daughter with my dad. The girl was about to turn 18, and the mother wanted to give us a heads up that her daughter may want to contact us.
They both had known about my brother and me the entire time but we never knew any of this until I was almost 22 and my brother 32. I'm 36 now and still have never talked to my sister. My father is also now married to a woman who he cheated on my mother with.
45. A Loud Whisper
When I was 12, my mom's cousin Laura got married. Laura’s sister Emily was the maid of honor. Emily gave a speech talking about how glad she was to finally have a brother and how much she loved Adam and welcome to the family! At this point, my grandmother turns to my mom and says something earth-shattering.
She whispers very quietly, "Too bad they don’t know about their brother". I asked my mom later about this. She was horrified that I had overheard and said for me to never speak of this. But she did tell me what happened.
So my great uncle was this young, handsome, Italian teenager and had an affair with a married woman when he was 16. She got pregnant and they knew it was my great uncle’s because the husband was infertile. As well as this Norwegian couple suddenly having a black-haired olive-skinned child.
It was a huge scandal that got hushed up and the married couple ended up moving away and my grandma and her sisters were sworn to secrecy. My great uncle passed 10 years ago now, and so have my grandma and mom.
I don’t know who else might know and feel trapped in speaking up to my mom's cousins about this. It haunts me.
46. Surprise Family
Last October, I found out my late father (passed in 2015) had a son when he was around 20 years old. He had never told my mother, had never told me. We found out later that my grandparents and a couple of his siblings, but not all of them, knew of the boy's existence. The boy, my half-brother, was put up for adoption.
It was a closed adoption so my dad never knew him or anything. He (my brother) got in touch with us when he got an Ancestry.com account and got in touch with his bio mom's sister, who told him about my dad. He lives and grew up in the next town over from where my dad's family is from. They were five minutes from each other the whole time but never knew.
We've met three times now, and he was a pallbearer at my grandpa's funeral in March. He looks exactly like my dad, and everyone says he and I look like full-blooded siblings and that we have the same laugh. We aren't super close (20-year age difference), but I went from being an only child to having a half-brother, an adopted sister, four nieces and nephews, and five great nieces and nephews!
It's something that seems like it only happens in movies. It's been a very surreal, but pretty cool experience.
47. Secret Dad
So, growing up we would take trips to see my father's mom in Florida, and there was always this old man with her. I asked my dad if that was his dad and he said no, his dad passed in WWII. This old guy was her husband. I was about eight at this time. Fast forward to about eight years later. I was 16, and we go to a family reunion.
I remember seeing my dad very angry and upset but he didn't say anything that day. When we got back from the family reunion, I heard my mom and dad talking about what happened. Apparently, my dad was talking to one of his distant relatives and said he wish he had a chance to know his dad before he passed. Well, the relative I had a chilling response.
They said, "Your dad is alive, I spoke to him last month". So my dad had asked if she would give him his phone number and she declined, but she said she would give him his address and my dad could write him a letter. If he got a response, great! If not, he had to promise to leave it alone. Well, my dad wrote his letter and a few months later he received a phone call from his father.
My dad was 38 years old and finally got to hear his father's voice. My dad booked a flight out to meet him the next day. My father’s mom told my dad his dad passed in WWII and told my grandfather she had a miscarriage. So both of them never knew each other were alive. When my father's mom found out he had made contact with his dad, she lost it.
She didn't speak to our family for about 10 years. My dad asked me if I wanted to go to his mom's funeral and I declined. But I did go to his father's funeral two years ago because he was a good man and a great grandfather.
48. It’s In The Name
A friend from work told me this story. Her sister married this guy who turned out to be having about three affairs. When she gave birth to their first son, the guy’s mistress also gave birth about two weeks after, and the idiot decided to name both of his sons the same first name (they both shared his second name).
So about three years later, his wife goes to get the birth certificate for her son, and the lady in the office gives her the one which belongs to the mistress's son, which is how she found out about the whole situation. But that's not the worst part.
They're divorced now and it turned out that the guy has 11 children with five different women.
49. Swept Off Her Feet
My mom was a university student when she met my biological father. He was older, classy, dressed in suits, had a Mercedes, swept her off her feet. They started dating and he took her out to amazing places, went all out, and met the parents. This guy spent literally all day with her, and kept staying in my mom’s house from early morning until late at night.
Even when he was home he was stuck to the (landline, early 90s) phone. My mom went to his house and met HIS parents. They made dinner and congratulated the beautiful couple, even mentioning that they could hear wedding bells. She also met his siblings and other family members, who were supportive. My mom decided she had to finish her master’s degree before settling down, which, looking back, was a good idea.
My mom got pregnant with me, and while I wasn’t planned, she was over the moon and told my biological dad. He acted kind of weird, but she attributed it to the news. Then he started to not take her calls, slip out early, and ignore her needs. When she asked him to start getting ready for the baby (diapers, crib, pregnancy/birth stuff) he wouldn’t pay attention to her.
It got to the point where she basically told him to either step up or leave, and he said he couldn’t take care of the baby because he had like five others. Turns out he was a married man with kids, who actually fully lived with his family. He just liked to frequent young women and his family supported this to the point they would normally meet the women he swindled and act like he didn’t have a wife at home and a troop of kids waiting for their dad.
My mom was shocked. She officially broke up with him and called his wife to tell her. The wife knew, but regarded my mom as a swindler who seduced her good husband and has stayed with him until this day. I don’t know my half-brothers and sisters because they are still brainwashed and think their dad is amazing and he could do no wrong.
Stupidly enough, my mom always spoke of him positively even though he’s never even given me a call or a birthday card. I’ve been trying to add my biological dad on Facebook and sent him messages asking to talk so I can get closure, but he deletes my friend requests and leaves me on read. His wife, his kids, my mom, me—we didn’t deserve this.
He might have seen this whole ordeal as just a couple of months of fun, but my life was created this way. That is my beginning. Sometimes I want him to leave, other times I wanna hug him.
50. Double Trouble
Mom and dad have been divorced since I was a year old. I’m their only child together. First marriage for both. My dad and I were mostly pen pals as I was growing up and only saw each other every few years (he lived on the opposite coast). When I was about 20, my mom confesses something out of the blue.
She tells me that my dad had a son before me. She said when he was serving in Vietnam, he married a Vietnamese woman and they had a son. When he was a toddler, he passed in an accident. She was surprised he never told me. He has never mentioned it.
Fast forward about 10 years. Mom passed from cancer. I called dad to tell him. We have about a five or 10-minute conversation. He didn’t know she was sick so he was shocked.
In that short conversation he says, "You know, your mom had another kid before you. When she was in high school she got pregnant and they sent her away to one of those homes until the baby was born. The baby was put up for adoption. So you’ve got a brother or sister out there somewhere. Pretty crazy huh? I’m surprised she never told you".
Both parents had kids before me and neither of them told me. But both told me about each other. Sigh.
Sources: Reddit,
