Every family has their secrets.
Not every family is good at keeping them, however.
Certain things people hoped would remain with them to the grave have a way of getting out.
Sometimes, they leave what they think are minuscule clues that can actually give away far more than they realize.
Other times, people share their secrets with folks who they think are trustworthy, who in reality have trouble keeping anything to themselves.
Resulting in privileged, sometimes wild information, being known by people who were never intended to learn it.
Redditor dentistani was curious to hear the wildest secrets people found out about their families which they were never supposed to know, leading them to ask:
"What’s a secret your family doesn’t think you know, but you do?"
A Very Close Family Indeed
"My nan and my grandpa are cousins."
"I'm from Yorkshire England."- Substantial-Fig-1907
Dark Family Secrets
"My dad didn't go to another state for a job opportunity. "
"He went on a drug binge."- alaskalovepup11
Secret Life Of Mom
"I absolutely adore my mother."
"She's a single mother who got a master's in education while taking care of three of us all the way up to working being a head of a department in the DOE."
"I've never seen her drink, shout, act immature, act out in any unbecoming way etc."
"My whole life the one thing people commented on was how 'classy' my mother is."
"Then two years ago when moving out, I ended up accidentally taking one of her boxes of papers from the attic thinking it was mine."
"It was full of court documents talking about an affair my mother had with a married colleague where she got allegedly got so upset he ended it that she started to stalk and harass him and he filed criminal charges on her as well as brought it to HR at her former job."
"The things he says my mother did in those documents, I can't imagine in a hundred years."
"Yet I also couldn't imagine her having an affair with this guy at all but she admits it in the paperwork."
"I know why she left her state job and we moved to DC."
"Basically there was some kind of deal made where she would leave and it would go away."
"And the criminal case was also pretty much dropped with the expectation and deal she would never contact him or bother him again."
"Like wtf."
"It's made me really realize that you don't know ANYONE really."
"Everyone makes a lapse in judgment sometimes especially when it comes to love and it seems she owned up to it and took responsibility."- iwant_torebuild
Mother Nature Can Be Cruel
"That my cousin’s Papillon didn’t run away."
"I was with my Uncle drinking on the porch and watched that poor pup get snatched off the ground by a massive hawk."
"A blink and it was gone."
"There was nothing we could do."
"We looked at each other after a solid few minutes of silence and he leans over: 'That f*cking dog ran away'.”
"I nodded and that was the last we discussed it."- ZedisonSamZ
Oh Sister, Where Art Thou?
"I have a half-sister."
"No one in my family has ever spoken about her, and after putting the pieces together I understand why."
"Being young, unwed, and pregnant in the South in the early sixties could be f*cking tragic."- howlandwolf
Not Exactly Affectionate
"The fact my grandmother basically ordered my father to give my old sister and I to the state since we were too 'rowdy'."- BluEyed_Lich
Love Is Stronger Than Blood... Most Of The Time...
"My Dad drunkenly called me and told me my younger brother is my half-brother."
"My mother doesn’t know that I know."
"Long story short is that my Mom cheated on my Dad and didn’t tell him till the child was two."
'To which she then divorced him and left him for the guy who she cheated on him with."- Comfortable_Safety11
Cheating Hurts More People Than You Realize
"The part they know I know now, because I vocally expressed my knowledge, is that my dad cheated on my mom while she was pregnant with my younger brother."
"There are a couple parts they don’t know I know, and one they don’t even know themselves."
"My dad actively took me to see his mistress, my now stepmom, while he was still with my mom."
"I was really young, but I remember being around her while my parents were still married."
"It didn’t click for me until I got older, and the rest of the family was really mad to find out when I told them."
"The thing I know that my dad and the rest of my family doesn’t know themselves is that my paternal grandpa continued to give my mom $1000/month on top of what my dad paid in child support, because he was pissed at my dad for cheating."
"My mom actually told me a story about my dad trying to bail on a dinner where the divorce was going to be discussed, and my grandpa straight up said, 'You’re taking your f*cking bitch a** to that dinner'.”
"My dad started favoring the kids he had with my stepmom, and my grandpa wasn’t having it."
"Until the day he died, he would secretly give my brother and I 'extra' for Christmas, birthdays, etc., because he knew the other two kids were getting treated better."
"My mom told me many times that my grandpa was the only member of my dad’s side she truly still loved after the divorce because of everything he did."
"My grandparents paid for the house my dad and mom lived in, but my dad wanted to leave it when he got remarried."
'He didn’t want the memories from it."
"Note that this house was three years old and really expensive."
"My dad threw a fit, because he wanted to build a new one family farm land."
"This pissed the rest of my family off, because it was active farmland."
"This fit split the family in half, and it’s still not fixed."
"My aunts and uncles still don’t like my stepmom because of her role."- 2PacTookMyLunchMoney
Um... An Explanation Is Needed!!!
"My parents borrow a lot of money from me because supposedly they own it to an Italian businessman, but when I went to the bank, I saw they had paid the amount to an Austrian bank."
"Never asked them an explanation."- Tribeworth
Love Conquers All
"I am from a very conservative country, and arranged marriages were the norm here, until a generation ago.'
"My uncle's marriage was the first love marriage in our family, and it happened after a lot of persuasions with the Elders."
"Long before that, my uncle once took me to see his gf in the McDonalds."
"I was hardly 5, and I remembered the woman as a tall amiable one, who gave me her burgers to eat."
"As we were going away, I told uncle that I am gonna tell mother how fine this lady was."
"We lived in a joint family."
"Uncle was terrified."
"He said there is no haste, and made me promise to never tell again."
"They married next year."
"21 years from then, and they are still married with a boy and a girl."- BackgroundResolve476
It's easy to understand why these families wanted to keep these secrets under a rock as long as they could.
Unfortunately, all secrets have a way of getting out, no matter how hard you try to bury them.
@LeeMerrittesq/X
@bob_moss/X
@jelanijones/Bluesky
@Aurkayne/X
@sadcommunistdog; @froglok/Bluesky