A friend at work in his early thirties just found out he has a half sister in her mid forties. He got an email from her and thought was a prank or a scam until he saw the photo.
He talked to his Mom and Dad and they were honest about the details. A daughter from a fling his Dad had as a tennager.
It reminded me of my own experience with family secrets. I am the youngest of 9 siblings, some with kids older than I am. There were a lot of discussions I was never included in because of that. I think as years rolled on my older siblings forgot what I did or did not know.
My Mom was married twice. The three youngest of us have the same Dad, and the older 6 were from her first marraige, or so I thought.
In a phone conversation one sister said rather casually
“It doesn’t bother me that I don’t know who my father is” I was to dumbfounded to ask for more details. Then a couple of years later another sister just casually talked of who she thought was the fathers of a couple of my older siblings. Again, I didn’t ask any questions. Evidently three of my older siblings were not the kids of my Mom’s first husband , but the kids products of affairs she had. At least that’s the impression I got. Maybe they’re not sure.
As an adult who has made my own mistakes , I wasn’t shocked or horrified by the revelation. My parents have both been gone since 92, so it doesn’t matter much now. I was surprised to have the news being dropped in casual conversation.
So, I was wondering what family secrets others may have discovered as adults or in thier teems and how it affected them.
I remember in the movie about Bobby Darin that as a successful artist he discoverd that the woman he thought was his Mom was really his grandmother and the woman he thought was his older sister was really his mother. Quite a shock.
So dopers, under the cloak of internet anonymity, spill the family secrets.
As of… two days ago, I learned that my grandmother was married once before. Also she mentioned putting up kids for adoption or something, but that could be post-stroke delerium. I don’t think that he was putting me on. I also don’t think I learned the full story of her mental illness until I heard it in high school or college. I heard it second hand from a friend, because that’s how we roll. Also, her parents had the same last name (it was not Lannister), but weren’t closely related AFAIK.
That my uncle is schizophrenic or something. He didn’t have any of the “positive symptoms” like hallucinations that make it obvious. Learned recently, thanks, dad.
I guess they don’t really bother me, but I am perturbed that I’m probably the last person to know all these things.
I was 10 when I found out my two older brothers were adopted, 15 when I found out that actually, they were my half-brothers and adopted by my dad, who was my mom’s second husband (also when I found out he was her second husband).
I was in my 40’s when I found out that the reason my mom divorced her first husband, back in the late 50’s, was because he decided he wanted to form a commune/cult/compound and take on a few extra wives, sort of a precursor to Dave Koresh. She said “umm… no” and left with the kids.
There’s a story going around the family that my uncle (who was much younger than his siblings) was actually the result of my grandmother having an affair. However, the only “proof” anyone ever came up with was that the older siblings teased him about it when he was a kid.
My granfather supposedly left the old country in a hurry because he got a girl pregnant, but that’s more a family legend than a secret.
One actual dark secret that didn’t come out for many years was that when my aunt got divorced, she lost custody of her daughter (my cousin) because she had been abusing her – not because her husband had a better lawyer.
Most of the secrets revealed to me when I was older were about generational abuse in my family. It wasn’t exactly shocking in the context of what I already knew. I think the biggest shock to me was learning that, according to my Mom, I am the product of rape. They were dating at the time but according to her, he deliberately gave her roofies. That didn’t come out until last year (I’m 29.) I actually know my Dad and see him periodically, so… yeah.
Kind of explains why my Mom was so angry at me all those years.
One of my great-aunts lives (and has done so for the duration of my entire lifetime, and longer) with her “best friend.” They sign their Christmas cards together, have shared finances, etc. Someone finally let slip to me a few years ago that of course my great-aunt is a lesbian, and everyone knows, and this is why her best friend is not very accepted by certain other members of our family.
The whole situation seems kind of sad to me, to be honest.
My father grew up during the Depression next door to one of the main lieutenants for the political boss who ran the city and the state at the time. I heard about the hatred my grandfather had for him. I heard about the corruption and bribery. I of course knew about his son who grew up to be a respected author. What I found out less than a year ago was that my great-aunt had a many year affair with this man. To the point that he would come on vacations with my family.
In my 20’s, I found out that my great aunt (my grandmother’s sister) kidnapped me when I was an infant and held me for some sort of ransom, threatening to kill me.
Rather a sad tale, really. She was raised in mental institutions because she had epilepsy, and that’s what you did with kids who had “fits” in those days. She was literally raised around crazy people, and took on many dysfunctional thought processes as a result.
What I still don’t know is *why *she kidnapped me. There’s some hint that cocaine was involved, so maybe it was simply for cash. I certainly don’t remember a bit of it!
This secret is boring, but it was a huge deal to my mom. When I was about 16 my dad told my sister that my mom was pregnant with her when they got married, and then my sister told me. My mom was so upset that my dad told, and thinks that knowing that is why I got pregnant without being married.
It really just made it make so much more sense why my parents ever got married.
I only recently found out that there’s a pretty damn good chance my cousin is actually my half brother.
Like … an EXTREMELY good chance.
It appears my dad banged his sister in law. (My dad was an asshole and it sounds like something he woulda done. The SIL in question, though, is a very nice lady; I don’t know her well but from what I know of her, I like her a lot.)
I don’t know if the kid knows he’s my half brother and I don’t know if my uncle realizes that the kid he thinks is his son probably isn’t. (I suspect my uncle does know, but I don’t know for sure.)
I’m not about to mess up a marriage or mess up the kid’s relationship with the man that has raised him, so for now I watch from afar.
I learned as an adult, in my late 20’s I think, that my father had been married to someone before my mother. He was very young at the time, she was a little older, and as he found out eventually she was (at least as he told it) addicted to both alcohol and sex. They had a baby girl who died of crib death. This was all during WWII, during most of which he was away at sea in the Merchant Marine. There is a story about how he found out that she was sleeping with lots of other men, but since this story came from my father I’m not sure I believe it (the story makes him out as the tragically naive young man and her as the cunning slut).
It took me a while to come to grips with this. It was such a different image from my father than I had ever had.
Roddy
It doesn’t get talked about much but when it first happened it went like this:
John? oh he’s at the dairy queen drive through.
Umm, Dairy Queen doesn’t have a drive through.
It does now.
John was an alcoholic. I don’t know when/if he kicked the habit. He was one of the family members I really didn’t know that well since he was my aunt’s FIL so I just didn’t see him that often. But to the best of my knowledge he was quite wealthy and well respected. He just had a drinking problem and they didn’t discuss it, or at least they didn’t discuss that incident. When he died my mom and aunt were reading the obit in the paper which was almost the entire column (being rich and all) and it listed all the people close to him (it read like an academy award speech) at one point I heard them say “Bill W, who’s Bill W, do you know a Bill W, I don’t know any Bill W” I was in the other room and yelled back to them “That was his wife’s way of thanking AA, ‘Bill W’ is code for AA in that context”.
But even that isn’t a big secret. My family is all pretty open with each other about major events. They’re might be stuff they don’t discuss, but if there are any major scandals going on, I don’t know about them.
I am the family secret kept from some of my more distant extended family. I made sure the cousins and nieces I am closest to know (from my own description) but I doubt all that many of the others know I was in the looney bin twice, or that I have a strange sexual/gender identity, or have oddball religious beliefs. (Probably all rolled into a general “batshit insane” kind of impression among those who do know).
Meanwhile, among those kept from me as a kid (or beyond)…
a) I had a great-uncle, brother of my grandma, whose split-up with his first wife was in fact caused by her attempt to kill him. She and her lover attempted to murder him.
b) Another more distant great-uncle and great-aunt (I think he was my great-grandpa’s brother’s son) had a room, in the house they lived in when we visited when I was a kid, that was furnished with baby stuff. A cradle, child’s bed, stuffed animals, little rattle toys, etc. They had no kids. I figured it out on my own but only got confirmation much much later that they’d had a child who had not lived long, many many years before I was born.
c) I have a cousin who lives in a very small Georgia town and several times over the last 5-6 years when I was visiting, she brought up how even though this was rural Georgia, I should know that not everyone down in these here parts is close-mindedly conservative, and that she supports gay rights and gay marriage, I’ll have you know. I’m kind of dense: I kept thinking she was telling me she assumed I was gay and that that was OK and cool as far as she was concerned. It finally struck me after this visit that maybe, just possibly, she was coming out to me, the urbane and socially sophisticated New Yorker relative. In our family that would qualify as a family secret.
These are fairly mundane (at least I’m in the right forum :)).
Apparently, my teetotaling, protestant-work-ethic grandfather was not always that way. After I was an adult, I found out he’d been a successful pool-hall hustler during the twenties and thirties. He actually made a decent living at it by traveling around and duping his opponents (pretending to be average and not showing his true skill until the bets were large). This lasted until he lost nearly everything (including their car) to a better player who pulled the same scam on him. After this, he became a strict 9-5 businessman and never returned to gambling. When my uncle (his son) became a young adult, grandpa discovered he was doing the same thing in the local pool halls. I guess this skill is genetic, maybe? Grandpa didn’t want him to make the same mistake, so he showed up a few towns away where my uncle was involved in some games, and challenged him. Uncle knew nothing of grandpa’s former life and was surprised to see him with his own custom pool cue. Grandpa challenged him (in front of others) to bet all his marbles (car title, savings, etc.), and this was written down and signed by them. As uncle tells it, grandpa then simply ran the table. Uncle never even got to shoot. Grandpa then tore up their agreement and told him: “Son remember; There is **always **someone better.”
Second tale (if you’re still reading). My wife’s family is a very conservative, working-with-your-hands group. In their opinion, people are either producing and contributing to the world, or they’re useless parasites. Construction worker? Useful. Teacher? Useful. Lawyer? Parasite. Management (above first-level supervision)? Parasite. And the lowest and most vile of parasites are politicians.
After we’d been married for awhile, I started picking up subtle cues that there was another sibling somewhere in their past. No pictures existed anywhere in the house that showed an additional person, but sometimes the numbers in various stories just didn’t add up. (you can see where this is going I’m sure) When I finally inquired, I discovered there was another brother but they didn’t have anything to do with him. His crime? He was a state senator. :dubious: After thirty years of marriage to my wife (and her family) I have never met this man, nor seen him at any family gathering.
Last year I found out that my father was already married when he met my mother. Soon after he was divorced and married her. All this was 60 years ago. I am not sure whether I had heard this before and forgotten because I didn’t really care or whether it was a new revelation. My brothers were the same.
I found out as an adult that my grandmother on my father’s side was not actually married to my grandfather. Apparently he was married to someone else but had a whole other family on the side, with my grandmother, with whom he had something like 9 children. She was also married and had children with her husband, although he might have been dead by the time she started the long-term affair with my grandfather, who also had a pile of kids (7 or so with his legal wife). Don’t ask me how he found the time for all this with all those kids.
That’s not the interesting part though. What is is that I just found out recently that the last name I have had all my life is not actually the last name of either my grandfather nor my grandmother. It turns out that my grandmother’s last name (i.e., the last name of her legal husband) and my grandfather’s last name were very close and she thought she’d get confused to have some of her children (the ones by her legal husband) with one name and some of her children (the ones with my grandfather) with the other very similar name … so she just picked a random third name out of the air and called all the children borne of my grandfather by that last name. For example, if her legal last name was O’Hara and my grandfather’s last name was O’Meara, she decided those were too close - and so picked “Johnson” out of the air and put that on the birth certificates.
The last name I thought was “ours” isn’t even the right nationality, which I had always thought strange but just figured some Dane or Brit went over to Dublin and settled there. All the times when I’ve seen people with “our” last name and wondered if our ancestors came over from Europe together were a waste. I should have been wondering if some whole other group of people were related to me.
My sister says we were told this years ago, when we were also told that our grandmother was not even married to our grandfather but was instead the secret “wife” he had on the other side of town, but I must have been in the bathroom during that part of the convo.
One of my sisters changed her last name to our paternal grandfathers, my Mothers Maiden name , after her 2nd divorce. She didn’t want the last name she was born with since she knew that man wasn’t her father.
Nothing too sordid among my family – my mom got knocked up before she and my dad were married, but it wasn’t exactly a secret. Nobody hid any dates (or even the wedding pictures where she was just starting to show), I just never really thought about it until I was a teenager and did the math. In college I learned my mom had dropped out of college her sophomore year, but she was back by that fall and graduated in four, so it’s a pretty mild story. Also my great uncle left his fiancee at the altar, but that wasn’t a secret either, it just happened 10 years before I was born, so was old news by the time I was old enough to be interested.
My wife, OTOH, learned in her 30’s that 1) her dad had been married before he met her mom (a green card marriage), 2) her parents had themselves been green-card married before they got married “for real,” and, most interestingly, 3) her dad, the youngest of four siblings, is actually their cousin or something, adopted into their family in Hong Kong because his bio mother was just a teenager.
Some years later I learned, from his oldest sister (or rather “sister”), the story of how they smuggled themselves out of occupied China to Hong Kong after finagling the release of their own father from a trumped-up prison sentence, but that wasn’t a secret either, just something that’d happened back in the Old Country.
Cliffy-My parents married 12/6/69 my brother was born 5/26/70, I was 12 before I consciously did the math. Like you, it wasn’t hidden juist never did the math.
juist never did the math.