# family secrets you learned when you were older. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 3, 2012, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909 "2012-06-03T01:49:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![DeweyDecibel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@DeweyDecibel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeweyDecibel)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/61 "2012-06-04T18:44:25Z")
My grandmother was married to, then left, some rich guy years before she met my grandfather. This was whispered about for years, like it was a big scandal, to the point where my mother and I thought there was something weirder going on. Maybe there was. But as far as we know it was a simple case of divorce, reason unknown to us. I still wonder if she was officially divorced (but she got social security from my grandfather so she was legally married to him), if there was a child, etc. I just get the sense from the fairly progressive people whispering about this that there’s more there. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/62 "2012-06-04T18:59:50Z")
I knew all my life that I had one much older half-sibling (15 years older) but I didn’t find out until I was 11 and we were taking a trip back east that I had two more: a brother and a sister, 10 and 11 years older than me. My mom initially only copped to one other marriage, but at this point (since we were going to visit them) she had to own up to the other one as well (apparently she left the first one to marry the second, who happened to be his best friend). I met the second set of half-siblings, liked them okay for awihle, but then my mom had a falling-out with the sister (who was married originally to a Klansman and then later on to a different redneck asshole) and they stopped speaking, so she stopped speaking to me too. I didn’t really mind, since I was figuring out at this point that she was a bit of a headcase. I don’t really have much to do with any of my half-siblings at this point. I was raised as an only child and liked it that way. Like I said, the sister is a vindictive headcase, the younger of the two brothers is nice but…strange, and the older brother (my favorite) I haven’t seen in probably twenty years. I’m not a super family oriented person, as you might have guessed. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/63 "2012-06-04T20:08:34Z")
I’m at least a decade younger than the cousins on my dad’s side, and so was between them and their own kids in age. One of my cousins married a woman who brought her young niece (her dead sister’s child, born out of wedlock) along when she immigrated to the US from overseas. She’d raised the girl from an infant. The niece and I were both in our 20s (early and late, respectively) when she and then the rest of the family learned that her aunt was really her mother. (The young woman killed herself a few years later, so I wonder what contribution that might have had.) ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/64 "2012-06-04T21:39:27Z")
My (now-deceased) aunt got married in the early 1950’s in a huge lavish church wedding. She and her new husband took the train from the midwest to Oregon, where he was greeted by his other wife and their four kids. She got back on the train, returned home, and never remarried. No one ever talked about it again - except for my mother, who didn’t like my aunt. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/65 "2012-06-04T21:57:36Z")
Not really true to the OP but - When my father and his brother were children, one of them got ahold of an uncle’s pistol and accidentally shot the other - he recovered. I don’t know which shot which, nobody in the family ever spoke of it. I only heard about it from family friends but they couldn’t remember who was shot and who did the shooting. Dad is gone, but uncle is still around - I’d love to ask about it, but it just doesn’t seem polite! ---
**Author:** ![Pai325](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pai325](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pai325)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/66 "2012-06-04T22:14:40Z")
> [@JohnGalt](#): > > No one ever talked about it again - except for my mother, who didn’t like my aunt. Just out of curiosity, was it your mom’s sister or your dad’s? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Woo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7c8e57/32.png) [@Dr.Woo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Woo)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2012, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/67 "2012-06-04T22:58:00Z")
Oh boy, family secrets. We have . . . many. I guess a lot of people in my extended family don’t know that I had a child out of wedlock; I assume they just think I’m childless (if they know anything about me at all). But I come from a long line of secretly _interesting_ people, apparently: My father’s father married many times - around 8 or 10, but we don’t know for sure as my dad was estranged from him for decades. I do know I have aunts and uncles younger than I. My great aunt lived with her friend for years and years and we didn’t even know until we were teenagers that although she was always Aunt Ruth to us, the best friend wasn’t related by blood. My aunt never married; I assume now that their relationship was greater than just friends. No one EVER said anything (in my hearing) or speculated about them as far as I know. I hope they were happy together, and I think they were, so yay. I found out at the age of 54 that I have another aunt AND that my mother’s parents weren’t married until after they’d lived together (as a married couple) for 30-some years and three children. The extra aunt was a child born to my grandmother by her former husband. That ex-husband was apparently a real stinker and grandma and grandpa actively avoided (if not hid from) him pretty much their whole “married” life. My mother’s sister married a guy back in the early 50’s who turned out to be gay. The day she found out about the gayness was also the day she got her positive pregnancy test results back. This caused a big ruckus in the family, not because of the gay thing, but my god, a divorced (i.e. not married!) woman _with a child!_ The horror! So this was a big-ass secret too. ---
**Author:** ![gunnergoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e95f7d/32.png) [@gunnergoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gunnergoz)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2012, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/68 "2012-06-05T00:27:20Z")
I found out at the age of 42, when I was going through my late mother’s documents, that my late father really wasn’t my biological father, but rather had married my mom and adopted me, after which he brought the two of us to the USA from Italy, where he’d been stationed as a soldier in the US Army. After finding the documents, I phoned my late father’s sister and she confirmed that he never wanted me to know that I was not his biological son because he feared I would love him less. Apparently, my father and my biological father were army buddies overseas after the war in Italy. The buddy met my mom and they had a love affair, she then got pregnant with me - but it turned out that he already was married - oops! So the buddy introduced my dad to my mom and they hit it off, got married and later adopted me. When we got to the USA, my mom’s entry documents were accepted but mine were not because the place they originated from, “The Free Territory of Trieste” no longer existed; it was now part of Italy. At the age of 5 I was declared “persona non grata” and ordered deported. If it had been up to US Immigration, this 5 year old boy would have been separated from his legal parents and sent to an orphanage in Italy. My father took a voluntary demotion in the army (he’d just made sergeant) so he could return with us to Italy while this was straightened out. It was a big sacrifice and his career never really recovered from it. Dad contacted his US senator, who in the next two years, eventually drafted a bill that passed in the Senate, which declared me a “war orphan” (I was neither born during the war, nor an orphan, but whatever, it worked) and so I was made eligible to enter the USA that way. I’m fairly certain who my biological father is, but have made no efforts to contact him. Anyway, that was one heck of a day to discover all that in the documents I’d uncovered. It was some education and explained a lot of little nagging questions I’d had over the years…like why I looked nothing at all like my dad, but an awful lot like his army buddy in the old photos from the family album! ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2012, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/69 "2012-06-05T12:43:36Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > I knew all my life that I had one much older half-sibling (15 years older) but I didn’t find out until I was 11 and we were taking a trip back east that I had two more: a brother and a sister, 10 and 11 years older than me. My mom initially only copped to one other marriage, but at this point (since we were going to visit them) she had to own up to the other one as well (apparently she left the first one to marry the second, who happened to be his best friend). I met the second set of half-siblings, liked them okay for awihle, but then my mom had a falling-out with the sister (who was married originally to a Klansman and then later on to a different redneck asshole) and they stopped speaking, so she stopped speaking to me too. I didn’t really mind, since I was figuring out at this point that she was a bit of a headcase. > > I don’t really have much to do with any of my half-siblings at this point. I was raised as an only child and liked it that way. Like I said, the sister is a vindictive headcase, the younger of the two brothers is nice but…strange, and the older brother (my favorite) I haven’t seen in probably twenty years. > > I’m not a super family oriented person, as you might have guessed. 🙂 It’s funny how things like that work out. My son is actually my step son. He always wanted to know and have a relationship with his biological father which he finally got after high school. Eventually he realized biology alone wasn’t enough to make them close. He has a half brother he never sees and it doesn’t seem to matter. I have two daughters by different mothers. They see each other and like each other but are not close. They didn’t grow up together and are both adults with different lives and concerns. One a working single professional, one a working Mom. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2012, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/70 "2012-06-05T12:48:13Z")
> [@lost4life](#): > > Not really a secret, but: > > We were always told the story of my aunt and uncle who were unable to have children, and how my uncle was visiting France and bathed in the waters of [Lourdes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes_water). Miraculously they went on to have a huge family. > > A few years back, my sister and I asked an elderly aunt about this story and whether it was true. She replied “Oh yes, he went to Lourdes and afterwards they were able to have kids…of course she also went to a fertility doctor at the same time.” > > So much for family miracles. If the kids looked like the doctor it would really spice up this story. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2012, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/71 "2012-06-05T12:53:37Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > My mom told me, right before I got married at 28, that I have a Cherokee ancestor on my dad’s side of the family. I found it amusing that she thought that was something she shouldn’t tell me until then. Is that you Elizabeth? ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2012, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/72 "2012-06-05T12:58:10Z")
> [@turtledove\_river](#): > > I was 24 or 25 when I found out that my dad had kept my mom and my siblings a secret from his mom (and the rest of his family) until my sister was about 8 and my brother 2. > > I don’t think he knows I know. Did you find out why he would do that, or how he did it? ---
**Author:** ![Bloodless\_Turnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@Bloodless\_Turnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bloodless_Turnip)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2012, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/73 "2012-06-05T17:04:59Z")
I found out in my late 20’s that my grandfather had raped my Mother and at least two of my Aunts. Totally made sense why my Dad absolutely hated visiting my grandparents and why he refused to allow my siblings and I to spend the night over there. Begs the question why my Mom would have ever thought it was okay. ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2012, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/74 "2012-06-05T17:14:55Z")
After my grandmother died, I found out I had another aunt. Grandma was molested by a family member and aunt was raised as her sister, and since my other great aunts and uncles never came around I didn’t know of her until she started showing up at family gatherings. I don’t know when my mom and her siblings found out. On the more boring side, my paternal grandmother apparently hated my mom. It never clicked that there was a reason she would never come with us when I visited my grandma. Found out as a teenager, long after grandma had passed away, that they avoided each other. ---
**Author:** ![lost4life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c4cdca/32.png) [@lost4life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lost4life)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2012, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/75 "2012-06-05T17:47:28Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > If the kids looked like the doctor it would really spice up this story. 😉 They had like 8 kids :eek: ---
**Author:** ![lorene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/65b543/32.png) [@lorene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorene)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2012, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/76 "2012-06-05T20:21:11Z")
> [@missbunny](#): > > 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. > [@TokyoPlayer](#): > > My FIL had a second “wife” on the side while my wife was growing up. I’m not sure how to tell the kids, and I know my wife won’t, so they may or may not find out about that. I think this family-on-the-side thing was more common than people originally thought. I have been told that my maternal grandfather, in addition to being married to my grandma and father to my mom, had a family on the side. This also happened in my husband’s family. His maternal grandmother (MIL’s mother) up and left her family one day. They found out much later that she had gone and started another family. Weirder still, when my MIL finally met her half-siblings (not all that long ago), she said one of the boys looked a lot like her father as opposed to the second husband. So, there seemed to be some back-and-forth. To bring it all togther, sort of—my mom and my MIL grew up quite near each other and even went to the same school. My husband and I also look quite a bit alike. We did some quick conferring once we found out that his grandmother and my granfather had had secret families. As far as we know, we are not related. 😛 > [@TokyoPlayer](#): > > Probably more shocking will be the fact that I was previously married, and the official divorce date is only a week earlier than the marriage to their mom. > > More shocking when they do the math on Pough-chan’s birth. > So, how to you work that into a conversation with you kids? How did school go today? And did I ever tell you about . . . I think these things matter less with each generation. We have never hidden from our kids the fact that we were married after my daughter came along. They just had never figured it out. The other night my daughter was talking about marriage and kids, and my husband just kind of told her—well, we had you before we were actually married. It was pretty much a non-event of a conversation. ---
**Author:** ![gunnergoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e95f7d/32.png) [@gunnergoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gunnergoz)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2012, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/77 "2012-06-05T21:48:24Z")
One generation’s Cardinal Sin is the next generation’s “So what?” There is also a cultural component with people from countries other than our own having a different take on exactly the same set of circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![limegreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/82dd89/32.png) [@limegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/limegreen)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2012, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/78 "2012-06-06T00:41:02Z")
> [@Dr.Woo](#): > > Oh boy, family secrets. We have . . . many. > > I guess a lot of people in my extended family don’t know that I had a child out of wedlock; I assume they just think I’m childless (if they know anything about me at all). But I come from a long line of secretly _interesting_ people, apparently: > > My father’s father married many times - around 8 or 10, but we don’t know for sure as my dad was estranged from him for decades. I do know I have aunts and uncles younger than I. Your grandfather wasn’t named Max, was it? It would be weird if we’re related! ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2012, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/79 "2012-06-06T01:45:49Z")
We learned the following after my grandparents were dead. My grandmother was known to us to be older than our grandfather, but we thought she was a year or so older. Turns out she was eight years older. She also casually changed her name sometime after she married him, maybe because they had the same first name. None of her children knew any of this. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2012, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909/80 "2012-06-06T02:15:32Z")
Not a big secret: Some time after my father’s death, my mother happened to mention that when they were in high school, he had been a champion jitterbug dancer. She said there was a contest every week, and all the girls wanted to be his partner, because he always won. When she told me this, I had to make sure we were talking about the same person. I had never seen my father dance, jitterbug or otherwise, and can’t even imagine him dancing. His body just never moved the way a dancer’s body would move. I have no reason to think she made this up, but I have a real hard time believing it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/family-secrets-you-learned-when-you-were-older/623909.md?page=5)