I’m just asking out of general curiosity. By “double life” I mean having two discrete legal and/or social identities that a person has maintained serially or simultaneously. You occasionally read about notable people with two entirely separate families and social identities (Charles Kuralt - Charles Lindbergh etc) or well regarded person in a community with an entirely different past and identity. Personally it seems like a huge amount of work, but if you are on the run from the law, or are trying to pull some scam or deception, or maybe just want to start over I suppose it’s a necessity.
Have you know anyone who led two separate lives? What was their motivation? How did you find out?
Not exactly what you’re looking for, but my aunt’s first husband (I never met him, they got divorced before I was born) apparently managed to live a lie for several years. He had supposedly served in Vietnam, and according to my mother had all kinds of stories about people he’d met there and things that had happened. I’m not sure how the truth eventually came out, but it turns out he’d never been in Vietnam or seen combat at all.
He had really been in the military during the Vietnam War but “accidentally” shot himself in the foot (literally) before actually being sent to Vietnam. He wound up in a non-combat position at a base in Japan. Even his parents didn’t know about this, they also believed he’d been in Vietnam the whole time.
This guy apparently lied about all kinds of other things as well, and I have the impression that he was cheating on my aunt as well although no one has ever specifically told me that.
I met this very rich dude years back. Nice enough fella, a little arrogant and kind of a smartass, but OK all-in-all. It was shocking when everyone found out that he’d been going out at night—dressed in a mask and a silly ‘bat’ costume—committing acts of vigilante justice.
Not exactly, but I’ve known 2 pathological liars and I can see both of them committing bigamy down the line. I’m also pretty certain I’ll be seeing one of them on the cover of the WSJ Bernie Madoff style one of these days.
When my wife turned 23 she found out that her father had another family living the next suburb over, and that she had 2 half-siblings aged 15 and 13. Does that count?
Does a co-worker’s stories about his grandfather count. Apparently he was a circuit judge back when that was done on horseback. When he died, they discovered he had two other families.
Didn’t present himself as someone else, though, now that I think about it. They all knew who he was, they just didn’t know about each other. Does it count?
She learned of it on my birthday after we gad been going out for a month or so. On one hand, she was terribly hurt and angry. But on another hand, it helped make sense out of a bunch of things. He had never seemed terribly loving, he was often absent from home, and he was ALWAYS in a shitty mood around holidays. Hell, who wouldn’t if they had to split their time between 2 families ignorant of each other!
Her parents split up, and MIL started drinking heavily - which caused a whole set of issues.
We tried several ways of dealing with him over the years. At first we had nothing to do with him. Then on several occasions we tried to develop a sincere relationship with him. For a while we dealt with him on a limited mercenary basis, figuring we could get money from him. At other times we tried to be publicly civil towards him and his other family.
At present we haven’t had anything to do with him or his other family for a couple of years, and we are happiest with that arrangement. Just the other day out of the blue he wrote letters to my kids, just to let them know he was not going to give them any financial assistance since they had terminated relations with him. What a Dick (his name BTW)!
I could write a friggin book, but won’t. Let me know if you have any questions.
I’m not sure if this counts as a double life or just a guy who was a serial liar…
Back in college, there was a guy who showed up on campus and got involved in student government. He claimed his brother was the drummer in Blondie, and the became the “liaison” between the student government and the band to arrange for a concert on campus.
Then he wrecked a truck that belonged to the U and ran from the scene, and the ensuing investigation showed that he was using a false name, had a prison record, and most surprising of all, had no relationship with anyone in Blondie. :rolleyes: He had scammed, I think, a grand out of the gov for “earnest money” to lock in the concert. I dunno how he managed to cash the check.
My paternal grandfather had a double life of sorts. What I know for sure is, he joined or rejoined the army when my father was a young child and my grandmother, a piece of work herself, refused to be a “camp follower”. So, she stayed in Brooklyn with my father and her mother and, eventually, her husband asked for a divorce. She refused, which seems so odd these days. So, they remained married but apart for many years. Now, I don’t know if he asked for the divorce because he met someone or didn’t allow the legality of his marriage to stop him from meeting someone, but eventually he and this other woman had four children together. And, it seemed, for many years, that everybody but the four new children knew. So, there was much secrecy and my dad wasn’t even told of his father’s death till after the funeral so he wouldn’t blow the lid off the deception. There are a lot of weird anecdotes regarding this situation, but it ended really beautifully. One of my grandfather’s sisters told the new kids about my dad’s existence and the oldest sister became obsessed with finding him. For years she sought clues and, one day, out of nowhere, the words “Montpelier, Vermont” popped into her head. She called 411, was told there was nobody by that name in Montpelier, but there was in West Burke, would she like the number. She called and now my dad has four siblings who love him very much.
Of course, this doesn’t explain the pictures and notes they found among their mother’s things that imply he may have had other women and maybe even another kid while he was still with my grandmother.
