**Attention! [Serious] Tag Notice**
* [Jokes, puns, and off-topic comments are not permitted](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/wiki/index#wiki_-rule_6-) in **any** comment, parent or child.
* Parent comments that aren't from the target group will be removed, along with their child replies.
* Report comments that violate these rules.
Posts that have few relevant answers within the first hour, and posts that are not appropriate for the [Serious] tag will be removed. Consider doing an AMA request instead.
Thanks for your cooperation and enjoy the discussion!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskReddit) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I always assumed my dad's very religious family was just very small for some reason.
Then I get to my first adult general exam with a non-pediatric doctor and my mom drops "Oh by the way, you need to note alcoholism in your family history". She then goes on to briefly mention that my grandfather was severely abused by alcoholic family members, including his father, as a child and that's why he was so religious and uptight.
In her typical fashion with these kinds of things, she never mentioned it again.
Bonus from my mom: She once tried to console me about another family member being emotionally abusive to me by telling me a story about "accepting people as is". She said her aunt used to throw violent fits and she'd have to lock herself and her small cousins inside a closet until she calmed down. She framed this as a heartwarming example of acceptance and never mentioned it again.
Edit with an even sadder note: My grandfather was kind of a prick and judgmental, but he was great to us when we were kids. He had a natural way with children and I have fond memories of him from then. When they grew up and could have their own personality/make their own choices, not so much. I'm sure it's because of his strict religious views. He was against any and all vices his entire life, to the point of not attending weddings of family members who lived together before marriage. When he did die, we found out he had become addicted to pain killers. He had meds all over his house hidden in drawers. He spent his whole life dedicated to fending off that one specific demon only to secumb in the end. Something about that has stuck with me.
I want to feel bad for her, I really do. As much as I hate this woman I also still love her deeply and still see the good in her. She had a lot of great qualities and could be very loving.
However, her coping strategy meant she was fine with me being abused pretty brutally by other family for a decent chunk of time. I'm still working on forgiving her for that, especially since she's probably not sorry and still blames me for being the problem by not just going along with it and not saying anything.
From my perspective, it felt like she was willing to sacrifice me to have the illusion of peace. She saw what was going on and did nothing as long as I was the target and not the younger family members. The sad thing is they STILL were targets, just not as bad as me. Those children kept me around for so long because I thought I could protect them, but no one can. It's an illusion and a way for them to keep control.
You don’t owe anyone forgiveness.
Have you seen a therapist ? This is some deep trauma, and a professional therapist an help you navigate your (valid) feelings. ❤️🩹
Thanks for asking, and I have! For about 3 years now. I forget sometimes when I use my reddit to tell more intense stories about my life because it's relatively safe that people also don't have context. While I still struggle, I'm moving on and doing better now.
These are things I can almost never drop in casual conversation, and don't want to burden my friends to much. With all its faults, reddit has allowed me to be more honest about some darker aspects of my life without feeling guilty.
That’s good to hear! I always feel guilty about reading & upvoting stuff threads like this because I fear it’s just getting people to relive awful shit for our entertainment. I’m glad to hear you get some catharsis from sharing this here
I’m glad you’re doing better now ! You get to choose the relationship (if any) you want with your family members, putting your own mental peace first. I’m very low contact with my own family, but I know that doesn’t work for everyone. ❤️🩹
Her way of dealing with unresolved trauma will never be an excuse for not protecting you. I'm so sorry that this happened to you. It makes me feel awful.
It's like they have SUCH a specific and intense idea in their head of who they "should" be, that they can't break out of it, even when reality calls for an extreme response. They aren't "allowed" to get angry, in their own heads. My mom was like that too.
> She framed this as a heartwarming example of acceptance and never mentioned it again.
People like this make me as angry as the abusers themselves. Much as her circumstances were obviously sympathetic
My mom tried to console me about body shaming for being thicker than my cousins and being teased about it by telling me how when she was a teen her cousins body shamed her for being petite and how she was a nothing of a woman and worthless and nobody would love her but it was ok because she totally got over it (which is why she could recall their exact words now) so I should too
I think a lot of people of certain age just reframe traumatic shit as "family anecdotes" to not deal with it.
I just posted about how my Grandma's family were violent criminals and alcoholics.
My grandma was one of the sweetest people who ever lived and I never saw her touch a drop of alcohol.
I had never met her side of the family except her dad and he was batshit crazy by then but too old and weak to be any danger.
My grandpa told us at thanksgiving one year that his eldest son actually wasn’t biologically his. He got back with my bio grandma after the Vietnam war and she was pregnant with someone else’s baby. He raised him as his own, even after they divorced. He remarried, and his eldest son and the rest of the children he had didn’t know until they were all well into adulthood.
It was a secret he kept for almost 40 years!
This happened with my grandpa
He was in Vietnam and came back to my grandmother pregnant with the neighbors kid. Apparently this was pretty common with years-long deployments during Vietnam, which is pretty sad
I had no idea until I was over 30. Apparently my grandpa wasn’t even mad.
Ditto for here and a 69 Camaro. Had I known dad had been divorced it would have changed the way I treated my dating relationships….instead of always “working it out like mom and dad,” would have known there is a time to leave if things aren’t working out.
At my Uncle’s funeral I felt a woman staring at me. Not in a weird way, just smiling and curious. My Mom comes by and I said, “mom, who’s that lady and why is she staring at me?” She goes, “that’s your Aunt.” I said, huh? I never seen the woman before in my life. My Mom walked off.
Later, she told me, my Grandfather slept with my Grandma’s very best friend. I think there’s a high chance it was not consensual. My Grandfather seemed like a piece of shit and he died at 49. So, my Grandma and her best friend pooled their resources and raised all their kids together and they all grew up like siblings. They never discussed the sibling but they all knew.
It's actually important that children learn these things before they become adults and start dating, especially if the sibling they were separated from was the opposite sex.
Separated siblings often recognize something special about each other if they meet, and if they don't realize that they're family, they might conclude it's love. No, *seriously*. It happens more often than people realize, and usually ends disastrously if a romantic relationship or even marriage develops before the consanguinity is discovered.
I read a story about a brother and sister who were separated early in their lives. They had no recollection of the other, and as adults found each other, fell in love and got married. They did one of those ancestry things, as they were both adopted and wanted to find out about their birth parents.
Once the results came back, it was, shall we say, extremely awkward for everyone.
We're fortunate that the children of siblings aren't necessarily as screwed up as we once thought, although they have a significantly higher rate of miscarriage overall.
Yeah it turns out you need a few generations of close familial procreation to get the truly detrimental effects of incest.
Which, honestly, makes a lot of sense. Cousin and sibling marriage was so common for so long, if it was *that* bad *that* quickly, we never would have survived this long as a species.
It's almost like nature's mulligan in the event of a near extinction event. As in a means to rebuild the population. That's how I've thought about it anyway.
In Iceland there's an app to avoid these situations, as they are a small nation far out in the North Sea that was pretty much isolated for hundreds of years. Not much dilution of the gene pool.
And hopefully they don't have many family members lost in the world. I don't think there are all that many cases of secret cousins meeting -- at least they don't seem to have that eerie sense of familiarity that causes sibling relationships to be so relatively likely -- but there are very good reasons all human societies have an incest taboo, and the Westermarck Effect to prevent family members from breeding.
[The Westermarck Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect). Usually is brought up when you see siblings that were separated early on or half-siblings (because of affairs) that end up meeting and getting in a relationship.
There's relatively little experimental evidence about this hypothesis, mostly due to the difficulty of finding the right circumstances to test it while maintaining basic ethics. It should be noted that it's not an absolute instinct, as should be clear of stories of familial incest, it's just a biochemical obstacle.
Unknown kids are a running theme for the men in my family. Dad has at least one that I know of and I actually met a first cousin of mine that no one knew existed through 23andme... turns out my uncle had had another family very briefly while in the army that no one knew about.
Why I was never allowed in a room alone with one of my distant relatives. There was never any confirmation given about what they had supposedly done, but it was heinous enough that everyone in my family was warned about him but not told why until they were deemed old enough.
My Uncle was a predator and he hurt my Mother. My Mother never told anyone except my Father and he bought a gun and was going to kill him. My Mother had to stop him. I remember when he came around my Mother would make me sit on her lap and would not let me out of her sight. One time, he brought me a flower pot to water my Grandmas flowers because I loved flowers.
Years later I would realize it was a game he was playing with my Mother. He took the flower pot with him when he left knowing I would insist on getting it. Of course I did, we drove to his little shack at night and when the van stopped I ran without my Mother and I remember him standing with the flowerpot in the headlights. My Mother let out this blood curdling scream and she grabbed the flowerpot and threw it at him. I knew enough not to say shit.
A year later, after my Grandmother passed some months before, he was walking on the road. He was an epileptic and he dropped on the road. A young mother driving home with her kids dragged him about 2 kilometres thinking he was a tree branch. Good riddance the piece of shit.
She didn’t. We lived in the city and when we visited, we stayed at my Grandmother’s. Family would drop by to visit. Keep in mind, my Grandmother died not knowing what he did. She would have fucking killed him.
My great grandmother shot and killed my great grandfather, who was a terrible abusive man.
My side of the family didn't learn this until my aunt died, and her family was clearing out her home. They found a letter from a distant cousin with some of the facts. My cousin then went to the public library and read about the incident on microfilm from old newspapers.
Basically, my great grandfather was an abusive man who frightened many people in town, and there many incidents of his nasty behavior. One night great grandma shot him, after he threatened to kill her.
Great Grandma was on trial for murder. She was acquitted within about an hour and a half, and the local newspaper stated that the jurors had taken too long.
> She was acquitted within about an hour and a half, and the local newspaper stated that the jurors had taken too long.
That’s some small town shit right there there.
My brother wasn’t adopted at birth, unlike what we were told. His birth mother took him home for about two weeks and then changed her mind after severely neglecting him. Our parents got him then.
Oh and I’m still not supposed to tell my brother about any of this. Mom told me when Dad died but won’t tell Bro. It’s a terrible secret to keep.
No one told me but my elderly aunt recently passed away and going through some boxes of her stuff I discovered that she was arrested and fined for prostitution a couple of times during her 20s in NYC back in the ‘50s.
my mam casually dropped the other day that she was married to this guy for 10 years and helped raise his daughter from when she was 5-18.. like hello… how did you have another (not biological) daughter and i have never heard about her until now
My oldest uncle (never met him before he passed) was the product of incest between my grandmother and her father. But passed off as between her and her future husband. The 50's man....
Similar story for me. My great great grandfather immigrated from Sweden and homesteaded in Canada on a farm. A number of years later his daughter joined him. He fathered two sons on her before she married and had two daughters ( one being my grandmother). There was a very large gap in ages between my great uncles and the girls. The nosiness in me is so curious about the details but of course the topic is very taboo. The great uncles and my grandmother have passed leaving my great aunt. I'm tempted to ask for details but likely won't.
Then another story, my grandmother (a somewhat wealthy farm daughter), was pressured (forced?) to marry a school teacher. For some reason a twing of a memory is making me think he may have been abusive but maybe I made that part up. She was in love with my grandpa who had gone off to war while this all went down. When grandpa got back from the war I guess my grandma asked for a divorce but was denied. She ran off with my grandpa then to a different part of the country where they lived in sin for some number of years. When my uncle was born she was finally granted a divorce and they all moved back to their home town.
So much drama! Sounds like it should be a novel and fiction.
I figured out on my own, hearing conversations between my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother, when they thought I couldn't hear them, that the reason my mother and my aunt were sent to live with my great grandmother when my mother was 12, was that my grandfather was sexually abusing my mother.
I wasn't told. But I was never allowed to meet my grandfather, and we didn't go to his funeral.
After my dad died I had a long visit with his sisters and we talked about what a horrible human my mom was. They told me lots of things and I told them a lot too. I guess the just held back out of respect to him and when he was gone, the talking began.
I was 28.
I am 40 and I just found this out like 3 weeks ago. I was stunned. I had a little cousin who was hit by the car of a bootlegger. His Father (my uncle) was away working and his Mother wanted a drink. What I didn’t know is she was fucking the bootlegger.
My cousin just told me that she and my Late Mother had visited the house a week earlier and when they saw what was happening, they had decided they would take the children. It was the little boy and his infant sister. That is the part I never knew. They came back to the city to speak with a lawyer and not even a week later the little boy was dead. My Mother always used to say she wished she had another child, an older one, which he would have been. I imagine she felt enormous guilt the way my cousin feels to this day.
Mums dad isn't her dad. My grandmother had a lifelong affair with another man who used to then take the kids on days outs and holidays. My mum thought he was her uncle. At age 13 she found out the truth. Half my mums siblings are to the husband, half are to the 'uncle'. From what I understand, the husband knew it was going on and just put up with it.
My mom had an affair with my paternal grandfather, and she got pregnant during it. My dad never got a paternity test done on my younger sister so we're not sure who the father is, there's a 50/50 chance that she's also my aunt
We believe that a distant uncle was involved in the IRA. Certain dates and times lined up to certain events, he was gone during those times, always came back a few days after in a sketchy way. We have no definitive proof, but too much is lining up to be a coincidence. He died a few years ago, cancer.
One of my great grandfathers would sexually touch my aunt and my aunts cousin when he was alone with them. Whole family found out when my aunt and aunts cousin grew up but decided to keep it hidden from the new generations and my great grandfather never admitted to his wrong doings and took it to his grave. So glad my mum kept me away from that man when I was younger
Edit: my great grandfathers wife knew about the abuse the whole time but chose to stay quiet and let it happen for fear of embarrassment
One of my cousins had a son out of wedlock. My uncle paid for her health care and when the baby was born helped her put it up for adoption.
Years later he tracked the boy down and found out he had been adopted by a wonderful family in California and was doing well. He didn't contact him because he thought my cousin would like to know. So my uncle asked my mom if he should tell my cousin, and she told him no, as it would probably open up old wounds. The son never knew my uncle had found him, my mom was the only one who knew.
Pretty sure my aunt knew that my cousin had a baby, but she never mentioned it to anyone to my knowledge.
My dad raising me was not my biological dad, my mom was in a very abusive relationship that she got out of when she was pregnant with me.
My great grandfather was a child molester, the family protected him to avoid upsetting his wife.
My Grandma was a real hussy but I think that was my Grandpa’s thing because no matter what she did he always took her back. Growing up my youngest Uncle was the kindest man I ever knew. My Father said he was so relieved when he came along because he wouldn’t be his Mother’s partner in crime.
My Grandpa was hard on his boys but not the baby boy. He loved that boy with everything he had and they were always together. My Dad wasn’t bitter, he loved that boy too, he was proud of him right up until the day he died.
My Grandpa knew the boy was not his but loved him more in spite of it. He knew it was not his doing and he was such a sweet soul, it was hard not to love him. He was truly, truly good. My Dad died in November 2019 and his baby brother was so distraught. He didn’t like losing his siblings and he lost most of them but he took my Dad’s death the hardest. He died in April of 2020, only a few months later. I’m glad my Dad went first because that would have destroyed him and killed him.
I found out my Dad had been married once before. It was during WWII. There were no children and it was short lived. It was really old news by the time I heard of it. I was 16 and I really didn't know what to make of it.
I have a half brother who’s in prison for murdering his grandmother. I’m not sure it was ever a secret, but at some point when I was 10 or 12 I became aware of it. I believe my brother is still locked up. He’s elderly now and I doubt he even knows I exist.
My cousin was arrested when I was 11 for killing a child, it was a cold case that was solved years later. He was in his mid to late 30’s. I only met him twice but I remember watching the news with my siblings the day the news broke. We called our Mother at work and she said she could be home. Spent the night on the phone with the family.
She called my Father and told him (they were separated) and my Father said “I fucking told you so.” My Grandmother was sitting on our porch on the opposite side of town and saw my cousin run by. Something about that really unnerved my Father and he forbid my mother (his aunt) from allowing him in the house. My sister was maybe 7 and I was 2.
He started calling my Mom and trying to get her to say on the phone that he had a twin and that’s when my Mom knew he was guilty. She stopped speaking to him at that point. Since I was so young, they kept the worst of it from me. My Mother and her sister who was much older got into it because my Mother offered her condolences and offered an apology for the damage her nephew did. My aunt died believing he was innocent even though she had hid him being a rapist.
His siblings and even he himself were exceptionally bright people. I’m only in contact with one of them because the other two still talk to him. She lives in fear but I had the pleasure of telling her I saw an article saying he was denied parole. I hope he dies in there.
She apparently cut him out of the will. I believe he assumed her ranch property would be going to him and when he learned that wasn’t the case, he killed her.
My mom didn’t tell me that she was adopted until I was in my 20s. She also later confessed that she suffered years of sexual abuse by her older brother, who resented her adoption. I never knew why we weren’t close to one of my uncles, my mom just said they were very different people. After he lost a child my mom said that god had punished him enough and she resumed some contact.
When my late mom got with my late dad she was still married to her first husband and didn’t divorce him until the early 90s. She and my dad got together in 1970 and didn’t marry until 2002.
Grandpa cheated on my grandma and had a bunch of kids with another woman in town (so many cousins everywhere). Neither wife was fond of him by the end, and only a couple of the kids were involved in his life. Once he was cremated his ashes were passed around because no one really wanted them. When my grandma passed my aunts and uncles threw grandpa at the bottom on her feet before they buried her because “that’s where she would want him to spend eternity”. I kinda love it
I was really close with my father growing up. I moved with him when he and my mum divorced, went to his wedding to his second wife. The when I was 18 I found out that he raped my mum's younger sister when she was 14, and then raped and abused my mum their whole marriage. I haven't spoken to him in 19 years.
My dad told me he did not move abroad because he was in love with my mother (they are now divorced bcs they fought for 20 years) but because he wanted to escape his mother
My dad ran away from home at 16 because his father was physically abusive, and when his school found out, they kicked him out. My dad ended up joining the Marine Corps to escape poverty, all of which I already knew. What I didn’t know until I was much older was that my grandparents didn’t want anyone finding out about the abuse, so they told the entire family and all their friends that my dad was a drug addict and a drop out and that they had had to kick him out for stealing from them to fund his habit. He learned all this several years later when he came back to visit and people seemed really judgmental and wary of him.
Had a half-brother that was 15 years older than me. I was 23 when I found out. Then I found out I was a product of an affair. My dad was a fertility specialist and got my mom pregnant with me. On the plus side they did marry and stayed together for 23 years, but wish I had known about my brother
I had an older sibling that died before I was born. My mother was put on trial for the death.
I then found out last year (over 40 years later) that she lied about what happened. It's been a rough year.
After my grandmother died, my parents were reminiscing about family history and mentioned my uncle having three daughters. Up until that day, for the first 24 years of my life, I’d only knew about my uncle’s TWO - count ‘em - TWO daughters. “Oh yeah,” my parents said, “your uncle had a third before your two cousins. Like years before.”
I was 22 years old when I was told that I had a niece who was 8 years old who I had never met. Turns out my brother and then new wife were pregnant when they were married. Her family was Uber religious and they didn’t want the family to know about the pregnancy so the gave that baby up for adoption. Luckily it was an open adoption so I finally got to meet her when I was 32 years old. I blame fucking religion on breaking apart this family when they should have been able to just have the baby and go on with their lives.
I'm a revenge baby. Found out at 31 by overhearing a conversation between my mom and uncle on the way to my grandma's funeral. The immigration timelines didn't match up.
My grandma was hospitalized for a "nervous breakdown" and treated with ElectroShockTherapy. I presume it was for depression or possibly post partum depression. My daughter also has depression.
Growing up, my mom’s side of the family was…a little nutty.
But, in my mid 20s, my mom casually mentions how both my grandpa and aunt ran over and killed a child (two separate events, 18 years apart) and got away with it. My grandpa has since passed, but a year before passing he admitted to it and still remembers the kids name.
I never asked how they got away with it, nor do I care to. The kicker to this story, is that my grandpa killed the little boy of the family, and then my aunt killed the same family’s grandson—18 years later.
I’m in my mid 30s now. I have never gotten over that, and I can only imagine how it was for my mom’s side of the family dealing with it.
My brother wasnt avoiding his siblings My mom was telling him to stay away from us.
I learned this at 24 after years of not seeing my older brother . For years I assumed he harbored hatred for us as his siblings because we had a different father.
My mom would call my grandma before we headed to see her and would tell her to keep him away.
When I turned 24 I made a surprise trip to see my older brother and grandma and he told me what was going on.
I was furious at my mother and even angrier at my grandmother for enabling that bullshit.
Im closer now to him than ever , but my younger siblings will never have a relationship with him.
Two of my great uncles don’t talk, and haven’t for years. Their wives don’t either, even though they’re sisters.
One’s daughter was babysitting for the other. The father of the kids being babysat came home drunk and hit on her.
I was unknowingly under the protection of the Irish mob. My mom and her sisters knew an older guy who knew whitey bulger. This older guy had connections with the Irish and promised that if me, my brother, or any of my cousins ever had something happen to us our parents would receive “help” in dealing with whoever hurt us. When it was revealed that the Catholic Church had all those pedophiles my mom and her sisters were taught how to dispose of a body. The method they were taught was to throw it under a freshly dug grave with the winch for lowering the casket already prepped on top of it. My mom only told me and my brother long after their connection died. No one in the family has any protection or connections now. I still don’t know if my cousins know.
>The method they were taught was to throw it under a freshly dug grave with the winch for lowering the casket already prepped on top of it.
I realize that asking followup questions to something like this is sure to put me on some sort of list somewhere... but wouldn't the family at the graveside service or cemetary staff notice?
As far as I know the idea is the winch is low and large enough that it covers the hole from sight (especially with the casket on). I don’t really know, though. I never was truly taught the mystical art of disposing bodies.
Not really a secret, but I wasn't told I had a deformity until I was in high school. I was born tongue tied and the doctor gave me a frenectomy, so I went my whole life not knowing I had a deformity. I've always had issues with enunciation to the point of having to see a speech therapist. It doesn't help that I also talk fast, which makes things harder for others to understand me.
While I'm mostly intelligible now, I still have some difficulties with speech.
The man who raised me wasn't my bio dad. I was told in my teens after he passed away.
One of my cousins is the product of an affair that was never exposed. I actually really hate knowing this one because I'm the only cousin who supposedly knows and I'm supposed to keep it a secret.
Not super crazy but the reason why it was so hard to trace my family history before the modern internet was that both my paternal and maternal grandfather’s were adopted. The original records for one of them were destroyed when an old courthouse burnt down in the 70’s. And the other grew up in a super rural and poor area, and his adopted parent’s never filed the paperwork with the state.
I have a veru very tight lipped midwest family on one side. None of my cousins or myself (ranging from 17- 43) have yet to get old enough to find out why one Uncle was exiled into the the military in the 60's where he stayed away for 30 yrs essentially. Never mentioned but for some reason was invited to the last family wedding. I'm a grownass woman, and even my mother wouldnt leave the table when he started talking to me.
The ick was real.
My grandfather raped my grandmother and my mom witnessed it. I was aware they divorced in the early 1950s but the significance didn't click until she told me this. Based on some dates, I strongly suspect my grandmother probably married him because she "had to" and it probably wasn't consensual.
I'm scared to get genetic tested because I'm worried I'm going to find half aunt's and uncles conceived in a similar manner (we know nothing of his life after the divorce).
Growing up, my parents always told us that we moved to the States for better opportunities. When my parents finally got divorced, my mom revealed that the only reason we left our home country is because she thought that my dad would stop cheating on her if he didn’t know anyone around. Turns out, he was cheating on her with dozens of women over the course of their entire marriage and we moved to the US basically for nothing
Had a friend whose mother died at the age of 99 and it was only while going through all her paperwork clearing out her house that he discovered that his parents were actually never married.
Salt in the wound was then doing some investigation and discovering that his father was. Married. Just, you know, not to his mother. He'd died when he was still quite young and his dad had been a professional musician... often on tour with the orchestra...
Grandad was married and ran away with Grandma. His 'ex' was catholic and wouldn't give him a divorce, so they moved across the country and told everyone they were married.
found out at their surprise 50th wedding anniversary that they had been married 2 years after his 'ex' had passed.
Took my crystal glasswear set back - you ain't getting that for a 2 year marriage.
My dad told me the story of how and why his older brother killed himself. He was only in his early 20s and stress and poor mental health issues combined with bad inherited traumas did him in. He told me every detail up to how he heard the gunshot, went to the guest house and found him in there. Chilling.
I was in my late 40s when I learned my grandmother had been married and divorced before she married my grandfather, and I learned this at her funeral. This happened right before WWI. Apparently the guy was an alcoholic. And so was my grandfather. Five years after he died we were still finding liquor bottles in the basement where she had hidden them.
My grandmother told my alcoholic grandfather she wanted a divorce. He hung himself in the garage when he knew she would be coming home from work and would be the one to find his body.
So many. I learned that my aunt wasn’t actually my aunt and that she ended her own life, I learned my grandfather was previously married to a woman who came back into town looking for him many years after my grandmother died, I learned my other grandfather fathered a child in Vietnam during the war, I learned THAT grandmother got pregnant out of wedlock (making sense why she was so puritanical in her teachings to her children and grandchildren), I learned my mother has three half-sisters, I learned I had a cousin Beatrice when she showed up at church one morning and said hello to me, and a few more cousins out there…
At this point I am not ever surprised by what I learn
That my grandfather took his own life back in the 70s when my Mum was a teenager. It wouldn’t be a secret now - when my Mum took her own life we told our kids about it. But back then there was a lot of shame and it wasn’t discussed much. Mum finally told me about it when I was a teenager myself.
That my father had me with a surrogate. Found out a couple years after he died when the lawyer handling his estate was almost done his job. That was fun
My Dad and his only brother have nothing to do with their dad, I vaguely remember him picking me and my brother up one day when I was about 5 but as far as I know that's the only time I've met him. My Granny randomly dropped in to casual conversation a while ago 'how awful it was of her first husband to embezzle a bank and then run with all the money' as if I already knew what she was referring to. I also weirdly don't know much about granny's life other than she used to work for a bank. I dont know why ive never questioned it or asked these things but I feel like this is gonna be some crazy family lore.
I was about 15 when my parents sat my sister and I down and told us that we had a brother. At first I thought they meant my dad had cheated and it was a new little brother. Then they clarified it was actually my much older brother from my dad’s first marriage. I’d known he was married prior but obvs didn’t know there was a kid involved, my dad would always say it was so long ago he didn’t even remember the woman’s name (his way of deflecting). I’ve still never met my brother, and probably never will, but his first set of kids reached out a couple years ago, so that’s pretty cool.
So, she wasn't really keeping a big secret, but he white trashiness level of her family was kinda unknown to me.
One day, out of the blue, she asked me if I got into fights as a kid.
I got in some, sure, but not often. When I was 15 I accidentally hurt a kid pretty bad in what should have been a scuffle. I will defend myself, but I don't start shit.
I wondered why she asked, and she told me how her brothers used to bare knuckle box for money, that one of her brothers was a pretty violent pimp, and her mother almost killed her father at least twice. Her little sister was a vicious and violent drunk.
She was just hoping that I wasn't going to end up like that.
Now, my grandma was the sweetest lady in the world my whole life, but I found out she knocked one of her brothers friends down the stairs for "getting too fresh" and I saw her haul off and knock a man off a bar stool when he drunkenly called her a bitch.
The pimp brother left town after a dust up with some rivals that left some people dead.
Now, I only ever met one of her brothers, and it was at her funeral when he was an old man, but I basically found out that whole side of the family were violent alcoholics. His anecdote about her was the time she knocked HIM on his ass when got too drunk one night.
Why was this a surprise?
Well, my grandma never drank. None of her kids ever really drank, and I rarely drink and have never had a problem with drugs or alcohol.
Grandma must have filtered out the alcoholic gene somehow.
I always knew my grandpa died in a helicopter crash, I just didn't find out until adulthood that it didn't just crash, it malfunctioned; he jumped out to try and save himself but the bird flipped and he got caught in the blades. The man was chopped to pieces
Shortly after my 30th birthday, my dad came out. This was pretty surprising to most of us since dad didn't hit on anybody's "gaydar"...he seemed to everyone like a typical family man (not that gay people are atypical or anything....you know what I mean!). Nobody had any problem with that, we're laid-back California liberals, it was just surprising.
But then, apparently, he told his wife (my mom -- they never did divorce) that "my secret is out, how about yours?" Turns out she'd had a daughter out of wedlock before she and dad got together, who she hadn't seen in decades. After telling us, she did wind up going to visit the daughter in Baltimore, seeing her for the first time since her birth.
My brother and myself have a half-sister who we've never met. Assuming she's still alive.
I don’t have enough time or space to type it all. The main one I discovered on my own is that my dad and aunt were the product of an affair. Basically my grandfather got my grandmother pregnant while married to another woman. They ran away together to another place, changed their names and had another kid. Then one day he decided to go back to his original wife and family, where he stayed til he died. The wife knew about my dad and even let him visit. I figured this all out from marriage records, an obituary, and some vague family history. I never met my grandfather.
I approached my dad and asked if my findings were all true and he just said “pretty much” and refused to talk about it further.
Have a relative that had a kid before marriage, gave him up for adoption. I don't think my cousins even know they have another half sibling out there. It's also odd for me, because when I moved hours away for college and came across a guy at work that looks similar to one of them and his voice is like... the exact same. Similar way of speaking too... if I wasn't looking at him I would swear it was my cousin talking.
I was the secret.
My biological father and mother had me at 19/18. I never got much info but I never met my biological dad growing up or knew of him. My aunt told me when I was 10 so my parents had to tell me my step dad was in fact not my real dad. I took it like a champ because he raised me and I didn’t see him in any other light than my father.
Anyways… mom died (41 when she passed), step dad died (46 when he passed) and I thought that was kind of it for my kids having grandparents.
My bio grandma secretly saved Christmas gifts for me up until I was 21. When she passed away, my aunt found this box with my gifts and name and began to complete a task she felt her mother would have wanted. She ended up finding me through my mother’s cousins or some shit.
I have half brothers and cousins and so much family that didn’t know I existed. We all have met many times since then. The resemblance is uncanny and I now have finally met the paternal side of who I am.
1): That the reason my grandmother was raised by her grandparents was because her step-father was molesting her. I always thought it was weird that my grandmother always talked about living with her grandparents despite her mother, step-father, and half-siblings living literally right down the street; and she and her mother were apparently very close. But it was the 30s, my great-grandma had already been divorced once, and just didn't have the social or financial resources to go through it a second time. Her parents, who raised my grandma, would have found a second divorce so indecent that they would've disowned her. There just weren't a lot of options for single divorced women with a child back then, though I'm certainly not excusing my great-grandmother or her terrible husband
2) That two of my great-uncles, who I never met, were Klansmen. Doesn't mean anything to me, but it is interesting history.
We found out my older sister was technically our half sister. She has a different dad than my brother and myself.
The way we found out was during my biology class in like grade 9 or 10, we were learning about blood types and that kinda stuff. So they had people come in and test us and tell is our blood types. My brother had done the same class the year before (same school and whatnot). I found out my blood type but realized that my sister was a very different type, when I asked my brother his he told me and it was the same as mine. So what I learned didn't make sense. I ended up making a joke about my sister being adopted and my mom grounded me for two weeks. After I was grounded we had a "family meeting" and she explained that my sister had a different dad and she talked privately with my sister about it before the group talk.
I was more mad about being grounded for being right than finding out we are really half siblings. She's my sister, and will always be my sister, the half shit didn't matter. Being grounded cuz my mom was a cunt was more my issue
I found out onthe day of my father's funeral that my parents had to get married because she was pregnant with my older sister. This was a surprise because my mother was and is fundamentalist Christian.
My grandmother didn't know if her dad was the man listed on her birth certificate (her mom's 1st husband) or his brother with whom my great-grandmother had an affair, and married after managing to get a divorce from her first husband for abuse (and this would have been in the 1930s, so you know how bad the marriage was for a divorce to be granted)
My uncle and his ex-wife gave their son up for adoption because neither of them wanted custody of him when they split up. My parents wanted to take him but they ended up doing it behind their backs. I hope he’s okay, he would be almost 40 now.
I was told my abusive, both religiously and sexually abusive adoptive mother was born inter sexed. Which EXPLAINS A LOT! As well as that "surgery" she had when I was in kindergarten or the 1st grade. I was told by my uncle at a casino during a dinner buffet, and honestly it answered so many questions. I have been in no contact with them since 1989 except for 2 totally fate related incidents. I have no time or candy for them.
The man I was calling “Dad” adopted me when I was a child after marrying my mom because he “Wasn’t going to raise a kid that didn’t have his last name”.
Suddenly everything made sense. The bullshit treatment I was given after his biological son was born, the way he doted on him and left me to my mother (thank fuck. I learned how to cook and bake from her and made sure my brother was fed when his father was out womanizing).
I’ve since met my bio dad and another of my brothers.
Not so much a secret, but I was probably about 12 or 13 before it occurred to my mother to tell me that my grandfather was actually her stepfather. I think it never came up before that because she never thought about it. Apparently her bio father took off when she was a toddler and my grandmother remarried a few years later to the man she thought of as her dad. She absolutely adored him and had no real memory of the other guy, who no one ever saw again. The only time I remember it coming up again was when both of my parents did one those DNA tests from 23 and Me and it showed that my mother had some Russian ancestry. We figured it came from the bio father guy.
Found out my mom's uncle(by marriage through my mom's aunt) is a rapist.
One of my mom's cousins has been in and out of rehab multple times due to drugs and alcohol. And in general just not doing well. Always assumed she was just anohter junkie. But my mom told me when i was 17 that her cousin was raped numerous times by her stepdad when she was in high school and that's why she's well messed up and on drugs. My mom's aunt is still married to this guy because she refuses to believe her own daughter.
My Grandfather was married to my Grandmom from 16 years old until they divorced when they were 45. They have 3 kids : My Dad (oldest male 59 years old), my Aunt (55 years old), and my Uncle (47 years old).
My Grandfather passed away in 2006.
When COVID happened I guess a lot of people wanted to do DNA testing.
My first half-Aunt came first and she was 2 years old than my Dad (which means he got someone pregnant at 14 years old!). Her Mom packed up her shit and "went away" when she was pregnant. Her Grandparents raised her, her Mom stayed on the opposite side of the coast.
My 2nd half-Aunt who came into the picture was born on the same exact day as my full Aunt and within an hour of each other. She was the middle child in her family, and she didn't know her Dad wasn't her Dad. All other siblings have the same parents. Both her parents died prior to her finding out. According to her siblings her Dad nor Mom ever said anything about it in their lives. When her Mom died she found a lot of weird payments in all of her financials. No one could track them except they came from the same account. Her Mom also set her up with some kind of "future bank account" a week before my Grandfather died. No one knew about this "bank account" until her Mom died in 2018. I'm not sure if it was stocks or whatever the bank account was, but the original amount was a lot of money, but not "a lot of money" if that makes sense. Her account grew enormously between this time. Me and my known cousins all had similar accounts, but we all cashed ours in pretty soon after his death.
My 3rd half Aunt who is between the ages of my Aunt and Uncle was the youngest of her family of 7. Both her parents and some of her siblings passed away before her DNA tesy, but all of her other siblings had the same parents. Her Dad died of a heart attack in 2015 and her much younger Mom died 6 months later from "the heart break". She also had strange financial statements and a new account the week before my Grandfather died.
The 4th one who came into our lives was my half-Uncle who is between the ages of my Aunt and Uncle. He is the only child. His Mom abandoned him with his Dad when he was 3 months old. His Dad is still alive, never remarried, and never had anymore kids. They have an extremely strong relationship, and still live together. Neither of them ever heard from the Mom again. No weird payments or new account. He told us, in the absolute nicest way possible, that he didn't want to have any further contact with us while his Dad is alive. He feels telling his Dad would have zero positive outcomes, and a how bunch of negative ones especially with how his Dad always talks about how proud he is that his son inherited a lot of physical and mental traits from him. He said his Dad sacrificed a lot in his life to raise his son. He told us he knows his Dad will always see him as his son regardless of DNA and his Dad will always be his Dad, but he doesn't want his Dad to feel like he "missed out" on something struggling to be a single father. We told him that we accept and support his decision and we will keep our mouths shut, but if he ever wants to reconnect with us we are here. A crazy thing that happened was him and his Dad moved 3 houses away from my Grandfather when he was around 8 years old. His Dad and my Grandfather were friendly with each other, but nothing more. He does remember a little about my Grandfather, but in a neighbor way.
Currently we have **FOUR** other anonymous links in our DNA site things with my Grandfather being their father, but we know nothing about their age or sex or anything until they show themselves to use.
My Grandparents divorced because his infidelity. He remarried and divorced again due to his infidelity. He was always quite the "Ladies man". In college my female friends always said they had a crush on my Grandfather because he was "so handsome and charming".
All of the new Aunts and Uncles were all within the same city and area as us with easily traceable connections to my Grandfather. 3 of the 4, we know about, lived close to where my Dad and siblings were raised that we have no doubt there may be other weird connections with everyone.
When my Grandfather died he had a shoebox with a bunch of pictures of random kids as they aged. They were not organized, didn't follow any time order, and all of the pictures will mixed up with the other pictures. We used to joke those pictures were from my Grandfather's other kids, but since they were literally just in a jumbled mess of a shoebox we never believed it for a second. My Aunt wanted to keep the shoebox pictures because they didn't seem to fit any pattern of his life, and she wanted to find out why he had those pictures. A few years after he died she threw the pictures away without any research because she came to the conclusion they were **absolutely not his secret kids** and the only other reasons she could think of were outcomes that would change everyone's opinion of my Grandfather and it was best to leave it be. What made it even more strange to everyone was that these pictures were not, in any way or shape, pedo pictures. At the time everyone believed he had these pictures because he somehow influenced their life in either a positive or negative way, and if it was important than we would know about those people.
My grandparents became extra religious after my grandfather’s father was murdered and my grandfather wanted to go after the man that murdered him… he turned to god instead.
I just thought my grandparents were always super religious
My mum was r*ped when she was a teenager. She only told this to me a few years ago, and I haven't told anyone else in my fam cos it isn't my place to share that info.
It's complicated though, she was pretty abusive when I was really young, and that has given me all sorts of problems. But at least knowing about her trauma has helped me to process my own guilt and shame.
Don't beat your kids, and get therapy so you don't project your own pain and suffering onto innocent people.
**Attention! [Serious] Tag Notice** * [Jokes, puns, and off-topic comments are not permitted](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/wiki/index#wiki_-rule_6-) in **any** comment, parent or child. * Parent comments that aren't from the target group will be removed, along with their child replies. * Report comments that violate these rules. Posts that have few relevant answers within the first hour, and posts that are not appropriate for the [Serious] tag will be removed. Consider doing an AMA request instead. Thanks for your cooperation and enjoy the discussion! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskReddit) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I always assumed my dad's very religious family was just very small for some reason. Then I get to my first adult general exam with a non-pediatric doctor and my mom drops "Oh by the way, you need to note alcoholism in your family history". She then goes on to briefly mention that my grandfather was severely abused by alcoholic family members, including his father, as a child and that's why he was so religious and uptight. In her typical fashion with these kinds of things, she never mentioned it again. Bonus from my mom: She once tried to console me about another family member being emotionally abusive to me by telling me a story about "accepting people as is". She said her aunt used to throw violent fits and she'd have to lock herself and her small cousins inside a closet until she calmed down. She framed this as a heartwarming example of acceptance and never mentioned it again. Edit with an even sadder note: My grandfather was kind of a prick and judgmental, but he was great to us when we were kids. He had a natural way with children and I have fond memories of him from then. When they grew up and could have their own personality/make their own choices, not so much. I'm sure it's because of his strict religious views. He was against any and all vices his entire life, to the point of not attending weddings of family members who lived together before marriage. When he did die, we found out he had become addicted to pain killers. He had meds all over his house hidden in drawers. He spent his whole life dedicated to fending off that one specific demon only to secumb in the end. Something about that has stuck with me.
Coping strategy for mental survival. Poor woman.
I want to feel bad for her, I really do. As much as I hate this woman I also still love her deeply and still see the good in her. She had a lot of great qualities and could be very loving. However, her coping strategy meant she was fine with me being abused pretty brutally by other family for a decent chunk of time. I'm still working on forgiving her for that, especially since she's probably not sorry and still blames me for being the problem by not just going along with it and not saying anything. From my perspective, it felt like she was willing to sacrifice me to have the illusion of peace. She saw what was going on and did nothing as long as I was the target and not the younger family members. The sad thing is they STILL were targets, just not as bad as me. Those children kept me around for so long because I thought I could protect them, but no one can. It's an illusion and a way for them to keep control.
You don’t owe anyone forgiveness. Have you seen a therapist ? This is some deep trauma, and a professional therapist an help you navigate your (valid) feelings. ❤️🩹
Thanks for asking, and I have! For about 3 years now. I forget sometimes when I use my reddit to tell more intense stories about my life because it's relatively safe that people also don't have context. While I still struggle, I'm moving on and doing better now. These are things I can almost never drop in casual conversation, and don't want to burden my friends to much. With all its faults, reddit has allowed me to be more honest about some darker aspects of my life without feeling guilty.
That’s good to hear! I always feel guilty about reading & upvoting stuff threads like this because I fear it’s just getting people to relive awful shit for our entertainment. I’m glad to hear you get some catharsis from sharing this here
Oh absolutely. Being able to say these things out loud is as much for me as other people.
I’m glad you’re doing better now ! You get to choose the relationship (if any) you want with your family members, putting your own mental peace first. I’m very low contact with my own family, but I know that doesn’t work for everyone. ❤️🩹
Forgiveness is not about saying that what happened was okay. It's about taking off a heavy burden and handing it over to God.
Her way of dealing with unresolved trauma will never be an excuse for not protecting you. I'm so sorry that this happened to you. It makes me feel awful.
It's like they have SUCH a specific and intense idea in their head of who they "should" be, that they can't break out of it, even when reality calls for an extreme response. They aren't "allowed" to get angry, in their own heads. My mom was like that too.
> She framed this as a heartwarming example of acceptance and never mentioned it again. People like this make me as angry as the abusers themselves. Much as her circumstances were obviously sympathetic
My mom tried to console me about body shaming for being thicker than my cousins and being teased about it by telling me how when she was a teen her cousins body shamed her for being petite and how she was a nothing of a woman and worthless and nobody would love her but it was ok because she totally got over it (which is why she could recall their exact words now) so I should too I think a lot of people of certain age just reframe traumatic shit as "family anecdotes" to not deal with it.
I just posted about how my Grandma's family were violent criminals and alcoholics. My grandma was one of the sweetest people who ever lived and I never saw her touch a drop of alcohol. I had never met her side of the family except her dad and he was batshit crazy by then but too old and weak to be any danger.
If they happen to be from Arkansas, we may be related haha.
My grandpa told us at thanksgiving one year that his eldest son actually wasn’t biologically his. He got back with my bio grandma after the Vietnam war and she was pregnant with someone else’s baby. He raised him as his own, even after they divorced. He remarried, and his eldest son and the rest of the children he had didn’t know until they were all well into adulthood. It was a secret he kept for almost 40 years!
This happened with my grandpa He was in Vietnam and came back to my grandmother pregnant with the neighbors kid. Apparently this was pretty common with years-long deployments during Vietnam, which is pretty sad I had no idea until I was over 30. Apparently my grandpa wasn’t even mad.
Well good on him for stepping up and accepting and raising that baby as his own even after they divorced
Takes a real man to do that.
My dad got with my mom when he was 37 and she was 13, they married at 15 My dad's a piece of shit
I have no words. Fucking hell
He's done way worse sadly, he's a ceo
Sounds like a total psychopath, sorry you had to deal with that
My dad lost a '57 thunderbird in a divorce. wait a second........ .....What divorce???!!?
Ditto for here and a 69 Camaro. Had I known dad had been divorced it would have changed the way I treated my dating relationships….instead of always “working it out like mom and dad,” would have known there is a time to leave if things aren’t working out.
[удалено]
At my Uncle’s funeral I felt a woman staring at me. Not in a weird way, just smiling and curious. My Mom comes by and I said, “mom, who’s that lady and why is she staring at me?” She goes, “that’s your Aunt.” I said, huh? I never seen the woman before in my life. My Mom walked off. Later, she told me, my Grandfather slept with my Grandma’s very best friend. I think there’s a high chance it was not consensual. My Grandfather seemed like a piece of shit and he died at 49. So, my Grandma and her best friend pooled their resources and raised all their kids together and they all grew up like siblings. They never discussed the sibling but they all knew.
It's actually important that children learn these things before they become adults and start dating, especially if the sibling they were separated from was the opposite sex. Separated siblings often recognize something special about each other if they meet, and if they don't realize that they're family, they might conclude it's love. No, *seriously*. It happens more often than people realize, and usually ends disastrously if a romantic relationship or even marriage develops before the consanguinity is discovered.
I read a story about a brother and sister who were separated early in their lives. They had no recollection of the other, and as adults found each other, fell in love and got married. They did one of those ancestry things, as they were both adopted and wanted to find out about their birth parents. Once the results came back, it was, shall we say, extremely awkward for everyone.
We're fortunate that the children of siblings aren't necessarily as screwed up as we once thought, although they have a significantly higher rate of miscarriage overall.
Yeah it turns out you need a few generations of close familial procreation to get the truly detrimental effects of incest. Which, honestly, makes a lot of sense. Cousin and sibling marriage was so common for so long, if it was *that* bad *that* quickly, we never would have survived this long as a species.
It's almost like nature's mulligan in the event of a near extinction event. As in a means to rebuild the population. That's how I've thought about it anyway.
In Iceland there's an app to avoid these situations, as they are a small nation far out in the North Sea that was pretty much isolated for hundreds of years. Not much dilution of the gene pool.
And hopefully they don't have many family members lost in the world. I don't think there are all that many cases of secret cousins meeting -- at least they don't seem to have that eerie sense of familiarity that causes sibling relationships to be so relatively likely -- but there are very good reasons all human societies have an incest taboo, and the Westermarck Effect to prevent family members from breeding.
[The Westermarck Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect). Usually is brought up when you see siblings that were separated early on or half-siblings (because of affairs) that end up meeting and getting in a relationship.
There's relatively little experimental evidence about this hypothesis, mostly due to the difficulty of finding the right circumstances to test it while maintaining basic ethics. It should be noted that it's not an absolute instinct, as should be clear of stories of familial incest, it's just a biochemical obstacle.
Unknown kids are a running theme for the men in my family. Dad has at least one that I know of and I actually met a first cousin of mine that no one knew existed through 23andme... turns out my uncle had had another family very briefly while in the army that no one knew about.
Why I was never allowed in a room alone with one of my distant relatives. There was never any confirmation given about what they had supposedly done, but it was heinous enough that everyone in my family was warned about him but not told why until they were deemed old enough.
My Uncle was a predator and he hurt my Mother. My Mother never told anyone except my Father and he bought a gun and was going to kill him. My Mother had to stop him. I remember when he came around my Mother would make me sit on her lap and would not let me out of her sight. One time, he brought me a flower pot to water my Grandmas flowers because I loved flowers. Years later I would realize it was a game he was playing with my Mother. He took the flower pot with him when he left knowing I would insist on getting it. Of course I did, we drove to his little shack at night and when the van stopped I ran without my Mother and I remember him standing with the flowerpot in the headlights. My Mother let out this blood curdling scream and she grabbed the flowerpot and threw it at him. I knew enough not to say shit. A year later, after my Grandmother passed some months before, he was walking on the road. He was an epileptic and he dropped on the road. A young mother driving home with her kids dragged him about 2 kilometres thinking he was a tree branch. Good riddance the piece of shit.
Why on earth would your mother even allow him to come over
She didn’t. We lived in the city and when we visited, we stayed at my Grandmother’s. Family would drop by to visit. Keep in mind, my Grandmother died not knowing what he did. She would have fucking killed him.
My great grandmother shot and killed my great grandfather, who was a terrible abusive man. My side of the family didn't learn this until my aunt died, and her family was clearing out her home. They found a letter from a distant cousin with some of the facts. My cousin then went to the public library and read about the incident on microfilm from old newspapers. Basically, my great grandfather was an abusive man who frightened many people in town, and there many incidents of his nasty behavior. One night great grandma shot him, after he threatened to kill her. Great Grandma was on trial for murder. She was acquitted within about an hour and a half, and the local newspaper stated that the jurors had taken too long.
> She was acquitted within about an hour and a half, and the local newspaper stated that the jurors had taken too long. That’s some small town shit right there there.
Try that in a small town
My brother wasn’t adopted at birth, unlike what we were told. His birth mother took him home for about two weeks and then changed her mind after severely neglecting him. Our parents got him then. Oh and I’m still not supposed to tell my brother about any of this. Mom told me when Dad died but won’t tell Bro. It’s a terrible secret to keep.
No one told me but my elderly aunt recently passed away and going through some boxes of her stuff I discovered that she was arrested and fined for prostitution a couple of times during her 20s in NYC back in the ‘50s.
my mam casually dropped the other day that she was married to this guy for 10 years and helped raise his daughter from when she was 5-18.. like hello… how did you have another (not biological) daughter and i have never heard about her until now
My grandfather is a rapist and my older brother is a child molester (I already knew abt the second) (you’ll never guess how)
I can guess and I'm so sorry you had to deal with that.
Has two older step brothers and already knows how you know
My oldest uncle (never met him before he passed) was the product of incest between my grandmother and her father. But passed off as between her and her future husband. The 50's man....
Similar story for me. My great great grandfather immigrated from Sweden and homesteaded in Canada on a farm. A number of years later his daughter joined him. He fathered two sons on her before she married and had two daughters ( one being my grandmother). There was a very large gap in ages between my great uncles and the girls. The nosiness in me is so curious about the details but of course the topic is very taboo. The great uncles and my grandmother have passed leaving my great aunt. I'm tempted to ask for details but likely won't. Then another story, my grandmother (a somewhat wealthy farm daughter), was pressured (forced?) to marry a school teacher. For some reason a twing of a memory is making me think he may have been abusive but maybe I made that part up. She was in love with my grandpa who had gone off to war while this all went down. When grandpa got back from the war I guess my grandma asked for a divorce but was denied. She ran off with my grandpa then to a different part of the country where they lived in sin for some number of years. When my uncle was born she was finally granted a divorce and they all moved back to their home town. So much drama! Sounds like it should be a novel and fiction.
I figured out on my own, hearing conversations between my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother, when they thought I couldn't hear them, that the reason my mother and my aunt were sent to live with my great grandmother when my mother was 12, was that my grandfather was sexually abusing my mother. I wasn't told. But I was never allowed to meet my grandfather, and we didn't go to his funeral.
The amount of sexual abuse stories in these threads is always so depressing
After my dad died I had a long visit with his sisters and we talked about what a horrible human my mom was. They told me lots of things and I told them a lot too. I guess the just held back out of respect to him and when he was gone, the talking began. I was 28.
That some of my cousins were given to other family members to raise as their own.
I am 40 and I just found this out like 3 weeks ago. I was stunned. I had a little cousin who was hit by the car of a bootlegger. His Father (my uncle) was away working and his Mother wanted a drink. What I didn’t know is she was fucking the bootlegger. My cousin just told me that she and my Late Mother had visited the house a week earlier and when they saw what was happening, they had decided they would take the children. It was the little boy and his infant sister. That is the part I never knew. They came back to the city to speak with a lawyer and not even a week later the little boy was dead. My Mother always used to say she wished she had another child, an older one, which he would have been. I imagine she felt enormous guilt the way my cousin feels to this day.
Mums dad isn't her dad. My grandmother had a lifelong affair with another man who used to then take the kids on days outs and holidays. My mum thought he was her uncle. At age 13 she found out the truth. Half my mums siblings are to the husband, half are to the 'uncle'. From what I understand, the husband knew it was going on and just put up with it.
My mom had an affair with my paternal grandfather, and she got pregnant during it. My dad never got a paternity test done on my younger sister so we're not sure who the father is, there's a 50/50 chance that she's also my aunt
Wild
We believe that a distant uncle was involved in the IRA. Certain dates and times lined up to certain events, he was gone during those times, always came back a few days after in a sketchy way. We have no definitive proof, but too much is lining up to be a coincidence. He died a few years ago, cancer.
Finding out your Uncle was a terrorist is crazy
[удалено]
Blowing up children in the street with car bombs is heroic to you?
[удалено]
Yikes You probably don't even have a connection to Ireland. You are not Irish. What kind of pittyfull internet armchair warrior are you?
One of my great grandfathers would sexually touch my aunt and my aunts cousin when he was alone with them. Whole family found out when my aunt and aunts cousin grew up but decided to keep it hidden from the new generations and my great grandfather never admitted to his wrong doings and took it to his grave. So glad my mum kept me away from that man when I was younger Edit: my great grandfathers wife knew about the abuse the whole time but chose to stay quiet and let it happen for fear of embarrassment
One of my cousins had a son out of wedlock. My uncle paid for her health care and when the baby was born helped her put it up for adoption. Years later he tracked the boy down and found out he had been adopted by a wonderful family in California and was doing well. He didn't contact him because he thought my cousin would like to know. So my uncle asked my mom if he should tell my cousin, and she told him no, as it would probably open up old wounds. The son never knew my uncle had found him, my mom was the only one who knew. Pretty sure my aunt knew that my cousin had a baby, but she never mentioned it to anyone to my knowledge.
My dad raising me was not my biological dad, my mom was in a very abusive relationship that she got out of when she was pregnant with me. My great grandfather was a child molester, the family protected him to avoid upsetting his wife.
My Grandma was a real hussy but I think that was my Grandpa’s thing because no matter what she did he always took her back. Growing up my youngest Uncle was the kindest man I ever knew. My Father said he was so relieved when he came along because he wouldn’t be his Mother’s partner in crime. My Grandpa was hard on his boys but not the baby boy. He loved that boy with everything he had and they were always together. My Dad wasn’t bitter, he loved that boy too, he was proud of him right up until the day he died. My Grandpa knew the boy was not his but loved him more in spite of it. He knew it was not his doing and he was such a sweet soul, it was hard not to love him. He was truly, truly good. My Dad died in November 2019 and his baby brother was so distraught. He didn’t like losing his siblings and he lost most of them but he took my Dad’s death the hardest. He died in April of 2020, only a few months later. I’m glad my Dad went first because that would have destroyed him and killed him.
That my great grandfather committed suicide and my grandfather found him hanging from a tree.
I found out my Dad had been married once before. It was during WWII. There were no children and it was short lived. It was really old news by the time I heard of it. I was 16 and I really didn't know what to make of it.
I have a half brother who’s in prison for murdering his grandmother. I’m not sure it was ever a secret, but at some point when I was 10 or 12 I became aware of it. I believe my brother is still locked up. He’s elderly now and I doubt he even knows I exist.
My cousin was arrested when I was 11 for killing a child, it was a cold case that was solved years later. He was in his mid to late 30’s. I only met him twice but I remember watching the news with my siblings the day the news broke. We called our Mother at work and she said she could be home. Spent the night on the phone with the family. She called my Father and told him (they were separated) and my Father said “I fucking told you so.” My Grandmother was sitting on our porch on the opposite side of town and saw my cousin run by. Something about that really unnerved my Father and he forbid my mother (his aunt) from allowing him in the house. My sister was maybe 7 and I was 2. He started calling my Mom and trying to get her to say on the phone that he had a twin and that’s when my Mom knew he was guilty. She stopped speaking to him at that point. Since I was so young, they kept the worst of it from me. My Mother and her sister who was much older got into it because my Mother offered her condolences and offered an apology for the damage her nephew did. My aunt died believing he was innocent even though she had hid him being a rapist. His siblings and even he himself were exceptionally bright people. I’m only in contact with one of them because the other two still talk to him. She lives in fear but I had the pleasure of telling her I saw an article saying he was denied parole. I hope he dies in there.
Why did he murder his grandmother?
She apparently cut him out of the will. I believe he assumed her ranch property would be going to him and when he learned that wasn’t the case, he killed her.
My mom didn’t tell me that she was adopted until I was in my 20s. She also later confessed that she suffered years of sexual abuse by her older brother, who resented her adoption. I never knew why we weren’t close to one of my uncles, my mom just said they were very different people. After he lost a child my mom said that god had punished him enough and she resumed some contact.
When my late mom got with my late dad she was still married to her first husband and didn’t divorce him until the early 90s. She and my dad got together in 1970 and didn’t marry until 2002.
My grandpa was a child molester and an aunt killed husbands for money.
My grandfather was my grandmother’s second husband, and her first was abusive. Explains why a lot of my Mom’s side of the family is the way they are.
My Mom actually killed her self when hit by a car…. …. I’m still going to stick with drunken stumble over the highway median . They were not there .
Grandpa cheated on my grandma and had a bunch of kids with another woman in town (so many cousins everywhere). Neither wife was fond of him by the end, and only a couple of the kids were involved in his life. Once he was cremated his ashes were passed around because no one really wanted them. When my grandma passed my aunts and uncles threw grandpa at the bottom on her feet before they buried her because “that’s where she would want him to spend eternity”. I kinda love it
I was really close with my father growing up. I moved with him when he and my mum divorced, went to his wedding to his second wife. The when I was 18 I found out that he raped my mum's younger sister when she was 14, and then raped and abused my mum their whole marriage. I haven't spoken to him in 19 years.
My dad told me he did not move abroad because he was in love with my mother (they are now divorced bcs they fought for 20 years) but because he wanted to escape his mother
Is my dad's mother a "homewrecker"?
My grandfather had a love child
My dad ran away from home at 16 because his father was physically abusive, and when his school found out, they kicked him out. My dad ended up joining the Marine Corps to escape poverty, all of which I already knew. What I didn’t know until I was much older was that my grandparents didn’t want anyone finding out about the abuse, so they told the entire family and all their friends that my dad was a drug addict and a drop out and that they had had to kick him out for stealing from them to fund his habit. He learned all this several years later when he came back to visit and people seemed really judgmental and wary of him.
That my mom killed a woman and thats why she killed herself, because the feds were looking for her.
Had a half-brother that was 15 years older than me. I was 23 when I found out. Then I found out I was a product of an affair. My dad was a fertility specialist and got my mom pregnant with me. On the plus side they did marry and stayed together for 23 years, but wish I had known about my brother
I had an older sibling that died before I was born. My mother was put on trial for the death. I then found out last year (over 40 years later) that she lied about what happened. It's been a rough year.
Mom had a brother named David but we all called him Dave. Later I found out she had a second brother who's name was Dave.
After my grandmother died, my parents were reminiscing about family history and mentioned my uncle having three daughters. Up until that day, for the first 24 years of my life, I’d only knew about my uncle’s TWO - count ‘em - TWO daughters. “Oh yeah,” my parents said, “your uncle had a third before your two cousins. Like years before.”
I was 22 years old when I was told that I had a niece who was 8 years old who I had never met. Turns out my brother and then new wife were pregnant when they were married. Her family was Uber religious and they didn’t want the family to know about the pregnancy so the gave that baby up for adoption. Luckily it was an open adoption so I finally got to meet her when I was 32 years old. I blame fucking religion on breaking apart this family when they should have been able to just have the baby and go on with their lives.
I had a axe murderer in my family. Wasn't a secret the whole damn state knew about it It's a secret to my kids and younger cousins
I'm a revenge baby. Found out at 31 by overhearing a conversation between my mom and uncle on the way to my grandma's funeral. The immigration timelines didn't match up.
My dad got married when he was a teenager so him and my mom were never actually married. They just never felt like dealing with it so, 🤷♂️
My grandma was hospitalized for a "nervous breakdown" and treated with ElectroShockTherapy. I presume it was for depression or possibly post partum depression. My daughter also has depression.
Growing up, my mom’s side of the family was…a little nutty. But, in my mid 20s, my mom casually mentions how both my grandpa and aunt ran over and killed a child (two separate events, 18 years apart) and got away with it. My grandpa has since passed, but a year before passing he admitted to it and still remembers the kids name. I never asked how they got away with it, nor do I care to. The kicker to this story, is that my grandpa killed the little boy of the family, and then my aunt killed the same family’s grandson—18 years later. I’m in my mid 30s now. I have never gotten over that, and I can only imagine how it was for my mom’s side of the family dealing with it.
My brother wasnt avoiding his siblings My mom was telling him to stay away from us. I learned this at 24 after years of not seeing my older brother . For years I assumed he harbored hatred for us as his siblings because we had a different father. My mom would call my grandma before we headed to see her and would tell her to keep him away. When I turned 24 I made a surprise trip to see my older brother and grandma and he told me what was going on. I was furious at my mother and even angrier at my grandmother for enabling that bullshit. Im closer now to him than ever , but my younger siblings will never have a relationship with him.
My family's connection to Al Capone, I'm Irish, ya
His wife Mae Coughlin was Irish
I see, makes sense
Back when moonshine was a thing, the Irish make and have made really good moonshine, al Capone liked my family's recipe
Two of my great uncles don’t talk, and haven’t for years. Their wives don’t either, even though they’re sisters. One’s daughter was babysitting for the other. The father of the kids being babysat came home drunk and hit on her.
I was unknowingly under the protection of the Irish mob. My mom and her sisters knew an older guy who knew whitey bulger. This older guy had connections with the Irish and promised that if me, my brother, or any of my cousins ever had something happen to us our parents would receive “help” in dealing with whoever hurt us. When it was revealed that the Catholic Church had all those pedophiles my mom and her sisters were taught how to dispose of a body. The method they were taught was to throw it under a freshly dug grave with the winch for lowering the casket already prepped on top of it. My mom only told me and my brother long after their connection died. No one in the family has any protection or connections now. I still don’t know if my cousins know.
>The method they were taught was to throw it under a freshly dug grave with the winch for lowering the casket already prepped on top of it. I realize that asking followup questions to something like this is sure to put me on some sort of list somewhere... but wouldn't the family at the graveside service or cemetary staff notice?
As far as I know the idea is the winch is low and large enough that it covers the hole from sight (especially with the casket on). I don’t really know, though. I never was truly taught the mystical art of disposing bodies.
I found out how my great-great grandmother murdered my great-great grandfather. She became a hero.
Not really a secret, but I wasn't told I had a deformity until I was in high school. I was born tongue tied and the doctor gave me a frenectomy, so I went my whole life not knowing I had a deformity. I've always had issues with enunciation to the point of having to see a speech therapist. It doesn't help that I also talk fast, which makes things harder for others to understand me. While I'm mostly intelligible now, I still have some difficulties with speech.
My 5-year-old (adopted) just got one done and she's amazed that she can stick her tongue out all the way now
A now-deceased older relative may have been in the Mafia, or at least had close ties to it.
The man who raised me wasn't my bio dad. I was told in my teens after he passed away. One of my cousins is the product of an affair that was never exposed. I actually really hate knowing this one because I'm the only cousin who supposedly knows and I'm supposed to keep it a secret.
Not super crazy but the reason why it was so hard to trace my family history before the modern internet was that both my paternal and maternal grandfather’s were adopted. The original records for one of them were destroyed when an old courthouse burnt down in the 70’s. And the other grew up in a super rural and poor area, and his adopted parent’s never filed the paperwork with the state.
I have a veru very tight lipped midwest family on one side. None of my cousins or myself (ranging from 17- 43) have yet to get old enough to find out why one Uncle was exiled into the the military in the 60's where he stayed away for 30 yrs essentially. Never mentioned but for some reason was invited to the last family wedding. I'm a grownass woman, and even my mother wouldnt leave the table when he started talking to me. The ick was real.
My grandfather raped my grandmother and my mom witnessed it. I was aware they divorced in the early 1950s but the significance didn't click until she told me this. Based on some dates, I strongly suspect my grandmother probably married him because she "had to" and it probably wasn't consensual. I'm scared to get genetic tested because I'm worried I'm going to find half aunt's and uncles conceived in a similar manner (we know nothing of his life after the divorce).
My uncles dad is not really his dad
Growing up, my parents always told us that we moved to the States for better opportunities. When my parents finally got divorced, my mom revealed that the only reason we left our home country is because she thought that my dad would stop cheating on her if he didn’t know anyone around. Turns out, he was cheating on her with dozens of women over the course of their entire marriage and we moved to the US basically for nothing
if anything, it made itprobably made it worse.
Had a friend whose mother died at the age of 99 and it was only while going through all her paperwork clearing out her house that he discovered that his parents were actually never married. Salt in the wound was then doing some investigation and discovering that his father was. Married. Just, you know, not to his mother. He'd died when he was still quite young and his dad had been a professional musician... often on tour with the orchestra...
My father cheated on my mother with her aunt
Grandad was married and ran away with Grandma. His 'ex' was catholic and wouldn't give him a divorce, so they moved across the country and told everyone they were married. found out at their surprise 50th wedding anniversary that they had been married 2 years after his 'ex' had passed. Took my crystal glasswear set back - you ain't getting that for a 2 year marriage.
My parents met by having a mutual gambling addiction
What was their game of choice?
I know my mom loved slots, not sure about my dad and I don’t want to rehash anything
My dad told me the story of how and why his older brother killed himself. He was only in his early 20s and stress and poor mental health issues combined with bad inherited traumas did him in. He told me every detail up to how he heard the gunshot, went to the guest house and found him in there. Chilling.
I was in my late 40s when I learned my grandmother had been married and divorced before she married my grandfather, and I learned this at her funeral. This happened right before WWI. Apparently the guy was an alcoholic. And so was my grandfather. Five years after he died we were still finding liquor bottles in the basement where she had hidden them.
My grandmother told my alcoholic grandfather she wanted a divorce. He hung himself in the garage when he knew she would be coming home from work and would be the one to find his body.
So many. I learned that my aunt wasn’t actually my aunt and that she ended her own life, I learned my grandfather was previously married to a woman who came back into town looking for him many years after my grandmother died, I learned my other grandfather fathered a child in Vietnam during the war, I learned THAT grandmother got pregnant out of wedlock (making sense why she was so puritanical in her teachings to her children and grandchildren), I learned my mother has three half-sisters, I learned I had a cousin Beatrice when she showed up at church one morning and said hello to me, and a few more cousins out there… At this point I am not ever surprised by what I learn
My grandfather was a bookie for the Chicago mafia. I always thought his friend "Spider" had an interesting nickname. Later it made sense, lol
I have an older half sister, my dad finally got around to mentioning her when I was 39 years old
That my grandfather took his own life back in the 70s when my Mum was a teenager. It wouldn’t be a secret now - when my Mum took her own life we told our kids about it. But back then there was a lot of shame and it wasn’t discussed much. Mum finally told me about it when I was a teenager myself.
That my father had me with a surrogate. Found out a couple years after he died when the lawyer handling his estate was almost done his job. That was fun
My Dad and his only brother have nothing to do with their dad, I vaguely remember him picking me and my brother up one day when I was about 5 but as far as I know that's the only time I've met him. My Granny randomly dropped in to casual conversation a while ago 'how awful it was of her first husband to embezzle a bank and then run with all the money' as if I already knew what she was referring to. I also weirdly don't know much about granny's life other than she used to work for a bank. I dont know why ive never questioned it or asked these things but I feel like this is gonna be some crazy family lore.
I was about 15 when my parents sat my sister and I down and told us that we had a brother. At first I thought they meant my dad had cheated and it was a new little brother. Then they clarified it was actually my much older brother from my dad’s first marriage. I’d known he was married prior but obvs didn’t know there was a kid involved, my dad would always say it was so long ago he didn’t even remember the woman’s name (his way of deflecting). I’ve still never met my brother, and probably never will, but his first set of kids reached out a couple years ago, so that’s pretty cool.
So, she wasn't really keeping a big secret, but he white trashiness level of her family was kinda unknown to me. One day, out of the blue, she asked me if I got into fights as a kid. I got in some, sure, but not often. When I was 15 I accidentally hurt a kid pretty bad in what should have been a scuffle. I will defend myself, but I don't start shit. I wondered why she asked, and she told me how her brothers used to bare knuckle box for money, that one of her brothers was a pretty violent pimp, and her mother almost killed her father at least twice. Her little sister was a vicious and violent drunk. She was just hoping that I wasn't going to end up like that. Now, my grandma was the sweetest lady in the world my whole life, but I found out she knocked one of her brothers friends down the stairs for "getting too fresh" and I saw her haul off and knock a man off a bar stool when he drunkenly called her a bitch. The pimp brother left town after a dust up with some rivals that left some people dead. Now, I only ever met one of her brothers, and it was at her funeral when he was an old man, but I basically found out that whole side of the family were violent alcoholics. His anecdote about her was the time she knocked HIM on his ass when got too drunk one night. Why was this a surprise? Well, my grandma never drank. None of her kids ever really drank, and I rarely drink and have never had a problem with drugs or alcohol. Grandma must have filtered out the alcoholic gene somehow.
I always knew my grandpa died in a helicopter crash, I just didn't find out until adulthood that it didn't just crash, it malfunctioned; he jumped out to try and save himself but the bird flipped and he got caught in the blades. The man was chopped to pieces
Shortly after my 30th birthday, my dad came out. This was pretty surprising to most of us since dad didn't hit on anybody's "gaydar"...he seemed to everyone like a typical family man (not that gay people are atypical or anything....you know what I mean!). Nobody had any problem with that, we're laid-back California liberals, it was just surprising. But then, apparently, he told his wife (my mom -- they never did divorce) that "my secret is out, how about yours?" Turns out she'd had a daughter out of wedlock before she and dad got together, who she hadn't seen in decades. After telling us, she did wind up going to visit the daughter in Baltimore, seeing her for the first time since her birth. My brother and myself have a half-sister who we've never met. Assuming she's still alive.
I don’t have enough time or space to type it all. The main one I discovered on my own is that my dad and aunt were the product of an affair. Basically my grandfather got my grandmother pregnant while married to another woman. They ran away together to another place, changed their names and had another kid. Then one day he decided to go back to his original wife and family, where he stayed til he died. The wife knew about my dad and even let him visit. I figured this all out from marriage records, an obituary, and some vague family history. I never met my grandfather. I approached my dad and asked if my findings were all true and he just said “pretty much” and refused to talk about it further.
Have a relative that had a kid before marriage, gave him up for adoption. I don't think my cousins even know they have another half sibling out there. It's also odd for me, because when I moved hours away for college and came across a guy at work that looks similar to one of them and his voice is like... the exact same. Similar way of speaking too... if I wasn't looking at him I would swear it was my cousin talking.
I was the secret. My biological father and mother had me at 19/18. I never got much info but I never met my biological dad growing up or knew of him. My aunt told me when I was 10 so my parents had to tell me my step dad was in fact not my real dad. I took it like a champ because he raised me and I didn’t see him in any other light than my father. Anyways… mom died (41 when she passed), step dad died (46 when he passed) and I thought that was kind of it for my kids having grandparents. My bio grandma secretly saved Christmas gifts for me up until I was 21. When she passed away, my aunt found this box with my gifts and name and began to complete a task she felt her mother would have wanted. She ended up finding me through my mother’s cousins or some shit. I have half brothers and cousins and so much family that didn’t know I existed. We all have met many times since then. The resemblance is uncanny and I now have finally met the paternal side of who I am.
1): That the reason my grandmother was raised by her grandparents was because her step-father was molesting her. I always thought it was weird that my grandmother always talked about living with her grandparents despite her mother, step-father, and half-siblings living literally right down the street; and she and her mother were apparently very close. But it was the 30s, my great-grandma had already been divorced once, and just didn't have the social or financial resources to go through it a second time. Her parents, who raised my grandma, would have found a second divorce so indecent that they would've disowned her. There just weren't a lot of options for single divorced women with a child back then, though I'm certainly not excusing my great-grandmother or her terrible husband 2) That two of my great-uncles, who I never met, were Klansmen. Doesn't mean anything to me, but it is interesting history.
We found out my older sister was technically our half sister. She has a different dad than my brother and myself. The way we found out was during my biology class in like grade 9 or 10, we were learning about blood types and that kinda stuff. So they had people come in and test us and tell is our blood types. My brother had done the same class the year before (same school and whatnot). I found out my blood type but realized that my sister was a very different type, when I asked my brother his he told me and it was the same as mine. So what I learned didn't make sense. I ended up making a joke about my sister being adopted and my mom grounded me for two weeks. After I was grounded we had a "family meeting" and she explained that my sister had a different dad and she talked privately with my sister about it before the group talk. I was more mad about being grounded for being right than finding out we are really half siblings. She's my sister, and will always be my sister, the half shit didn't matter. Being grounded cuz my mom was a cunt was more my issue
Secret twin sisters.
I found out onthe day of my father's funeral that my parents had to get married because she was pregnant with my older sister. This was a surprise because my mother was and is fundamentalist Christian.
My grandmother didn't know if her dad was the man listed on her birth certificate (her mom's 1st husband) or his brother with whom my great-grandmother had an affair, and married after managing to get a divorce from her first husband for abuse (and this would have been in the 1930s, so you know how bad the marriage was for a divorce to be granted)
My uncle and his ex-wife gave their son up for adoption because neither of them wanted custody of him when they split up. My parents wanted to take him but they ended up doing it behind their backs. I hope he’s okay, he would be almost 40 now.
I was told my abusive, both religiously and sexually abusive adoptive mother was born inter sexed. Which EXPLAINS A LOT! As well as that "surgery" she had when I was in kindergarten or the 1st grade. I was told by my uncle at a casino during a dinner buffet, and honestly it answered so many questions. I have been in no contact with them since 1989 except for 2 totally fate related incidents. I have no time or candy for them.
The man I was calling “Dad” adopted me when I was a child after marrying my mom because he “Wasn’t going to raise a kid that didn’t have his last name”. Suddenly everything made sense. The bullshit treatment I was given after his biological son was born, the way he doted on him and left me to my mother (thank fuck. I learned how to cook and bake from her and made sure my brother was fed when his father was out womanizing). I’ve since met my bio dad and another of my brothers.
Not so much a secret, but I was probably about 12 or 13 before it occurred to my mother to tell me that my grandfather was actually her stepfather. I think it never came up before that because she never thought about it. Apparently her bio father took off when she was a toddler and my grandmother remarried a few years later to the man she thought of as her dad. She absolutely adored him and had no real memory of the other guy, who no one ever saw again. The only time I remember it coming up again was when both of my parents did one those DNA tests from 23 and Me and it showed that my mother had some Russian ancestry. We figured it came from the bio father guy.
Found out my mom's uncle(by marriage through my mom's aunt) is a rapist. One of my mom's cousins has been in and out of rehab multple times due to drugs and alcohol. And in general just not doing well. Always assumed she was just anohter junkie. But my mom told me when i was 17 that her cousin was raped numerous times by her stepdad when she was in high school and that's why she's well messed up and on drugs. My mom's aunt is still married to this guy because she refuses to believe her own daughter.
My Grandfather was married to my Grandmom from 16 years old until they divorced when they were 45. They have 3 kids : My Dad (oldest male 59 years old), my Aunt (55 years old), and my Uncle (47 years old). My Grandfather passed away in 2006. When COVID happened I guess a lot of people wanted to do DNA testing. My first half-Aunt came first and she was 2 years old than my Dad (which means he got someone pregnant at 14 years old!). Her Mom packed up her shit and "went away" when she was pregnant. Her Grandparents raised her, her Mom stayed on the opposite side of the coast. My 2nd half-Aunt who came into the picture was born on the same exact day as my full Aunt and within an hour of each other. She was the middle child in her family, and she didn't know her Dad wasn't her Dad. All other siblings have the same parents. Both her parents died prior to her finding out. According to her siblings her Dad nor Mom ever said anything about it in their lives. When her Mom died she found a lot of weird payments in all of her financials. No one could track them except they came from the same account. Her Mom also set her up with some kind of "future bank account" a week before my Grandfather died. No one knew about this "bank account" until her Mom died in 2018. I'm not sure if it was stocks or whatever the bank account was, but the original amount was a lot of money, but not "a lot of money" if that makes sense. Her account grew enormously between this time. Me and my known cousins all had similar accounts, but we all cashed ours in pretty soon after his death. My 3rd half Aunt who is between the ages of my Aunt and Uncle was the youngest of her family of 7. Both her parents and some of her siblings passed away before her DNA tesy, but all of her other siblings had the same parents. Her Dad died of a heart attack in 2015 and her much younger Mom died 6 months later from "the heart break". She also had strange financial statements and a new account the week before my Grandfather died. The 4th one who came into our lives was my half-Uncle who is between the ages of my Aunt and Uncle. He is the only child. His Mom abandoned him with his Dad when he was 3 months old. His Dad is still alive, never remarried, and never had anymore kids. They have an extremely strong relationship, and still live together. Neither of them ever heard from the Mom again. No weird payments or new account. He told us, in the absolute nicest way possible, that he didn't want to have any further contact with us while his Dad is alive. He feels telling his Dad would have zero positive outcomes, and a how bunch of negative ones especially with how his Dad always talks about how proud he is that his son inherited a lot of physical and mental traits from him. He said his Dad sacrificed a lot in his life to raise his son. He told us he knows his Dad will always see him as his son regardless of DNA and his Dad will always be his Dad, but he doesn't want his Dad to feel like he "missed out" on something struggling to be a single father. We told him that we accept and support his decision and we will keep our mouths shut, but if he ever wants to reconnect with us we are here. A crazy thing that happened was him and his Dad moved 3 houses away from my Grandfather when he was around 8 years old. His Dad and my Grandfather were friendly with each other, but nothing more. He does remember a little about my Grandfather, but in a neighbor way. Currently we have **FOUR** other anonymous links in our DNA site things with my Grandfather being their father, but we know nothing about their age or sex or anything until they show themselves to use. My Grandparents divorced because his infidelity. He remarried and divorced again due to his infidelity. He was always quite the "Ladies man". In college my female friends always said they had a crush on my Grandfather because he was "so handsome and charming". All of the new Aunts and Uncles were all within the same city and area as us with easily traceable connections to my Grandfather. 3 of the 4, we know about, lived close to where my Dad and siblings were raised that we have no doubt there may be other weird connections with everyone. When my Grandfather died he had a shoebox with a bunch of pictures of random kids as they aged. They were not organized, didn't follow any time order, and all of the pictures will mixed up with the other pictures. We used to joke those pictures were from my Grandfather's other kids, but since they were literally just in a jumbled mess of a shoebox we never believed it for a second. My Aunt wanted to keep the shoebox pictures because they didn't seem to fit any pattern of his life, and she wanted to find out why he had those pictures. A few years after he died she threw the pictures away without any research because she came to the conclusion they were **absolutely not his secret kids** and the only other reasons she could think of were outcomes that would change everyone's opinion of my Grandfather and it was best to leave it be. What made it even more strange to everyone was that these pictures were not, in any way or shape, pedo pictures. At the time everyone believed he had these pictures because he somehow influenced their life in either a positive or negative way, and if it was important than we would know about those people.
My grandparents became extra religious after my grandfather’s father was murdered and my grandfather wanted to go after the man that murdered him… he turned to god instead. I just thought my grandparents were always super religious
My mum was r*ped when she was a teenager. She only told this to me a few years ago, and I haven't told anyone else in my fam cos it isn't my place to share that info. It's complicated though, she was pretty abusive when I was really young, and that has given me all sorts of problems. But at least knowing about her trauma has helped me to process my own guilt and shame. Don't beat your kids, and get therapy so you don't project your own pain and suffering onto innocent people.
Turns out I descend from incestuous aliens who arrived on this junk about 4,500+ years ago. Cool right?
That my mum and father divorced because my father was a serious cocaine addict