Finding out a huge secret about your partner usually leads to a messy breakup, but these twenty-four people learned the worst secret their partner was keeping and kept it to themselves. Their significant other has no idea. Secrecy can go both ways.
The Relief On His Face
I want him to be somewhere that he can be happy, perhaps find love again and take care of our girls.
The look of relief on his face… Was something that I have never seen before, and I’ll never forget. He’s the other half of me, but I don’t want to be the reason he ages prematurely or is sad. I don’t know how to make it better. I don’t know how to live without my body breaking down or falling apart. I just want him and our beautiful kids to be happy.
So yeah, that unspoken look of relief at me and my physical issues no longer being on him.”
The Twisted Family Secret
“My ex-fiancé’s family was always very weird about him being with someone, and very much tried to push me out and keep him to themselves.
His sister and mother were especially strange. At 26, his mother would crawl into bed with him in the morning. And his sister (5 years younger than him) was always clinging to him and sitting on his lap and stuff like that.
I put up with it for several years because his parents weren’t from here and maybe all that behavior is normal in that country.
Then after we got engaged and he wouldn’t move out, I did some snooping while they were all at work.
I don’t particularly want to explain the evidence I found, but I found multiple things confirming a disturbing incestual situation, and that he was totally fine with participating.
I told him I couldn’t take the ‘negligence and emotional turmoil’ he was subjecting me to and gave the ring back without telling him I knew.
I talk to his best friend a lot because we actually knew each other as kids and are close. Not long after I left he also figured it out. Last time I checked, it was still very obviously a thing.”
This Can’t Be Healthy
“He thinks I don’t know that he messed up his university entrance paperwork (didn’t send his student loan application in on time, all that kind of admin stuff).
He’s been going to non-existent lectures for over a month now.
I’d call him out on it but this is the most time he’s spent out of the house in years- It’s nice to have some peace and quiet.”
High School Torment
“My current girlfriend of 3 yrs was part of a group in high school that used to mercilessly bully me for when I was overweight. She was never directly involved but she would make heinous suggestions on what to do with the unpopular kids they would pick on. I am 100% sure she knows who I am and I found out a year ago when I was switching out phones for our new mobile plan.
No red flags are being raised, but every time she goes out I can’t help but think she is doing some sort of long con with her group of friends on me (yes she is still involved with the same group of friends). I want to bring it up, but I know the response will be something similar to, ‘Hey it was a long time ago, I changed.’ I still have confidence issues and social issues accumulated from that group so that answer will be extremely unsatisfying for me- I don’t know what to do.”
No One Keeps A Secret Like Grandma
“So this is slightly different, as it involves a secret my grandmother knew about her husband. My grandmother got remarried when my dad was in middle school, after divorcing my bio grandfather, this was in the late 70’s. Anyway, StepGrandpa (SG) was a ‘cool dad’ for a while, at least up until my dad and his older brother got into college. After that, he started going off the emotional deep end( read: angry and borderline abusive).
For a long time, both SG and grandma were in the same business. My dad and uncle both became attorneys and went to work at what was now the family company. Anyway, many years later, my dad and uncle are no longer working with SG and grandma, and my mother manages most of the company. One day, a business associate quietly pulls my mother aside and says that they saw SG in public with a much younger man. She tells my father and uncle, who do some digging around and find out he had used company funds to buy cars, apartments, etc for multiple 20 something men (he was in his early seventies). They are understandably shocked, and they all go over to my grandma’s house when SG is not there to break it to her.
Her response? ‘Oh yeah, I’ve known that for years.’
She had suspected he was gay before they were married, but nobody talked about that sort of thing at the time or in her family. She knew about the affairs, and she had a public health worker come to her front door to inform her he had HIV and give her a test as well. She declined to tell anyone this for close to fifteen years. He had no idea she knew.
Anyway, they managed to convince her to divorce him, which took ages and ages. So, that’s probably the worst secret that’s ever been kept in my family.”
This Is Divorce Worthy
“My wife dropped my iPhone in a Port-A-Potty toilet. Luckily it has been so used there was a large pile of s— which gently held the phone above the liquid. She cleaned it off and gave it back to me. A year later I upgraded and gave her my old phone.
She insisted on purchasing a new cover even though I had a high-end OtterBox. I never understood why until one of the kids told on her.”
Wow, This One Is Just Crazy
“My significant other and I have never actually been properly intimate. We have been together for over a decade. I always thought he was just terrible in bed. He always made excuses to avoid me going down on him, and to this day has never been fully naked in my presence unless there was no light at all….literally have to have blackout curtains. The blackout curtains in our bedroom were always clothed. We would have a quick, unpleasant, emotionless encounter. It was only one day when rummaging through his drawers that I saw what he was really using.