It’s one thing when your friends have secrets or things they haven’t mentioned to you, but it’s VERY different when you discover something about your own family members.
These Redditors share their family’s personal plot twists.
My brother had given me access to his computer to look something up. Turns out he had his text messages sent to said computer. The last window that he had up were messages between him and his wife talking about how they had finally gotten pregnant and hadn’t told anyone yet.
Finally they came out and told everyone like two months later. When they invited everyone over for dinner I knew exactly what it was for. My brother still doesn’t know that I knew.
I’ll be an uncle in around two months!
bombdigitydrew
The only reason my family is in California instead of New York is because my dad’s father wanted to follow his mistress (which nobody knew about until he died) to California, so he uprooted his entire family and made them move over here.
poopylongjohns
When I was 16, I found out my brother is actually my half-brother.
A family friend just casually asked me one day, “Hey, how’s your half-brother?” A couple questions later, I learned that we had different mothers.
Apparently, it was common knowledge throughout town but my parents just decided to never inform me. When I asked my mom about it, she just muttered something to the effect of, “People should mind their own business.”
My brother was surprised that I didn’t know and took some time to explain the situation a little bit. Didn’t change our relationship at all but it definitely cleared up some things.
tako9
I found out that my parents had a vasectomy before I was conceived. Thought it might be a big part of my superhero origin story. 26 years into a very average life has shown otherwise.
kbryan31
I found out that my dad was a rather successful drug dealer in the 80’s (before I was born). Had tons of nice vehicles to launder the money but eventually got caught. He served a shortened sentence because he ratted someone else out. I found this all out after I did a background check on him because “for some reason” he was being turned down for jobs. I confronted my parents about it and they told the whole story.
regalternative
Over decade ago, “big sexy hair” was a decent dry hairspray, and only sold by select salons. Couldn’t get online or just any super market like today.
I lived in small town, went in to the local salon to buy some. I’m already feeling awkward, being the only guy in there, not my kinda place. Girls in chairs getting hair done, other girls that may recognize me from (small) school in waiting area. This salon will not sell me a product without taking my name and email…
Gave them my name, and because of my last name, the lady says “are you related to Patrick?” Well yeah that’s my dad…
“He comes in here all the time to tan.”
So that’s when I learned that my dad sneaks off to tan, and everyone in the waiting area laughed at me.
bisjac
My grandma was a huge fan of some romance novelist who had a main character named Douglass (two s’s). My grandparents agreed to give my dad the middle name Douglas (one s). But when my grandpa wasn’t looking, she snuck in an extra s. So when he was about 30 and applied to get a passport, he saw his birth certificate and found out he’d been misspelling his middle name his whole life. My grandpa also found out that day…. He was LIVID.
lamatans1
My cousin went to college and apparently didn’t have time to clean out his room and asked his sister and I to clean his room. We proceeded to find a very raunchy letter from his then girlfriend and a male candy thong. We actually ate the candy thong while cleaning his room, it was unopened and unused.
SinfullySinless
My dad might have been a mercenary or something in the 70’s and 80’s
Growing up he taught me all sorts of cool stuff, how to live off the land, how to fight (with and without weapons), how to use and maintain a firearm, how to “read” people. He even taught me how to speak Russian and Spanish well enough.
When he died in the mid 2000’s, I was going through his stuff and saw some pictures of him in Camo. I always figured he was in the Army but never said anything.
At the time I had a friend who was in and I asked if he could look up my dad and he said that there is no record of him being in the service. Then I asked my mom about his time in and she said he was never in the Army. He got caught up with some security gig and went off to South and Central America for a good while. We don’t know, we probably never will know.
Windmere00
My uncle got caught up in a drug scandal that ended up costing his father his job. He was so ashamed he exiled himself to a farm for ten years. Nobody saw him or had any contact with him the entire time. This was before I was born. It does explain his knowledge of chickens though.
bettels
Found a Salem witch in the family tree. Not really a secret, just forgotten.
butligs
My dad’s yelp account is my favorite thing I have ever found on the internet. First off, he is SAVAGE … he mentions that he is vegetarian in every post and then complains about how there are not enough vegetarian options in the sassiest way you can ever imagine.
Also, he visits a lot of ice cream shops without the rest of the family– rude!
He is a very very quiet man, with a loud internet presence.
aDILF418
Found out a week ago that my grandma on my dad’s side and her boyfriend regularly attended nudist colonies.
ArceusBlitz
My grandma and grandpa were very devout Catholics. After their 8th kid my grandma started taking birth control without my grandpa knowing. He never found out.
honeycakes
I found out my mom is a lumberjack. The spit cup on her ironing board gave it away eventually. Sawdust in all of her clothes, always smelling of pine, fir and sometimes redwood. Alas, you do what you have to to stay afloat.
winkelschleifer
An old boss once told me that my father once burst into his pub, said he was having a rough day, and proceeded to down six bourbons with him. Definitely was not supposed to know that.
plurntup
Accidentally found out my cousin was gay. Came across a book with Mickey Mouse on the cover, opened it and turned out it was a diary. Being the nosey kid that I was, read it and found out he made love to a dude. Promptly closed it, put it back, and never spoke of it.
Edwinxa
My grandmother has all the dirty little secrets but she’s too proper to spill anything.
Until this one night when she told me about her husband’s family… Essentially they were poor, living off the streets and trying to earn money during Australia’s gold rush. Anyways, the family had too many kids and not enough money so they sold one of their kids to a Chinese businessman.
aperture81
My dad had a greenhouse growing up and he and his brother thought it would be funny to plant a marajuana seed.
It got so big that they ended up selling it to a guy for a car radio
KasperAura
My uncle was mad at my dad once, and decided to poke holes in all of his condoms. He was dating my mother at the time, and that is how I came about. I wasn’t supposed to know, but my uncle told me once when he was drunk. I am thankful he did it, but still…
Hammer989
Found out through an angry vent given by my mother, that most of my cousins aren’t legitimate, and most of my aunts had lied to their husbands about the true father of their children. Also found out that there was a very large niche of the family I had never met and that no one really admits to – because they’re all inbred.
TacentEvince
My grandmother’s cousin married a man she met in college. They had a daughter and were married for maybe 40 years. 3 years ago, he passed with cancer. We were not shocked at this. After all, he was approaching 70 and had a bad form of cancer, and it was spreading fast. We were prepared for this.
What we weren’t prepared for was that after he passed, his wife found a journal of his which explained that for 35 years, he was having a another relationship with a man.
It was a shock to all of us. He was so committed to his wife, that he never left. But at the same time, it must have killed him to stay silent for such a long time.
Pozzik
My parents used to always joke about how “we picked the wrong boy at the hospital.” I never thought much of it. A year ago they told me that when I was born in the almost exact time as a boy whose parents abandoned him. The boy was almost the same size as well. Now, you’d think that this would never happen, but I was born in China at a hospital that somehow mixed us two up. Essentially, they weren’t exactly sure if I was the son of my parents. My mom looked at the two of us and swore that I was the one, despite the nurses’ tags stating otherwise. Genetic tests were (relatively) expensive then and were refused by my mother. They didn’t care at the time since there was no parent to claim the other boy.
Now, I’m about to go off to college, and I have no intention of finding out whether or not I’m the biological son. Strange when I think about the other boy though. People always say I do look like my parents though, so I have little doubt that mother knew best.
NewtonsOtherApple
I found out that one of my ancestors was exiled from Russia for challenging an army officer to a dual (with swords) and winning. My ancestor worked in the czar’s stable, and the argument arose when the army officer insisted on riding my ancestor’s horse. The horse threw him off and the army officer shot it.
We’ve always been horse people.
cg13velociraptor
A long time ago, back when I was still in middle school my mom’s best friend died. She wouldn’t tell me how she died. Only that it was sudden. When I asked why we weren’t going to the funeral she told me that there wouldn’t be one because “her body was being donated to science.”
I didn’t ask any more questions. That was the last time we ever talked about her.
Well, five months ago my mom handed me her phone to find the number for Domino’s and as I’m scrolling through her contacts I come across the phone number of the dead best friend.
The next day I called it from a pay phone at Waffle House and she picked up. I instantly recognized the voice and accent. She’s not dead.
Anonymous
My friend’s mom was one of a few children from a catholic school when she was a kid who pressed charges against a priest who was accused of child molestation, 20 years after the fact.
During a family thanksgiving dinner she got blackout drunk and admitted to the whole family that she had never been touched by the priest, nor any of her friends, they just wanted the cash from a settlement. She still has all of the money and I shouldn’t know, but my friend did the same thing when he got drunk and told me.
Anonymous
When I first started dating my girlfriend, I was invited to her very conservative catholic parent’s 25th wedding anniversary party. I was hanging out with her and her 24 year old older brother afterwards, and she was talking about how her mom found her birth control earlier that week and lectured her about how wrong premarital sex was (we weren’t having sex).
I did some quick mental math and said “she should talk since your brother’s birthday is in 5 months.” They both looked at me with a crazy amount of shock on their faces. They had never figured that out.
cold08
I found out last night that my mom’s nickname in High School was “Little Miss Sunbeam”. That’s because Sunbeam bread used to be advertised as the bread with “No-holes texture” and my mom refused to put out…
BigMacsAndWhiskey
An ex of mine was telling me that her father made films as a hobby of sorts and he actually had some success on the indie horror cult classic scene. So one day I was bored and decided to google his name and found a bunch of his films.
In most of them, the main character was my ex’s mother and she had at least one full frontal nudity scene in each. She was pretty attractive and I’m open-minded about nudity anyways, but I have to say I felt a little weird when I watched one of the sex scenes between the mother and the father. I couldn’t look her in the eyes after that point.
Anonymous