This article is based on the AskReddit question "What is one thing your SO hid from you until later in the relationship?"
[Source can be found at the end of the article]
Somethings you shouldn’t wait to say…
My wife did not intend to have a career and always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I learned this about two years after the wedding. We live in a high-cost part of the US where dual incomes are the norm. She worked when we met but kept getting fired, I had assumed due to bad luck. Now I can see that there were also other factors at play. People, communicate! I’ve since given up my low-paying creative career for something more lucrative to try to make her SAHM aspirations a reality (we have kids now). But she is still working and is unhappy doing so. Had I known earlier, I might have (1) taken a more direct career path to focus earlier on higher earnings or (2) broken it off. Perhaps it is the latter risk that kept the subject from being raised. Either way, raise it! take the risk! Be honest.
BokenUnbroken
Sometimes… yeah not so much.
One of my exes waited months to tell me that her godparents (that she lived with) were actually her ex-boyfriend’s parents.
I didn’t mind it until he moved back in.
_pillar_ofdust
Sometimes you make unnecessary sacrifices…
My wife and I have been together six years. A few weeks ago, I came home with a jar of crunchy peanut butter after visiting my parents’ place (to avoid going to the grocery store, naturally). She found it in the cabinet and was like “where did we get crunchy peanut butter from – I love crunchy!”
We stared at each other in momentary silence as we realized we’d been buying creamy peanut butter for six years because we both thought the other person hated crunchy.
It’s like living with a stranger.
_bamf1230
There’s a first time for everything…
My now-husband acted like he knew how to grill steaks and just casually grabbed steaks and asked me how I liked mine and then made perfect steaks. Then continued making perfect steaks for months, then years.
And I just learned a month or so ago that the first time he made steaks for me was the first time he’d made steaks in his life, he’d just studied up INTENSELY because he felt that I would be impressed by him making me a good steak. I thought he had been making steaks for years to throw down a perfect steak like it was no big thing, but it turned out he did a ton of research and was sweating bullets trying to get it right. He’s the best.
84th_legislature
Sometimes you just have to go for it.
When I was in college, I had no money and shaggy hair. So I wandered around the dorms looking for someone who knew how to cut hair. A cute girl overheard me and said, “Hey, I know how to cut hair!” She gave me a haircut in the hallway and then asked if I wanted to go grab dinner with her.
We’ve been married for 13 years now but about two years into our marriage she confessed that she had no idea how to cut hair but really wanted an excuse to hang out with me. She did it in the hallway and asked me to dinner because she didn’t want me to look in a mirror and see the results.
She’s actually pretty good at it now, though.
ManateeSheriff
Some things are hard to talk about.
I never knew the story of how his first wife passed away until we were engaged. I only knew that she had CF, and that she died too soon; I didn’t know that he came home from work, found her passed out and blue, and rushed her to the hospital himself, where she later died. He told me about it one evening when we were sitting in front of the Christmas tree. The whole story came pouring out of him, and I just hugged him and listened. His mother died six months after his first wife passed away, and to hear him tell it, it nearly broke him. I think it healed his heart a little to talk about it, and I know that it made me love him even more somehow. I’m just grateful that he was willing to open his heart up to love again. He is an awesome man and the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Queen_Dare_Bear
Ok, that’s a bit specific…
That he hates sheets. About 4 years into the relationship he proclaimed that sheets wrap around him when he sleeps and he refuses to use them anymore.
Apparently, he’s always hated sheets but just never mentioned it
cassiopeia1280
Maybe mention that you have kids?
His eldest daughter. I learned about her 5 months into our relationship.
I had known about his younger daughter (different mothers) from the start – he was very open about that. However he didn’t know how to tell me about his eldest because it was going to be a difficult conversation. The mother of his eldest had taken off with her years ago & he had no idea how to find her.
Within a year of our dating we found her. It was very rough at first because she had been brought up being told that her father didn’t care about her – typical parental alienation. Within the next 5 years her father and I got married and she opted to live with us. Now she is an adult, living her life on her terms and we are incredibly proud of her.
Leannderthal1976
The voice of an angel.
He can sing, beautifully!
We had been together for 2 years before I heard him actually sing. He would belt out random lyrics in the car with me in a fun, playful, not serious way all the time. The first time I heard him actually feel it, I was blown away. He has such a deep, soulful voice.
VanessaSoIll
Don’t let your anger get you down…
He liked to punch walls, and himself, when angry.
Until we were married, our disagreements were always discussions. Sometimes heated, sometimes angry, but never violent and always worked out to a solution in the end. It was great! It was the way adults should argue!
The first fight after the wedding, he put his fist through the wall of our (rented) apartment. He also slammed his head into the bathroom door. Why the change? “I’ve been holding back my anger, but now that we’re married, I know you can deal with the real me.” Up until then, he’d been WAY more angry and violent than I’d known about, but had hidden it during fights so I wouldn’t leave.
Yeah, we’re not married anymore. For many reasons, but one of them being that I never, EVER felt safe to disagree with him after that.
LordOfPoodles
Sometimes it’s best to be stressed!
She hadn’t done her taxes in three years because it made her anxious.
Turns out she was owed 7K from the government.
winterbike
Ok, this is just taking it too far….
I found out that my significant other hides candy from me in her car. In fairness, she does this because she likes the occasional sweet, whereas I attack a bag of gummy bears like a starved hyena.
exhale_lent
Oooh, that’s a nice ending!
That she (now he) was transgender, I was completely supportive and encouraged him to go for taking Testosterone. It just so happens that though I thought I was straight, I adore him so much that he’s still a perfect match for me.
Bagpipes_Rule
Sometimes we don’t see what’s right in front of us…
My girlfriend swoops her hair over her left eye. I thought it was just an emo hairstyle until I found out she was blind in one eye.
Judith6636
I can’t believe this one…
He brought me to a house party just a couple of weeks after we started dating. He pointed out a young lady and said he’d been dating her before me.
What he didn’t mention was that he failed to tell her that the relationship was over.
I’m also 99% sure he was seeing someone else before we decided to get divorced since he was spending all his time at the place his new girlfriend worked.
Furthermore, I’m 99% sure he met someone else before they broke up (several years later) based on how they met and when they started dating.
There’s a pattern here. The pattern is that my ex is a crappy relationship partner who exits a relationship, finds someone else, and only then does his partner know he’s finished.
no_talent_ass_clown
Well, that’s unexpected…
My wife knew the sex of our 2nd child, before birth, and didn’t tell me she knew for 7 years. She ran the budget and we were single income and she needed to know if we were going to have to buy boys stuff or reuse girls stuff.
Also I found out, 7 years later, that she was really hoping I wasn’t going to propose at the moment I did.
Been happily married to her for 13 years now and terrified to find out the next “7 years later” tidbit.
FelixTheCrazy
When it comes to kids, you have to say something!
My ex-husband revealed 2 years into our marriage that he didn’t want kids, had never wanted kids, and had only told me he did because he knew I wouldn’t have married him otherwise. Which is true. We had talked about kids before even being engaged so it’s not like we hadn’t discussed it on more than one occasion. I stuck around for another 2 years hoping to make it work, but ultimately decided the marriage wasn’t worth saving. We had other issues in addition to that, but that was the big, big deal breaker for me.
Luckily, I’m dating someone now who is absolutely amazing. It’s like night and day compared to my first marriage.
amusedfeline
I feel like I don’t even know you anymore…
The year is 2015 and I had been dating my wife, then girlfriend, for about 5 years. I was surprised to learn she had not seen Tropic Thunder so I instituted an Emergency Movie Night. At the end of the movie, Tom Cruise dances to “Get Back” by Ludacris. Imagine my surprise when my wife begins to sing along to the music. Believe me when I say that my wife does not look or act like the kind of person who listens to, let alone memorizes 00’s rap. I felt like I was sitting next to a stranger.
boomstik101
Yeah, the pillows are super important.
How much she hated my pillows! We’d been together for two years. TWO YEARS. This is the same woman who will instantly tell me if she likes or doesn’t like something. Love that about her. And then two years in, the topic of pillows comes up and it turns out she’s always hated my pillows. I felt betrayed.
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Calm_down_santa
The social media thing… gotta stay on top of that!
My ex told me he didn’t have a Facebook. About a year into dating (long distance), he was a “suggested friend”. It didn’t bother me initially, because it’s possible he didn’t use it or think it was important.
Nope. He was very active with his friends/family (some I knew), and listed himself as single. When I told him about it, he didn’t give me a reason why. Just told me to deal with it
He didn’t have a reason to go behind my back or hide me from his friends/family. It bothered me that the ones who knew of me went along with it. It felt like he was hiding something but I never found out.
That was the beginning of our spiral downwards. Being long distance was hard enough, but he kept giving me reasons to not trust him. We broke up a year after that and boy, was it messy.
daneari
How can you mess up spaghetti?
I thought he didn’t like spaghetti.
Just this year (we’ve been together 6+ years), he says to me that he actually likes spaghetti, just not when I make it.
He’s such a punk.
So now, when he pisses me off, he gets spaghetti for dinner.
autumn20161990
How old even are you for real though?
His real age. Found out after two years and not from him, but his sister. When I asked him about it, all he had to say was “Why are you talking to my sister!”
He was a sociopath and compulsive liar though. He lied about places he’s lived and even about his “job”. Quotes required because it turned out he never had a job while we were together. He would just leave and hang out at the library when he had told me he was at work. (Note that the job was supposedly part-time so it was harder to notice than a full-time job situation) He gaslighted me the entire relationship so any suspicions I’d develop I would completely dismiss as me just being crazy and paranoid.
Idontwannawait043
Some lessons take time to learn…
Met him abroad, and when we moved back to the UK I discovered that not only was his family ludicrously rich (going by the property I was told about, in the tens of millions) after he met my decidedly middle-class and unglamorous family, he was also independently a millionaire due to inheritance. It was actually really frightening, and I felt that he had been lying through omission. He turned out to be a massive turd of a human: he went to travel in Australia soon after I began a degree in the autumn (the plan being that he would fly me out there after final submissions), met a model two weeks in, cheated on me with her, and dumped me over Skype while drunk, then blocked me on all social media platforms immediately after the call ended. Never trust someone who’s ‘slumming it’ with you.
PLAUTOS
TNG or the original? It’s important.
My girlfriend (now wife) and I had been living together for two years before I told her I watched Star Trek. I was worried she would think I was too nerdy.
It was the early 90s. I had a VCR at my parent’s house and I would have dinner with them once a week, and then watch the latest episode of The Next Generation. It all came out one week when my girlfriend and I were both over for dinner. We were getting ready to leave, when my mom says “Aren’t you going to watch Trek first?” It was all out in the open.
My girlfriend immediately felt bad for me, saying she would never have judged me for watching Trek. She even watched a few episodes with me I had on VHS at my parent’s home. She liked it, and thought the stories and themes were good.
Trying to assuage my fears further, a few months later she surprised me with tickets for both of us to a Star Trek Convention that was coming to town. So we went. After about 30 minutes walking around the Con, seeing autograph booths, vendors, and cosplayers, she leaned into me and whispered lovingly in my ear,
“You were right not to tell me.”
EBone12355
Ok that’s not real…
That she says things in her sleep. Sometimes she’ll just spurt out something like ‘I’m unhappy in our relationship’ when she’s sleeping with her eyes open and we’re eating dinner.
Actuarial
Pays off to be a creep sometimes.
One drunken night with my wife, she confessed that she decided to move to Chicago after graduating from grad school because she knew I lived there.
We originally met at a young professional conference in LA and soon after the conference, after her grad school, she moved to Chicago.
She always told me it was because there were better opportunities in Chicago for employment and she didn’t want to live in LA or NY.
Kinda creepy if I really think about it, considering we barely talked, but I’m glad she did the full creep on me. 3 1/2 months after dating, we decided to get married.
devidual
Some things are too painful…
I am the one hiding it from my SO. He knows about my past with being abused. I am good at hiding my emotions about it, however, he honestly doesn’t know the full extent of what happened to me, in fact, nobody does except me, and I don’t feel like ever talking about it with him.
I try to avoid those emotions and instead focus on the good times I have with him. I just hope it doesn’t come back and hit me when I least expect it. He knows I am super reluctant about being touched or kissing and I absolutely hate it, yet, I cannot do anything about it.
Booner999
I mean, I would think that’s obvious.
That she doesn’t think Cristiano Ronaldo is a handsome man. I’m as straight as an arrow but can definitely recognize the sheer magnificence of another man.
She’s either blind or telling ducktales.
MikhailRasputin
Some things are unforgivable…
My boyfriend is writing a fantasy/sci-fi story.
A running joke in the story is that the main character keeps and raises winged buffalo.
We had been friends for 5 years, dating for 4, when he revealed that the character occasionally eats the buffalo. I was firmly under the impression that they were kept as pets.
IcePhoenix18
Sometimes you may never find out the truth…
That he was arrested for stabbing someone in self defense, and that it was years ago, and it was during a PTSD fueled rage.
He got arrested for trying to stab his friend several months ago, with witnesses and in broad daylight, which makes the first story sound even more of a lie than it did back then.
spaghatta111
Sometimes you just want to jump from the top rope…
Mine didn’t reveal until much later how big of a wrestling fan he was. I always knew he liked it, but I never guessed that his heart was actually shaped like a title belt. It’s true, I’ve seen the x-ray.
It’s great, though! Now I’m a huge wrestling fan, too. I even bought him tickets to a live show for Christmas. I kept it a secret the whole time. You should have seen his face that morning!
DarkNFullOfSpoilers
Takes one to know one!
He hid that he was bisexual. I wasn’t upset with him; I understand accepting your sexuality can be a long, scary process that you may not feel comfortable sharing with people you love, no matter how close you are.
Also, it would have been a bit hypocritical of me to be upset with him, considering I’m bisexual as well and was also hiding it.
We had a good laugh about that one.
assfuneral
Always keep an eye on the big things…
I made the mistake of agreeing to let her handle the finances since she told me she had “experience” in banking.
I found out right before the divorce that she was racking up credit cards, and would get balance transfers when she tapped them out on a new card and start using the old one again. When I found out, she already had 6 cards with over $30k on them.
After the divorce I found out from one of her friends that all she ever did at a bank was being a teller, and only for 6 months.
adanipse
Sometimes it works out perfectly.
My friend is dating a farmer (no they didn’t meet on farmersonly.com) they did meet online though. Any who, they’ve been dating for 5 months at this time and he refuses to take her to his town and meet his family because he’s had a lot of girls date him for what he owns. She waited a year and had no problems and he finally brought her to his town and house and his family is a multimillionaire family. They own like 15 farms across the US. They’re house is a mansion. She was super scared to be in the relationship after that. They’re still dating but she try to buy her own things and not depend on him and his money.
Howeverly
(Source)
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