19 Juicy And Disturbing Secrets People “Accidentally Discovered” About Their Loved Ones
Recently, u/Electrical-Lemon187 posted in r/AskReddit: "What’s the most disturbing secret you’ve discovered about someone close to you?" and wow — a lot of these are...downright ghastly.
Here's what they revealed:
1."My great-grandmother was married to three different people at the same time. The men were from different branches of the military — she was collecting all three of their paychecks at a time."
2."I discovered that my sister stole my father's $25,000 Rolex not more than 24 hours after he died. I only discovered it when she and her husband made a frivolous purchase and I wondered where they got the money since they were always broke and begging my parents for money. I got suspicious, and it hit me that she might have stolen and sold the Rolex. I had the paperwork and ran a track on the sales history, and I learned it had been sold to a pawn shop down the street from where my sister lives. I went to the pawn shop, and after a bit of persuasion, I got them to tell me who sold it to them: It was my sister. My mom and I disowned her."
3."My ex-wife and I were having problems. I was certain she was cheating on me. Then, I found her notes where she was adding up how much I'd be worth dead."
4."My coworker lets her dog hump her leg every morning until he 'releases' while she has her coffee. This has stayed with me since I heard it, and I can’t think of anything else when she talks to me."
5."I graduated boot camp and wondered why my brother wouldn’t talk to me. It turned out he was hooking up with my ex while I was away instead of delivering my letters. Guess guilt ate him up, and he thought it was simpler to keep up the lie and not have a brother, right up until an old friend from my home town told me what happened."
6."My mom received birthday cards with money in them from her parents for years. She kept the cards with the money in them, saving to buy a piano, and for sentimental reasons. My sister, who has repeatedly stolen from family members, found the collection of cards and money and took them. My mom only wanted the cards back when she realized what happened. My sister denied everything."
7."My brother was stealing money from our father who had dementia. This went on for a year until I found out about it because the bank that had my father's mortgage called me wondering why it hadn't been paid in six months. My father's bank account went negative around this time, too, and when I confronted my brother about it, he said, 'Well, I gotta pay MY bills.' I was about to take control of all the accounts and make sure they got back on track, but my father ended up in the hospital and died shortly after that. In the end, my brother stole over $5,000 from his dying father."
8."So, my grandmother (who’s been estranged for my family for a long time now for a MULTITUDE of reasons) has this weird thing where she has to share food with people. Are you ordering steak at the restaurant? Well, oh boy, she’s gotta order the same thing even if she doesn’t like steak. Try her drink, 'It’s really good!' Take the first bite of chicken to let her know if it’s 'any good.' This always really annoyed me because I hate sharing food. One day, I brought it up to my mom, and she was like, 'Oh yeah, grandma is afraid of being poisoned, so she wants other people to try food first.' SO, LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: GRANDMA THINKS SOMEONE IS TRYING TO POISON HER, SO SHE HAS ME TRY THE FOOD FIRST??? And it makes so much sense looking back because she literally would not take a bite of anything she ordered until someone else had a bite first."
9."After my husband died in 2020, I found out he had been having an affair with a 30-year-old (he was 55), and she even got an abortion. Everything he told me about his prior life was a lie (it was the second marriage for both of us), and he had also been having sex with men since he was in his early 20s. To sum it up, I didn't know this man at all. We had been together 10 years, and married for six."
10."I found out that the reason why one of my uncles didn't want to go back to Korea when he retired was that he couldn't — he was fearful for political reprisals if he tried to return. It turned out his brother was part of the group that assassinated the South Korean president back in 1979, and his own innocence was never proven, so he was scared of getting arrested if he ever tried to go back."
11."My best friend confessed to me that he has a child as a result of a long-distance affair in another country. He has three kids in the US, and is in a toxic marriage. His wife doesn't know."
12."When my grandfather passed away, we discovered that he did not exist. His name was not in any government registry. He was a normal citizen, paid taxes — had a license and everything. He lived a long life, was married to my grandmother for over 50 years, had multiple children, and everything normal. Even now, no one knows who he really was and why he had a fake name."
13."A work colleague of mine appeared on the front page of a national newspaper for a life of fraudulent qualifications. He claimed medical and law degrees, was a brigadier in the Army (reserves), and was the CEO for a major health fund. He actually was a brigadier in the Army reserves, but that and the health fund role were largely built on the fraudulent qualifications and a progression of jobs also based on this claims."
"In reality, the only qualification he actually held was as a mortuary assistant. Not even his wife knew. The fraudulent degrees had been gained when he was in the Army reserves recruiting, and he had access to submitted position applications. He came undone when he applied for a government job, and some flags were raised by the recruitment people. He tried to withdraw the application, but didn’t realize that an application for a government role has the same weight as a statutory declaration and cannot be withdrawn. It all went south very quickly, and he ended up doing jail time."
14."My friend who was also our family's veterinarian lost his license for doing all the ketamine that was supposed to be for the animals."
15."My mom started visiting a casino after my dad died and ran up $850,000 in debt."
16."I was best friends with someone for seven years — we had literally been through it all together. I moved out of state with my now-husband, but she convinced us both to move back to be closer with her after about a year. We had no real ties to the state we had tried out, so we said screw it, let’s go back, she’s basically family. We were all so happy to be reunited; she was over almost every night for dinner; we all laughed and talked and had a blast. Best year of my life. Then slowly, she started trying to turn my husband and I against each other. Anytime we had an argument (like any couple does), she would text each of us about how right we were, trying to foster animosity between the two of us."
"With me, she started talking about how she had a Plan B for 'us': If my husband and I couldn’t make it work, I could move in with her, and we’d live happy lives together. With my husband, she started talking about her infertility issues and how she wanted to have a kid just like him — she just needed a sperm donor. This all happened at around the same time, and my husband and I compared texts and figured it out.
She wanted to take his sperm and have a baby with me. When we confronted her about it, she refused to admit anything and started lashing out at both of us. It got to the point where she would show up unannounced, banging on the door, and demanding a place in our home. It was so terrifying and panic-inducing that we ended up having to move and change our phone numbers.
I guess it’s so disturbing because I had never had a friend like her, only to find out that she 'cared about me' in such an unhealthy and scary way."
17."A 'friend' baby-trapped her boyfriend at the time, now-husband. He did not want kids and was actively planning to get a vasectomy. Even though she was on the pill, he used condoms. She admitted to a couple of us, while drunk, that she poked a couple of the condoms. I was horrified by this and cut her out of my life. What's worse is that some of the women who she told agreed it was the smart move. To my knowledge, they are together. This was over 10 years ago, and I haven't spoken to them since."
18."My grandfather is a ghost on paper. We always grew up knowing he had skeletons in his closet, but I wasn't prepared for what he had done in his younger years. I started hearing rumors as a teen that he had been a pretty big time robber — his specialty was allegedly cracking the safes, but he would never admit it."
"Then in 2016, he casually told me he also used to deal guns to the IRA. He also told me he helped a couple of triads hide out in Jamaica after they went on the run for beheading an adversary. They were fairly nice guys according to him. It was only about 10 years ago that he finally stopped sleeping with guns stashed under his bed and taking shady phone calls down at the bottom of the garden. Only my grandmother knows his real name — no one else in the family does."
And lastly:
19."I found out someone who I thought was a close friend — I literally considered her a sister — had a secret blog about how much she hated me."
Answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.
