I know that some people love keeping secrets. It makes them feel important, or it makes them feel good that other people trust them, I don’t know. I personally hate it, because I’m not good at it and I honestly believe that secrets have a way of coming out eventually.
These 16 people found themselves the keepers of devastating secrets – their own and others – and they’re not sure if or when they’ll ever get to divulge them.
16. With family like that…
Several family members knew which family member molested me from six to seven and he was allowed to move back in with us when I was 16, where he continued to touch me. Even after knowing that, those family members talked openly in front of me about bringing that guy around my niece, who was six at the time, or the same age I was when he started molesting me.
Once I realized that my nieces and nephews were in danger, I exposed the secret to the entire family and told them who already knew. That family member was finally cut out and my nieces and nephews will never know what I had to go through to keep them safe.
The molestation was bad enough, but having people close to me actively choose to keep a pedophile around their own kids, especially the one who abused me, is what really still f**ks with me to this day.
15. Time for a new couch.
My parents have had these couches since I was like 9 years old (I’m 30 now). They’ve moved from house to house and room to room over the years and now reside in my Aunt’s second home in the basement.
There is a brown stain under one of the cushions that my mom and my aunt always complained they couldn’t get out no matter what they tried.
That stain is a s*%t stain from when I wiped my a$$ on the couch as a kid. I think I’ll tell them the next time I visit.
Edit: The positive response to this post has lead me to do the right thing and confess after all these years. Seeing as that s*%t stain is now old enough to drink, the consequences seemed pretty low. My Aunt wants to look for a new couch…
14. This hurts my heart.
My friend and his wife just had a miscarriage. None of the women in their lives know and always complain that she’s been “so emotional” lately and that she is turning into a b*%ch.
They have openly debated stopping contact with her in front of me and all I can really say is, “maybe she is going through something and needs friends now more than ever”.
I’ve never personally witnessed the aftermath of a miscarriage from this close before. It truly is life altering.
13. Awful indeed.
Buddy’s dad is actually his uncle and his uncle that is actually his dad raped his mom when she was drunk one night. It’s why his family doesn’t talk to that uncle.
He and his parents are the only ones that know in the family.
12. Not exactly healthy.
Seeing some of these it’s not super bad, but my mother recently admitted the divorce was due to her cheating on my father and then proceeded to say “we got over it, but it seemed he just wouldn’t love me ever again” she tried to turn it on him despite them agreeing they wouldn’t make sides to the divorce at all.
But in reality, she wants to be the good guy in it but is simply not the good guy but she feels she is because she didn’t want the divorce, she wanted unadulterated forgiveness. But I digress.
My sister had a boyfriend of 2 years cheat on her on a trip to Scotland, and when she brought it up for advice to the family (she didn’t want to end it, it was 2 years) she said “part of me says “once a cheater always a cheater but…” and then my dad said “There’s truth to that…” basically the fucked up thing I know is the inner workings of the things that have happened the past 2 years, and that one of the people is a piece of s*%t in it but they are my own mother so I can’t really just say you a piece of s*%t and walk away.
I just have to hold it and bear it possibly forever. I don’t see any time where I could let it out I’m the future either.
11. Long overdue.
I’m the one who tipped over the Faygo vending machine at the local IGA in 2008. There, I said it.
Happy now?
10. He’ll never tell.
I accidentally lit a dumpster on fire at Eastern Michigan University in 2010. It was very dramatic and could have burnt down an entire set of apartments.
We all stood there and watched it go down, no one knew it was me other than myself.
9. I hope this turned out better.
I found out my friends mom dressed him up as a girl to humiliate him as a punishment for arguing with his sister.
Charles Manson, Ed Gein, and Henry Lee Lucas all had that done to them.
8. What a jerk.
My (married) close colleague/boss was cheating on his wife, at least for a while. I know this because one of the girls he hooked up with from Tinder was a friend of mine from outside work.
He used a fake name but told her his real profession, so she asked if I knew him and we figured it out pretty quick.
He has no idea I know and it’s been several years since then.
7. What kind of mother…
My aunt used to sell her 3 kids 2 infants twin girls and one toddler boy to grown men for a night so she could make rent and my grandmother caught wind of it. She called cps (child protective services) and the kids were taken away.
My aunt willing gave up her kids but only if non of them were aloud to be adopted by any family members. They went to very intensive therapy to the point non of them remember what happened.
My grandma fought like hell court case after court case for 5 years to get them back. Only me and my grandma know the real reason why they were taken away and it’s only Becouse one them asked my grandma for her medical records and wanted to go thru them her self but my grandma wouldn’t let her in fear of her finding out.
She got mad and argued with my grandma and after a while left, I went down to see what happened and my grandma was crying and explained everything to me
6. Why are men.
Before I switched stores I remember hearing about one of the big bosses who had an affair with one of the lower tier employees. I heard it from one of the managers so it wasn’t well known, we just gossiped about it briefly and that was that; I never knew the guys name or met him. About a year later I was asked to move to one of the new stores to help train all the new staff. Moving to a new store meant I was working with a different manager, he was very likeable, funny & we got along well in the work setting. He ended up opening a couple more stores and would move me to them whenever they opened. Because of this we had a pretty solid friendship even though he was about 20 years older than me. It got to the point where he’d drive me home from work often, he confided in me about his marriage & family etc.
Then one day he asks my advice on a “hypothetical” situation, strongly implying it was true tho, about gf issues. I made a joke after giving him the advice that I thought he was married. The more we talked and we’re around each other the more and more I started putting things together. I knew he lived in a big house with his wife & kids but then he would talk about his condo, gf problems vs. Wife problems, things like that.
A friend of a friend confronted me one day after coming to my work and told me about how she parties with him and his gf in their condo every weekend and how he goes on huge coke binges and doesn’t sleep for days and what not. I kept it to myself, never told him I knew. We’ll I guess his gf flopped and he started hitting on me all the time, this is about 3 years into me working for him.
I lost all respect in him after that. I stayed long enough that he bought me an iPad and then I dipped with no explanation, that was a year ago and he’s still trying to contact me.
5. Ugly stuff.
My best friend in middle and high school got sent to a military academy/boarding school for troubled teens with behavior problems.
Not because he had any behavior problems, but because his parents just didn’t want him around for a few years.
I learned this when I went over to his place, we were both setting in the living room and he went outside for something through the door in the kitchen. You can’t see the living room from the kitchen and I guess they either didn’t know I was in there or thought I went outside with him and said a bunch of stuff like “I can’t wait for him to be gone. Wish we had the money to send him for the longer one but a few years is better than none.” “Yeah it’ll be nice to be rid of him for a while.” Stuff like that.
My friend didn’t have any behavior problems that I knew of. He was always pretty chill and didn’t get into too much trouble at school. But they sent him and he went.
Luckily he came back and was the same as before he want. The only thing that changed was he almost always wore a jacket with the academy’s logo on it as a sort of protest. I’m pretty sure that he figured it out, but I would never bring it up. We’re not in contact anymore, anyway.
4. That poor pooch.
I peed on my basement floor and ruined our sound system.
It wasn’t the dog.
3. At least he unburdened himself.
I was a carer and one of my clients who was a WW2 veteran informed me that when he was in France, you know fighting the war, one of the regulars (he was in the TA) raped him while they were in their basha and he felt that he couldn’t have told anyone because the other guy had been in for longer than him.
He informed me that he had never told another soul up until that moment and he passed away a couple of months later at the age of 97 which I was also there for but that’s another story for another thread.
2. What a creep.
Know someone who was definitely groomed by the youth pastor at 14. He was married at the time and is at least 12 years older than her. Eventually she went off to college and he got divorced. They’re now married with 3 kids.
He lost his job as the assistant FB coach at our high school while we were attending and left the church he was working for “to start a new one”, which makes me suspicious it wasn’t just grooming.
1. That’s…really something.
My cousin and his half-sister are in a relationship. She moved in with him a year and a half ago, saying it was to protect their immune-compromised dad. Now that the vaccine has been out, everyone keeps asking why she is still living there.
Cousin let me know what’s up since I own the duplex he lives in and we see each other all the time. They’ve been hooking up for a while now and the pandemic just gave them an excuse to finally live together.
I don’t think I would do very well with these, would you?
Are you keeping a terrible secret? If you want to unburden yourself, our comments are open!
