"I've Thought About Telling My Sister, But I Know It Would Crush Her": People Are Sharing The Darkest Secrets They Wish They'd Never Been Told In The First Place
Note: This post contains mentions of sexual abuse.
We control the secrets we reveal — but not the ones others choose to unload on us, no matter how unsettling they may be. Recently, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to share the secrets confided in them by family and friends that they wish could have been kept secret. Here are the 20 darkest truths people felt were just "too much" to hear:
1."My sister and I both tried out online dating years ago. She was into it, and I was just humoring her by joining. She met her now husband online. After they had been together almost 10 years and married for about 3 years, my brother-in-law told me he sent me a message on the dating site, too."
"He also once revealed that he thinks about me, too. I made it clear that he was way out of line. My sister and I have never been attracted to the same type of man, and I've never given him the impression that I was attracted to him. I really hope that that is the end of this. I've thought about telling my sister, but I know it would crush her. I've been limiting my visits."
—Anonymous
2."My dad admitted in family grief counseling with me after my mom died that his love for me (and likely subsequently my sister as well) was conditional. The therapist we were seeing, and I both initially thought he misspoke when he said it. The therapist then clarified, 'Do you mean unconditional?' My dad responded no and doubled down on how he felt with some hypothetical examples. It just felt like the ultimate betrayal and completely contradictory to how we were raised and what we were told by our mom."
"At the time it happened, I was not yet a parent, and now, as a mother, I cannot fathom feeling that way, much less sharing that feeling with my children, even if it was the truth.
He’s gone now, and I’ve long since forgiven him for it, but it’s a truth I could have lived better by not knowing he felt that way. Definitely would have saved me some heartache and money (that I spent on talk therapy)."
—Anonymous
3."My daughter was 16 when she had her son. A year after the baby was born, I found out who the father was at my brother’s funeral. My daughter was quite close with her uncle, and I assumed she’d be devastated at his funeral. I couldn’t have been more wrong."
"She was smiling and giggling throughout the whole thing. I just brushed it off as a shock, as the death was extremely unexpected. However, when family members started going up and giving speeches about what a good man her uncle was, she absolutely LOST it.
Like full-on falling out of her chair with laughter, I dragged her out of the room and gave her a stern talking, as it’s completely unacceptable to laugh like that at someone’s funeral. She eventually calmed down and returned to the funeral but still smiled as if she had just won the lottery. Eventually, it was time for the final viewing of the body. My daughter picked up her son, walked up to the coffin, and loudly said, “Let’s say bye-bye to Daddy one last time.” I’ve never heard a room go more quiet than it did then. I now understand why she was laughing so hard. Her assaulter died."
—Laura, Michigan
4."When I was 16, my mother sat me down after I had been out all night long with my first boyfriend. I knew I was in trouble, and I expected her to ground me, but instead, she said, 'Your real father is Evans.' What?? I was shocked, first of all, because I knew that name from my cousin. Evans was her father's name! Wait, what? My favorite cousin was my first cousin AND my half-sister! Woah."
"I did have a feeling something was different for me since I was raised by an Italian man (my stepfather, it turns out), but I didn't 'look' Italian, even at 10 years old. I have blonde-haired, blue eyes, a round face, and a small nose. It turns out my bio-father was Jewish. Ah-ha! I was so mad at my mother for 14 years. I knew, for my own mental health sanity, I needed to forgive her. When I was 30, I finally did."
—Sporter
5."My fiancé's dad, while intoxicated, confessed that he and his ex-wife (my fiancé's mom) used to swing/partner swap with my fiancé's best friend's parents. They did it before he and his friend met and became best friends. So, they decided it was best to stop the shenanigans. I held onto that secret for SO. DANG. LONG. I finally snapped and told my fiancé and SWORE HIM TO SECRECY. His dad never knew I spilled the beans before passing, thank god."
—KW, Tennessee, 35
6."My mum confessed to me when I was 30 (now 36) that before she met my Dad, she was madly in love with another guy for 5 years. They were engaged and looking at houses to buy together before he suddenly took off. Mum was left heartbroken and met my Dad only a year or so later. I always had in mind that Mum and Dad’s relationship was pretty stable. But due to Mum struggling to get over the guy before, they were very on and off during the first few years."
"Finally, Mum decided that she loved Dad enough to marry him and settle down, but her feelings were never like those she had for the man who left her. Since learning that, I’ve looked at Mum and Dad’s relationship very differently and always felt a bit sorry for Dad as he adored her til she died last year. It’s something I wish I hadn’t known as it’s messed with so many memories of my Mum and Dad’s time together, especially when I was a young child."
7."My sister resented me since I was born, and one time, while in an argument, she yelled that our dad asked my mom for an abortion when she was pregnant with me. I had to ask him, and he told me it was true, but he regretted it and never wanted me to know. My mom must have told my sister, and I could never understand how or why she would hurt me so badly."
8."My younger sister confided in me that she had an abortion when she was pregnant with twins and then divorced her husband. She wanted no links to him and saw the twins as being tied to him. She told me this over forty years ago, and I have shared it with no one."
9."My best friend’s younger sister told me she had found a picture of their mother in a wedding dress marrying a man who wasn’t their dad. The man in the picture looked much like my friend's sister, the only tall redhead in a family of short brunettes. Later, she confronted her grandmother and learned the man was her sister’s biological father. She wasn’t sure how to tell her sister, and only she and I knew this family secret."
10."My mother told me that she'd tried to force an accidental miscarriage when she was pregnant with me, which resulted in me being born two months early with some defects that would affect me for the rest of my life. I never needed to know that."
11."Learning my best friend's family was borderline abusive. It was just really hard. I was so worried about her, and that probably took a toll on my mental health, along with hers."
12."I knew this very down-to-earth, chill, and nice guy. He was open about being imprisoned, but I figured he'd served his time, and people make mistakes, so it wasn't a big deal. Until I later found out he'd been to prison for an attempted bombing of an abortion clinic. I could never look at him the same way again."
13."I still have mixed feelings about when I found out my grandparents' plans for my mother. A huge rift developed in my mom's family after my mom refused to go through with 'the original plan,' which meant after finishing her medical training in the States, she was to move back to her home country to never marry and care for her parents and other family for free for the rest of her life."
"I found out about it when I was about 11, and it fucked up my entire point of view of my supposed kind and loving grandparents. Apparently, it was a tradition going back generations that one daughter would never marry and would care for the parents until they died.
That was the only reason my grandparents invested so much time, effort, and money into getting my mother into medical school; it was a self-serving action. Except my mother finished her residencies, met my Dad, and decided not to return to the Old Country to be the Old-Maid MD. This forced her other siblings to split the duties of taking care of their parents, and they loathed it because it was supposed to be my mom's job to do that. I heard my Aunt once yell at my Mom, 'I wasn't supposed to care for them at all. I was the pretty one, not you!' I loved my Grandparents. As far as I knew, our family is big on ancestral respect, and they were infallible until I found that out."
—Anonymous
14."My cousin once confided in me that her husband had been questioning the paternity of their daughter. Apparently, some friends had visited, and one of them told the husband that my cousin had cheated on him with one of their friends. Not only does this not sound like her, but this story didn’t come out until after their baby was born."
"He would apparently bring it up constantly to her, and she didn’t know what to do about it. All this while constantly going on to anyone who would listen about how great being a dad is. I mean, sure, bud; you can’t even watch your own kid without help.
Things have only gotten messier, and I feel so bad for their daughter, but I wish I had never been told all that paternity crap. It made being around the guy awkward as hell."
—Anonymous
15."My friend came out to me (the only LGBT+ person in the friend group, thinking I’d be the most accepting), and I appreciate that they trust me like that. But it’s hard to know that their family (their heavily religious family) will never accept them, and I’m the only one who will. I have to see them struggle with the guilt of who they are."
—Anonymous
16."That my favorite uncle had assaulted my cousin, who was his stepdaughter in her teens, I found out a few years after his death (not the actual extent of what happened, just that something did). This man treated me like his own daughter and made sure my mom and I were taken care of after my parents had divorced when I was 16. I've never talked to my cousin about this because she doesn't know that I know. We had a bad falling out about 10 years ago. Now, my favorite memories of him are tarnished by the knowledge that he did this horrible thing to my own blood."
—Anonymous
17."Coworker confessed to everyone on the team privately that they let their stepdad have sex with them and that they are madly in love with their stepbrother. I've been super grossed out for over 20 years now."
—Anonymous
18."I work as a nurse in a hospital. Once, I was helping another nurse verify blood to be given to a patient (it takes two RNs to verify patient identity, the blood bag info, etc.). She informed the patient that we were going to give him a unit of packed red blood cells to address his anemia, and the man asked us if the blood was 'white blood.' I understood immediately, but the naive other nurse asked him to clarify (after she looked down at the blood bag and said that it was 'red blood')."
"The patient, a middle-aged white man, then stated plain as day that he could only have blood that came from a white person. Since he wasn't my patient and I had done my part verifying the blood information, I just turned and walked out. It's never good when something happens at the hospital, and you suddenly don't care if a patient lives or dies."
—Anonymous
19."While on active duty in the Army, I served with a National Guard Infantryman in Afghanistan. I worked with this guardsman, his civilian job was as a Sheriff's Deputy. He occasionally entertained us with wild stories about his time as a police officer. Then he told this one story."
"He pulled a guy over for driving erratically, figuring he was drunk. He went to the window and demanded that the guy get out of the vehicle. The guy answered sternly, 'I can't.' He repeatedly asked, and the guy repeated, 'I can't.' The Sheriff's Deputy proceeded to beat the driver up. When he finally got his car door open and took him out of the vehicle, he found that that the man was actually paralyzed from the waist down and was driving a customized car with a hand throttle. The backup officer found the guy's collapsible wheelchair in the back.
What really irked me was how he told this story like it was a big joke, as if beating the hell out of a paralyzed man was the funniest thing that ever happened to him. I tended to avoid him for the rest of our time together and was glad when he rotated home."
—Anonymous
20."I started a new job when I was in my early 20s and made friends with my older manager. We both came from abusive families and had bonded over our traumatic backgrounds. She always talked fondly about her adult son, whom I had never met. He lived about as far away as you could get from us and was still in the United States."
"One night, after some drinking, she confessed to me she had slept with her son when he was 15. I was so sickened by this confession that I quickly cut her from my life. I realized that she had serious mental health issues, but that confession has haunted me to this day, thirty years later. I wish I never knew."
—Anonymous
Have you ever been told a truth you wish had been kept secret? Tell us about it in the comments. If you prefer to stay anonymous, submit your story to us via this form.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
