What is your deepest family secret?

[Anonymous]

For my nuclear family, our deepest secret from the outside world is that my husband's first wife committed suicide after 20 years of marriage and one child. They married at 19 . He divorced his second wife after less than a year (no kids) because she cheated and she subsequently married a high profile politician (she was a 100% trophy wife and caused the suicide of the first wife), and I married him when he was on the rebound. Our children know their half brother who is in his late 20's. They don't know that I am the third wife.

Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see Anne Boleyn staring back. Kidding, sort of.

[Anonymous]

I'm glad someone white said something. I'm a black woman and my build is anything but muscular and my sporting ability is nonexistent. I am amazed by some peoples' perceptions!

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That my grandfather was 1/4 black and passed for white. I had to pry it out of my mother...

wow. this is amazing...do you appear AA? Ahhh, sorry, that didn't come out the way I meant it. I just find this fascinating as to how people come to look the way they do...

The PP is 1/16 black. It's very doubtful that s/he looks black.

Personal experience from someone 1/16 black-I have the lips and the muscular build of a black person. I love it. No Botox, and I was a college athlete. Otherwise I am a nice olive color, super dark ash brown hair, bright green eyes.

You sound very beautiful physically, but it is sad that you believe black people are somehow naturally more muscularly built. My ancestors are German and many of them are built like plow horses, but I am thin, small boned, angular and tall. It has nothing whatever to do with my race, rather just my selected genes. Good grief, the ignorance.

[Anonymous]

My mother got pregnant before she married my father, and had an abortion. This was in 1962.

[Anonymous]

I was raped in college by a stranger who had been stalking me. My mother calls it my "accident" - I can't describe how much this has pissed me off. I don't think she was able to deal with the emotional burden, but thankfully, I have. It really sucked though - it was all over the news at the time, in the papers - enough said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was raped in college by a stranger who had been stalking me. My mother calls it my "accident" - I can't describe how much this has pissed me off. I don't think she was able to deal with the emotional burden, but thankfully, I have. It really sucked though - it was all over the news at the time, in the papers - enough said.

This ranks right up there as one of the worst things a parent could say to their child. Sorry to hear it pp, glad you've dealt with it. I was date raped in college and never told my mom because I fear (ed) a similar response. You have every right to be pissed off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For my nuclear family, our deepest secret from the outside world is that my husband's first wife committed suicide after 20 years of marriage and one child. They married at 19 . He divorced his second wife after less than a year (no kids) because she cheated and she subsequently married a high profile politician (she was a 100% trophy wife and caused the suicide of the first wife), and I married him when he was on the rebound. Our children know their half brother who is in his late 20's. They don't know that I am the third wife.

Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see Anne Boleyn staring back. Kidding, sort of.

How did the seond wife cause the suicide of the first? Your DH was having an affair and the first wife found out?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That my grandfather was 1/4 black and passed for white. I had to pry it out of my mother...

wow. this is amazing...do you appear AA? Ahhh, sorry, that didn't come out the way I meant it. I just find this fascinating as to how people come to look the way they do...

The PP is 1/16 black. It's very doubtful that s/he looks black.

Personal experience from someone 1/16 black-I have the lips and the muscular build of a black person. I love it. No Botox, and I was a college athlete. Otherwise I am a nice olive color, super dark ash brown hair, bright green eyes.

You sound very beautiful physically, but it is sad that you believe black people are somehow naturally more muscularly built. My ancestors are German and many of them are built like plow horses, but I am thin, small boned, angular and tall. It has nothing whatever to do with my race, rather just my selected genes. Good grief, the ignorance.

Oh COME ON! It is no coincidence that black people dominate professional sports at much higer proportionate rate than any other race. Different races are built differently, this is not ignorance, but a glaring FACT.

Black people kick white people's asses all over the place in sports, even though they are at a socioeconomic disadvantage and probably do not benefit nearly as much as all the money that white parents through at their kids getting private coaching and instruction.

OF COURSE there are exceptions...Larry Byrd and such, but not many. Of course there are black people with poor muscle tone, no matter what they do, but as a whole black people are much stronger and more athletic than whites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

My sister and her long term boyfriend pretended that my niece was his, but really my sister had cheated on him and he pretended to be the father to save face because they were working on the relationship. 18 years later and it leaked out to my niece and some others in the family.

How did your niece react? Does she know her bio father? did she feel betrayed by the family?

The only ones that knew the secret before her were her mom and 'dad'. She and her mom are super close still. She no longer has much to do with who she thought was her father. (He and my sister had split up when she was a preschooler but he was very involved in her life until she was in high school and he remarried.) None of us talk about it at all. The identity of her real father is still a secret, although my parents are pretty sure they've figured it out. We're from a small town and there's a guy that looks just like her who always asks them about her. As far as I know, she has never asked about him.

Thanks, PP.

My best friend could have written what you wrote. She is going something VERY similar. Her current husband and his ex wife. Their "child" is 19 and still doesn't know. It's very sad.

That is why i was wondering how the child reacted. If everyone in the whole family knows the secret, except her, i imagine she'd feel very betrayed. All these relationships built on lies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

My sister and her long term boyfriend pretended that my niece was his, but really my sister had cheated on him and he pretended to be the father to save face because they were working on the relationship. 18 years later and it leaked out to my niece and some others in the family.

How did your niece react? Does she know her bio father? did she feel betrayed by the family?

The only ones that knew the secret before her were her mom and 'dad'. She and her mom are super close still. She no longer has much to do with who she thought was her father. (He and my sister had split up when she was a preschooler but he was very involved in her life until she was in high school and he remarried.) None of us talk about it at all. The identity of her real father is still a secret, although my parents are pretty sure they've figured it out. We're from a small town and there's a guy that looks just like her who always asks them about her. As far as I know, she has never asked about him.

Thanks, PP.

My best friend could have written what you wrote. She is going something VERY similar. Her current husband and his ex wife. Their "child" is 19 and still doesn't know. It's very sad.

That is why i was wondering how the child reacted. If everyone in the whole family knows the secret, except her, i imagine she'd feel very betrayed. All these relationships built on lies.

It's a very tough situation. I think for my niece, the fact that her 'father' pulled away from her when he remarried maybe took away some of the surprise that he wasn't her biological father. As an advocate for my niece, what has bothered me the most is now that the news is out there her 'dad' has basically given up on the situation. I don't think anyone realized at the time that the commitment to pretend would be a lifelong responsibility. She is an innocent party in all of this and has lost not only part of her identity, but also the father she thought she had. None of it has been fair to her. I am shocked that my niece doesn't seem to bear any anger towards her mother for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was raped in college by a stranger who had been stalking me. My mother calls it my "accident" - I can't describe how much this has pissed me off. I don't think she was able to deal with the emotional burden, but thankfully, I have. It really sucked though - it was all over the news at the time, in the papers - enough said.

Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have told my parents. But come to think of it, the police contacted her because I was taken to the hospital. I wish I could have carried the rape to my grave and not have told a single soul.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was raped in college by a stranger who had been stalking me. My mother calls it my "accident" - I can't describe how much this has pissed me off. I don't think she was able to deal with the emotional burden, but thankfully, I have. It really sucked though - it was all over the news at the time, in the papers - enough said.

This ranks right up there as one of the worst things a parent could say to their child. Sorry to hear it pp, glad you've dealt with it. I was date raped in college and never told my mom because I fear (ed) a similar response. You have every right to be pissed off.

Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have told my parents. But come to think of it, the police contacted her because I was taken to the hospital. I wish I could have carried the rape to my grave and not have told a single soul.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Both of my parents spent time in mental institutions. They lied about it to us as children and still don't want anyone to know.

Same with my mother. When I was in college, I went with my mom to visit an old high school friend of hers. On the drive there, she told me that she'd spent most of her senior year of high school in "the bin" (as she calls it) for severe depression and also told me about the periodic bouts of depression she'd had over the subsequent years.

Some time later, in a fit of transparency, she detailed several of her abortive suicide attempts. There are some things I don't want to know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My great grandmother most likely had a child out of wedlock when she was 16. He was raised as her brother and her parents claim they adopted him from France during a vacation. My great aunt is pretty sure it was her mother's child but not positive because it was never spoke of. The same great grandmother was the illegitimate child of the daughter of a rich Welsh family and the stablehand and was given away for adoption to a family in the town. This wasn't a secret.

I also recently discovered some incest when researching my family tree around the turn of the century. A sister and half brother married and had kids, only they were more closely related than that because their parents had already been cousins.

The first part of your post sounds like the book "Liars and Saints."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My dad is gay. My parents are still married. Kind of hard to explain.

Interesting. Is he openly gay with the family? I can see why they would stay married, it actually makes perfect sense to me. My BF was a gay guy and we considered getting married, I know, complicated, but I met my hetro hubby and that never materialized.

He came out about 10 years ago. It was a huge relief to me and made sense of so many things. I was so relieved all the secrets were finally gone, all the times of wondering what was really going on and why he took so many trips. Yes, the whole immediate family knows.

None of us live in McLean.

My dad is gay, too. Came out to me about 10 years ago as well. My parents are still married as well, but my mom has a boyfriend and they live together in a connected house (dad on one side, mom and boyfriend on the other with a door in the middle). My DH knows and some of my friends, but not a lot. As time goes on I am getting more comfortable with it. I have no problem with my dad being gay, but I kind of wish my parents would just get divorced. My mom has been with her boyfriend for several years and they are happy so I just don't get why they don't just get divorced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My dad is gay. My parents are still married. Kind of hard to explain.

Interesting. Is he openly gay with the family? I can see why they would stay married, it actually makes perfect sense to me. My BF was a gay guy and we considered getting married, I know, complicated, but I met my hetro hubby and that never materialized.

He came out about 10 years ago. It was a huge relief to me and made sense of so many things. I was so relieved all the secrets were finally gone, all the times of wondering what was really going on and why he took so many trips. Yes, the whole immediate family knows.

None of us live in McLean.

My dad is gay, too. Came out to me about 10 years ago as well. My parents are still married as well, but my mom has a boyfriend and they live together in a connected house (dad on one side, mom and boyfriend on the other with a door in the middle). My DH knows and some of my friends, but not a lot. As time goes on I am getting more comfortable with it. I have no problem with my dad being gay, but I kind of wish my parents would just get divorced. My mom has been with her boyfriend for several years and they are happy so I just don't get why they don't just get divorced.

My mother had a lesbian affair when i was in middle school. She doesn't think I know. It was really embarrasing as a 13 year old.