My brain cannot process what I've just read.
As a Writer at BuzzFeed, I write and curate quizzes, listicles, and articles about everything from pop culture and history to food and fashion. Nothing is spicier and juicier than good old family drama and gossip.
It is one of the things that unite the family . I have some shocking lore from my side of the family that, if I ever share, I'm pretty sure you will lose your mind. So when I came across this Reddit thread where a "What is a 'family secret' or a private moment you witnessed that completely changed the way you look at a relative?"I picked out some of the best ones for you. Here are 30 family secrets that changed people's perspective on their family, and it's a wild roller coaster ride:Disclaimer: The following has mentions of sexual abuse, domestic violence, mental health issues, and other sensitive matters. Reader discretion is advised."I was at my cousin's house when we were about eight. My aunt and uncle were upstairs wrapping Christmas gifts. Obviously we weren’t supposed to be up there, but we happened to be trying to sneak a peak at gifts and saw my uncle lunge at my aunt, stabbing her with the scissors. She told everyone the next day she had fallen, and I was so confused why she would lie. I now realize she was a domestic violence victim but was always confused from then on out being around them as a kid." "We found out my aunt was paying extended family members to uninvite us from family events after my father’s death. We have completely cut them off, but her wanting to control family dynamics is beyond disgusting." "I remember being a very small child , visiting my great-grandparents, and my mom being very upset and shouting 'NO' while pulling me away from a great-uncle who was trying to put me in his lap. She never wanted him to be near me. I thought it was because he was usually drunk. Years later, she told me that when she was seven, this uncle tried to make her put her hand in his pocket because he"had a worm in there" and she could play with it. She was also worried about this uncle's behavior with her little sister. She told her mother and got screamed at,"Stop being so nasty! It isn't true what they say about Murray! There's nothing wrong with Murray!" She was upset that her mother wouldn't protect her and her sister and that she was called nasty for trying to tell her. My grandmother often acted in very peculiar ways." "My grandfather once sadly said that something very bad happened when she was growing up; he didn't know what it was, but something happened that made her mind not right. She was suspicious and accusatory of innocent people but turned her head to her brother's perversion." "I remember my sister leaning over the casket that held our brother, only to go back to her husband at the time and check to make sure the pictures looked good. I've viewed everything she says and does since differently." "My great-grandmother was often visited by a man with special needs when I was a kid. He was a little younger than my grandparents. My relatives all called him a 'family friend,' and I didn't think too much about it. Sometime after her death, I found a letter that was addressed to a woman in Arizona. That woman in Arizona was my great-grandfather's mistress, with whom he had a child. Our 'family friend.' My great-grandmother had forgiven him, and they would send money for his child's raising and care. Sometime later after his mother passed, he came to live near my great-grandmother. This said a lot to me about her character that she would treat him as her own all those years later. Not sure I would have done the same." "I found out my sweet, Christian grandma had an affair with my dad , which led to my parents' divorce. My mom kept it a secret for over a decade because she didn’t want me to look at my grandma any differently. I wasn’t surprised by my dad’s actions, but I will never be able to look at my grandma the same way. She was also married to my grandpa when this happened; he’s passed now though and never found out." "The trauma my mother endured as a child. She never told me about it; my grandmother did in my late teens. She found her father’s body after he hung himself and was mercilessly beaten by her cognitively impaired brother throughout her childhood and adolescence." "After my grandfather passed, I learned that he had at one point been hospitalized for depression. The man was a mountain: outdoorsman, engineer, professor, and veteran, and despite seeming grumpy and gruff , he was very compassionate and playful with us grandchildren. That he could have suffered from depression to that degree has helped me some with my own depression and feelings of self-worth. Makes me miss him even more." "My mom found child p*rn on my stepfather's computer after I told her he had been touching me inappropriately, and he convinced her he just saved it because it was 'so awful he couldn’t believe what he saw.' When she told me that after they separated years later , I haven’t respected her decision-making since." "I was finally let in on the secret: my grandfather raped my grandma when they first met, producing my father. Then 23 years later, he raped my other grandma AT my parents wedding. Oh, and then he raped a woman janitor that worked for him. Also, I always wondered why my uncle went back to Scotland. It turns out he was deported for raping a real estate agent at knifepoint." "After my grandfather died, a baby photo was found in his bible that did not belong to any relatives. He was in the same platoon that thewas based off of. We are fairly certain he fathered another baby overseas during WWII, and took it to his grave." "The childhood friend of my father was the type of guy to make inappropriate jokes around 13-14 years old boys, and my father would laugh it off 'as a joke.' My father would go to his place, and he would take me with him when I was around 15, when my uncle heard that, he very sternly warned me to stay away from him. Over time I grew uneasy around him, and when I was 18, he managed to get me to stay for one night in his place . He even called and convinced my mother and tried to SA me. If he hadn't been drunk and I couldn't fight him off, I have no clue what that night would have been like. Later I tried to talk to my father about his friend, and he waved me off by saying that it was 'all rumors.' The guy didn't even listen to me to understand that I was talking about firsthand experience. I stopped talking to my father from that day until he died." "I was told my uncle was a philanderer, and that really colored me against him. One time we were taking a long walk on the beach, having cocktails and talking. He had met my aunt, and she'd gotten pregnant. His family was very well connected, and they 'did the right thing' and got married. He said, 'A month later, I met the love of my life.' Turns out that my aunt was fully aware; nothing was hidden and secretive. It was an arrangement among consenting adults. It completely changed my relationship with him, as I'd been in a complicated situation myself." "My grandmother's dentures broke while she was having lunch once. I was in the living room with her while it happened. Her daughters absolutely lost their minds on her, blaming her for 'chewing too hard.' The look she gave me was just so miserable... she just wanted to be believed and looked at me so helplessly. I blew up on my parents and chewed them out for sounding absolutely insane . Ever since then, I tell them to shut up and fuck off all the time because I see them for the verbally abusive, victim-blaming people they are. Everything that happens to them is their fault because of something they did. What's funny is they think I'm a MASSIVE asshole for speaking to them the way they speak to everyone else." "During my childhood, there was always an extra man or two at the table for holiday dinners when my grandparents hosted. It was rare for the same person to attend more than one dinner. When I was in my late teens, I realized these guests were all recovering alcoholics. My grandpa was involved in AA and also managed a half-way house later in life. My grandparents regularly invited people in recovery with nowhere else to go to celebrate the holidays with us. As an adult, I realize how much love and support my grandparents showed those men trying to stay sober." "When I was 16, I overheard my dad on the phone at like 2 a.m. He thought everyone was asleep. He was talking to the electric company asking for a payment extension. I’d always thought he was just strict and kind of emotionally unavailable. Turns out he was juggling bills and just never let us feel it. This completely changed how I saw him. He wasn’t cold. He was tired." "My sister was interviewing our grandfather for a school project once and asked what his earliest memory was. It was the FBI showing up at his door and arresting our great-grandfather. Great-grandpa was still able to provide for his family during the Great Depression, ostensibly because of his successful auto scrapyard. Turns out the much more lucrative side was helping the mob launder cash. Not that they ever proved anything!" "Turns out my aunt killed my grandfather. She injected him with a massive overdose of morphine while he was dying of cancer." "My grandfather was in the death squads that terrorized El Salvador between the late 70s and early 80s. He's a very well-mannered man; you wouldn't even think he was capable of some of the shit I've heard them do, but the truth is you can never know what one was capable of, especially in their youth." "My uncle is actually my cousin. He was adopted by his aunt at birth. They didn't tell him until he was in his 30s." "During college I stayed at my uncle's home for a few weeks. My uncle's wife was not liked by my side of the family, and I didn't know why. I was young and didn't care about the drama anyway. The uncle's mother-in-law also lived with them at the time. She was sweet and kind. One day the grandma was putting the dishes away or something, but it wasn't THE way the aunt liked them. The attitude and berating the aunt gave her mother were an absolute shock to me. And the aunt's eyes as she looked at her mother, full of hate and resentment, were something I would never forget. I could never look at my mother like that. Ever. I completely lost any respect I ever had for the aunt after that moment." "When my mother admitted that she knew I had been abused as a kid by my dad and his family, yet did nothing because she 'wasn't ready to get divorced yet.'" "I can never look at several of my family members the same. One aunt didn’t take her aging dog to the vet, and he was losing his sight and in pain; another uncle kicked the dog because he snapped at him because of how much pain he was in. Another uncle also refused to take their dog to the vet and wouldn’t allow me to do it when I offered. I have had to call the RSPCA on that one and will never look at any of them the same. Being told all my life that we let things slide because family is the most important, but then they do things like this that I can’t let go, and I finally realize that family is not the most important." "In 1993, my favorite uncle was killed, and my other uncle wasn't allowed to visit us. My mom would hide us from my dad to go visit my uncle. I was in my early 20s when I found out what really happened. Long story short...my uncle that we weren't allowed to see was low-level Tijuana Cartel, and his brother was sent to pay off a debt unaware of what my other uncle actually does, and he was killed. That same uncle tried to get my mom to do a favor for him, and my dad put a stop to it. Essentially my dad saved our lives." "I found out in my teens, after my great-grandmother passed away, that she was the only survivor after her father murdered her mom and all of her siblings. She was maybe five or six and only survived because she hid under the porch when it all started. Apparently her dad called her name for hours, but she never came out, and he eventually gave up and killed himself. She was so sweet and quiet, but you would never have guessed she had trauma like that." "My grandfather was an MP in WWII. He had to guard an internment camp for Japanese Americans. I never found anything out about this until well after he died; he never talked about his service days with me. His youngest daughter married a Japanese man who had been at that camp as a child." "When I found out, my uncle got his first wife pregnant when he was in his twenties and she wasn't out of high school. That kind of changed my perspective. They'd been dating since she was 14 and he was...early twenties. Also, his mother paid for his house. Also, he kept saying his first wife's family were just bad people because they didn't like him. Well, he fucked their underaged kid, had a shotgun wedding, then basically stole his mother's money for his house. I now want nothing to do with him." "My devout Christian grandfather, who lived with us, went on a 'mission trip' two or three times to the Philippines to meet a 19-year-old girl while my grandmother was dying in the living room. I was 15 at the time; the girl literally looked 12. He spent thousands of dollars buying her stuff. Crazy shit. We were once really close, but that destroyed our relationship." "I remember being on a family vacation when I was little. We had conjoined rooms with my grandparents. I was goofing around and opened the door and saw my grandmother with her wig off. She had cancer, and it was my first time having someone explain that her hair was a wig and that she was sick."I'm still having trouble processing all of this information. Man, families can be complicated. What are some family secrets that completely changed the way you look at your relatives? Let us know in the comments. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7at 1-800-656-HOPE, which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local centeris an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
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