Secrets can make or break a relationship. Sometimes, it can bring people together. Other times, it's the reason why people never speak to one another again. In romantic relationships, for example, trust is essential. Yet one in five married people say they're keeping a secret from their spouse.
Still, we like reading about the times some juicy secrets get revealed. Especially when they don't involve us. One person online recently prompted others to share their best-kept secrets, when they asked: "What's the most disturbing secret you've ever been told?"
From heartbreaking ones like secret affairs and deathbed confessions to more chaotic evil ones like feeding vegetarians meat and never washing jeans, people shared all kinds of secrets.
#1
My stepdad confessed on his deathbed that he’d spent thirty years with my very difficult mother just to be sure I could have a normal life. He passed away from cancer about a week later.
For what it’s worth I’m married to a wonderful woman, have two amazing kids, and a fantastic career.
Thanks Dad.
Image credits: MyCatPoopedTinsel
#2
My ex would feed vegetarians meat and not tell them.
Image credits: liatsuzie1
#3
A co-worker told me her 2nd child wasn't her husband's.
Did not need that information.
Image credits: FlirtyFiona4365
#4
A friend of mine told me she is having an affair with one of our friend's father.
Image credits: lylybootyy
#5
Someone confessed they never wash their jeans. like ever. still can't decide if it's genius or gross.
Image credits: Professional-Rub8598
#6
Ex-Coworker “has a few bodies to the list” and that he was an ex gang member/door knocker. He also told me when he was on “vacation” back home in “Samoa”, he was really back in Utah getting revenge on the dude who shot up his apartment when he was living there. Amazing family man and great guy but after hearing all that , I couldn’t help but see him in a new light and take him a little more seriously since he was really goofy and free going, almost like a class clown type. He’s got my back like a brother but me and him are of two different worlds and mindsets after such a revelation.
Image credits: Stoic_hawaiian808
#7
My cousin was a nanny for a wealthy family in the upper west side for three years. They had one daughter who had dairy allergies. My cousin thought she could ease dairy into her diet and make her allergy disappear. So she did that, slowly adding dairy into her diet. The poor little girl had allergic reactions, and her parents could not figure it out. Of course, my cousin didn’t fess up. And of course, the allergy never disappeared. That poor girl, having such bad reactions and all because of my cousin’s psycho way of thinking.
Image credits: Summer_Dee
#8
So, I once had a friend confess to me that they had a secret relationship with their married boss. It wasn't just a fling either; it went on for years. They’d sneak around, have secret rendezvous, and even go on fake business trips together. The worst part? The boss's spouse had no idea and thought everything was perfectly fine.
Image credits: lunnaromeox
#9
A friend of mine who is married told me that before he was married he was teaching English in Thailand and they he was in a relationship with a ladyboy for three years he says if it's a wife ever finds out she will definitely break up with him.
Image credits: SwapnilKusale
#10
My grandma told me that before I was born my mother had an affair with my dad’s married brother. She apparently cheated a lot. When I was out of the house and married my dad got a letter in the mail telling him she was cheating again and going on trips with this guy. They finally got divorced.
Image credits: Gwayeveryday
#11
My boss faked his qualifications entirely.
Image credits: GRAYNE_WETZKY99
#12
My mom got pregnant her senior year of highschool. She have the baby up for adoption to one of my aunt's friends. My mom told me last year. I'm 41 now. My half sister is 47. Several family members have taken the secret to their grave.
Image credits: Ryanmh1983
#13
An uncle beat a guy almost to death with his bare hands. He had walked in on a friend molesting a kid. He had to pay a fine and do community service for a long time but also didn’t have to pay for beer at the local bar for a few months. He was so reserved and kind so it threw me when I found out what he’d accomplished in his younger years.
Image credits: SausyKat
#14
My coworker would trauma dump on me. I'm not sure why people are attracted to me and always tell me their darkest secrets. I never asked to be their therapist. She told me she used to work for the 3 letter agency and they would do hardcore d***s on weekends with coworkers/friends REGULARLY I'm not talking about weed I'm talking white powdery kind. NEVER GOT CAUGHT. I'm baffled. Here i am on the straight and narrow when I could have experiemented. With my luck I would have been caught so some people are just born to be lucky.
Image credits: Plane-Chemist-3792
#15
Someone once told me literally where the body was burried.
Image credits: skisushi
#16
A friend once confessed they enjoy eating pizza with mayonnaise on top.
Image credits: AdAdmirable8103
#17
Not as crazy as others’, but I found out that my dad is actually my stepdad and my real dad left immediately after I was born. 18 years and still haven’t met the guy.
Image credits: LunaPeachyyy
#18
My cousin died of an overdose several years ago. He was awesome and I loved him very much. Recently my aunt told me that when he was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital she was trying to get ahold of anyone in the family because she was panicking and just needed someone. She couldn’t reach my aunts and called my dad. When he answered and she, obviously really emotional and worked up, said “[my son] just overdosed and is on the way to the hospital!!!” My dad responded by yelling at her “WHAT THE F**K DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT IT?!” I knew she was telling the truth because he did the same thing to me when I called him several years ago upset about something. He never apologized when he found out he didn’t make it either.
My dad is a really complicated person. Sometimes he’s a good dude and sometimes he’s a complete bastard. It’s so hard and confusing having a parent like that.
Image credits: Apocalypstick1
#19
I was at work, owners bff came in and got absolutely hammered, she must have had something in her purse cus i hadnt served that much… she then tells me she had relations with her bffs dad, my bosses dad, and made me promise not to tell anyone and i never have until this right here…. Ugh.
Image credits: Simple_Salt4779
#20
Being ordered to shoot civilians instead of moving them to another location, digging a snow cave too deep to purposely have it collapse on a commanding officer. I haven’t been able to verify these drunken confessions and wouldn’t really know where to start.
#21
I am 43 and recently found out that my grandfather (who passed away before I was born) was in prison when he was 16 for killing his father. There were reports of child and spouse abuse and alcoholism. My family looked at it as if he was protecting his siblings. When he got out of prison he met my grandmother, and they had 11 children who were protected until his death.
Image credits: Mimi_Jess
#22
Chicago detective told me how they would wrap a dry cleaner bag over someone’s face to get them to sign a confession.
Image credits: Perfect_Staff3150
#23
My dad being involved in gangs when I was a baby. They were both crack heads and my dad made friends with one of them who would help pay our bills we were behind on. My mom said one night he came in his shoes were all bloody and he wouldn’t speak a word to her about it.
#24
I knew my moms grandpa had died young (like 50-55) but never knew how. apparently, a cop was driving drunk and way over speed limit, hit his tractor from behind which flipped over and slid over 200 feet, killing him instantly
the cop had to pay around 1000 dollars in todays money as compensation, but did not get sentenced to jail or anything else for that matter (very small town and the cop was buddy buddy with the town leaders)
Image credits: fiposu
#25
An ex friend of mine, sleeps with her biological aunts, husband. She often spends time with their family as well. She f***s her cousins dad and still goes to dinner and family vacations with them.
Image credits: queencape
#26
When my dad was younger, he joined the air force. His mother, my grandmother, who I couldn't stand, almost had a nervous breakdown because she was afraid he would go over seas.
I found out, from a very reliable source, that she actually prayed that something would happen to him to him to prevent him from going over seas.
About 6 months into his enlistment, he was struck with a crippling disease that caused him to have to spend the rest of his life in a wheel chair.
Image credits: charlotsa
#27
This isn't mine, it's my grandpa's.
This was in the late 1940's. One of his buddies calls him up saying he needs someone to talk to, so they meet at a local bar. They had both finished serving in WW2; my gramps in the South Pacific, the other guy in Europe. They meet at the bar, and the guy is visibly upset and says he has to get something off his chest; it's been bothering him since he came home. He proceeds to tell him this story which I will try my best to remember correctly (gramps died 11 years ago so I can't confirm details anymore)
He was stationed in either Eastern France or SW Belgium, I think near the border with Germany. The allies had been winning and the war was only technically still on. This guy was stationed at a POW camp where they had some German soldiers. He was ordered to escort 6-10 of them to another location just a few miles away. It was winter, and very cold that night. He had to drive them through woods on dirt roads, and the truck breaks down en route with engine issues. He orders them to get out of the back so he can keep an eye on them while he deals with the engine, so the Germans are just standing there in the middle of the woods, and apparently their movements and talking to each other (he couldn't speak German) are making him paranoid. He starts yelling commands at them like "stop talking," "move closer together," "stay where I can see you." None of the Germans speak English, so there is more talking amongst themselves and confused movements, which only increases the guy's already heightened state of fear and paranoia. One of the German soldiers makes too sudden of a movement or comes towards him and he shoots. The other soldiers start freaking out so he starts shooting them. He ended up killing every one of them and running back to his base. He tells his commanding officer what happened, that he panicked and thought they were devising a plan to kill him and escape, so he shot them all. The officer basically tells him not to tell anyone about it and arranges to get him discharged as soon as possible and to not think or speak of it again. They sweep the whole thing under the rug and send the guy home. They didn't have trauma counseling back in those days, especially for something that they wanted to keep quiet, which is why my Grandpa came to hear the story.
#28
I was into martial arts (karate) as a teenager. It started as a hobby, but I began to take it more seriously after experiencing sexual harassment.
A martial arts senpai (senior in ranking) confessed to me that he r*ped his cousin at a family reunion. He was about 19 years old when it happened. The cousin was about 11 or 12.
To this day, I have no idea why he told me that, but I avoided him and eventually left the dojo.
Image credits: anon
#29
i slept with a guy who was a civil engineer once, and he worked on a multimillion dollar high rise building he ultimately had to quit working on because they wanted it built under dimensions that weren't safe for the soil conditions. so they said either say its safe or we find someone who will. and when he refused, they did.
supposedly, that building [which he wouldnt specificy for obvious reasons], ended up in fact being built the way they wanted, and it will likely face significant structural issues and lawsuits in future years. it may even be dangerous for residents.
Image credits: Pale_Woman
#30
My mother told me that my father physically hurt my brother as a toddler. She said dad had grabbed him by the back of the neck in a rage, and my brother held his head crooked for weeks.
She finally took my brother to the doctor. My brother was fine, but mom asked her little boy to lie, and not tell the doctor what dad had done to him.
I wasn’t even born yet, but my father was a violent man throughout my whole childhood. I wish my parents had gotten a divorce much earlier.
Image credits: Green-Krush
#31
I want to be really vague about this, so I'll explain it this way: A very mild-mannered, friendly older man told me about how he was working abroad in an area that had just gone through an ethnicity-based civil war. The place was still very chaotic and lawless. He and his colleagues found out there was a group of local men from one ethnic group who would abduct and assault primary school-aged girls from the other ethnic group. There was really no good legal mechanism through which to address this. My friend and his colleagues decided the best way to deal with it was to find out where the men lived and shoot them in the head.
They went out over the course of one night, killed several of the men and left their bodies in the road. The assaults in the area stopped because most of the perpetrators were dead and the ones that were left didn't dare do anything again.
My friend wasn't upset by about killing them, but seemed haunted by what the men were doing to the girls. He said of the men, "They had no business being alive.".
Image credits: SuLiaodai
#32
I remembered another one. I used to hang out with a ex-Mormon friend. There was a condom commercial on and she shook her head saying she'd never had to use them before. I was like, "What? You've had like 3 long term ex boyfriends I'm aware of?" Then she told a few stories about her and her oldest brother and the yearly at-home abortion methods and the 3 children I didn't know existed that survived her attempts. I'm just sitting there staring at the wall while she's digging deeper and deeper into her childhood and late teens. She mentions things between her brother started when she was 8 years old and her brother was in his 20's and blamed herself for being so attention seeking. Obviously her brother is a predator and made her feel this way. The one time she tried to tell on her brother her dad ended up taking the fall for his son. The Mormon church made it all go away and nothing became of it.
#33
That my ex’s dad cheated on his wife multiple times throughout their years of marriage. It was his dad who told me. She doesn’t know. Given the multiple red flags about him I’d say it makes sense. He doesn’t treat her super well IMO, but then again relationships to me look different than theirs might be.
#34
My friend told me that her bf, who's 30 years older than her, beat her during Christmas break because he thought she cheated on him.
#35
While driving a sweet old lady in my senior citizens center home one afternoon about two years ago she told me that she served 7 years in prison for manslaughter, causing the death of her boyfriend, then added that she would kill me if I told anyone. .
Image credits: MatchPoint5
#36
There’s a LOT of messiness in my family. I found out my uncle (mom’s brother) was a surprise, forcing my then 20-year-old grandmother to marry my jerk of a grandfather out of wedlock. I also learned my half-uncle (dad’s half brother) was in prison because he murdered a man with a table leg in a d**g deal gone bad. For some reason, the wedlock thing freaked me out more because that side of the family always tries to act perfect??
#37
Had a roommate show me an article in the local section of the city newspaper, it was about a young man killed outside of a club. He had gotten into a fight and the other person punched him and he then fell and hit his head on the curb and later died. The incident had happened a year prior and they were still looking for the suspect.
Roommate told me it was him, he had punched the dude. He had a bad temper and I believed him.
Image credits: splitip86
#38
My father told me a story about his ex and how she was crazy. They were young and she wanted to have one of his children so anytime after they had sex she would do a handstand against the wall butt a*s naked so she would get pregnant. This was a huge red flag but he continued to stay with her for a few years after... and she did eventually get pregnant.
