Every family has a secret. But secrets were easier to keep in a time without online DNA testing or access to a never-ending supply of photos and personal details on social media.
In the past, significant family events were kept hidden for decades and only discovered when elder members of the family passed away, shocking those who were left behind.
From love affairs to money laundering and so many ‘hidden’ relatives, these 18 anonymous women share with Mamamia their family’s most well-kept secrets.
1. Hidden sexuality and male escorts.
“Seven years ago when my dad died, I found out he was gay. We were best mates, and he lived with us often. He and my mum had separated years before, and he had occasionally had girlfriends.
“When he died I needed to use his phone to finalise certain things and found a lot of messages to male escort agencies organising appointments with sex workers. It makes me sad that because of his class and background and the s****y society we lived in, he never had the opportunity to be himself.”
2. A secret sister-in-law.
“About three years ago when my father-in-law died, a lady contacted me saying she was my husband’s sister. My name was in the funeral notice and she found me via social media. My now ex-husband’s mum Barbara* was pregnant before marriage back in the 70s so went on a ‘holiday’ for a few weeks to have the baby and then adopt it out. Nobody in their extended family knows and they consider it a top secret. My ex’s family refuse to acknowledge her. I think it is sad because she is a beautiful, successful lady with two beautiful daughters. One daughter looks just like Barbara and the other a lot like my daughter.
“She has spent years trying to find her mum and contacted Barbara before me, but Barbara kept brushing her off. Barbara’s response to me was ‘That evil woman. She just wants my money!’. But from what I understand, she just wants to know her biological mum.”
3. A secret marriage.
“My mum was married three times, not twice as my half-siblings believe. My biological dad died in a car accident when I was just two years old and a few years later, my mum remarried a real scoundrel scumbag who ended up taking a lot of money from her (he even tried to get custody of me!).
“This led to huge embarrassment on her part. She later met and married my stepdad and fell pregnant with twins who were born in 1987. These now 35-year-old half-siblings of mine have no idea that there was another marriage in between. I do not know why my mum was embarrassed so deeply because of a failed relationship, but the sad thing is that my mum now has early onset dementia and can’t remember anything, plus my stepdad died 10 years ago. So it’ll probably be up to me to keep this secret.”
4. A fractured family.
“My grandma’s parents had both had children from their first marriages where the spouse had died. Grandma was the only child of this second relationship. Her dad’s older children never liked her so he paid for them to live in a different house and they never accepted her as their half-sister but she didn’t understand why.
“Seventy years later, when my mum was researching family history, she realised Grandma was born four or five months after her parent’s wedding. In 1918, this wasn’t a premature baby! Mum decided not to tell her, but it made sense that her half-siblings on her dads’ side didn’t like her – he got another woman pregnant, out of wedlock, after their mum died, then moved her and her daughter in and brought another baby into their lives.”
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5. An unhappy marriage.
“My father died when I was a child and after the death of his sister (my aunt) I received a bunch of letters that he had written to her.
“In them, he spoke of being miserable and ‘stuck’ in his marriage to my mother. He was planning on leaving her and then he died. She doesn’t know. I see no point in unnecessarily hurting her and it’s a burden I’ve carried.
My mother still thinks they were happy together and to me, it’s easier for her to just believe that.”
6. Unexplained wealth.
“My grandparents had a ‘wealthy era’ – which absolutely never made any sense to me considering they were both war babies, and had no qualifications or inheritance. In the 80s, they owned an art gallery, showing paintings and works that were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. They had millions of dollars worth of stock.
“They were always busy, rolling the high life, driving expensive cars, travelling the world, living lavish lives until one day, they retired, moved to a quiet suburb and it was like the money never existed. We only heard stories, saw photos, and had a few little paintings left over. Years and years later, we began piecing together that not everything was exactly by the books. Nothing was completely illegal, but enough for it to be something that’s become quite hush-hush, and we don’t talk about it anymore.”
7. Two new sisters.
“I am one of three kids, my two brothers are much younger than me. When I was 12, there was a day when something really upset me and I blurted out to my parents (who were separated) ‘I just wish I had a sister!!’. They looked at one another and my dad said… ‘well, you do’.
“Before he met my mum, he actually had two daughters who, for various reasons, were no longer in his life. My mind was blown. After much pleading my mum actually organised an introduction but because of the fraught family dynamic, they didn’t really come into my life until my 18th birthday when they called and said ‘You’re old enough to make your own decisions and we hope you’ll be a part of our life now’. It’s been 20 years now, and it’s like they have always been a part of my life. We all have kids of our own now and I couldn’t imagine my life without them!”
8. A secret affair and sibling.
“Fourteen years ago when my parents were still married we received a Christmas card with a photo of a little girl, about four-years-old maybe, and a message saying she was our sister and she ‘wanted to get to know us’. Well, you can imagine the s**t hit the fan. It turns out that my dad had a secret child from an affair…one of many things that eventually led to my parents’ divorce. My grandmother on my mum’s side still doesn’t know this girl exists. She’s 18 now. I still haven’t told my friends I have a half-sister because I feel super uncomfortable about it.
9. A secret brother, adopted out.
“My step-mum was in her mid-40s when she found out she had an older sibling who was put up for adoption in England. Her mum and dad met in England and her father cheated on his first wife, resulting in the pregnancy and subsequent adoption. There was HUGE drama when the long-lost brother tracked the family down as her half-sister was always resentful of her dad’s ‘new family’.
“A note was found after my step-mum’s dad’s death, revealing it all.”
10. Bi-sexual affairs and gaslighting.
“Growing up, I knew my parents had a tumultuous marriage. They split when I was a young kid, and it wasn’t until my late teens that I was told about all the infidelity on my dad’s part, along with some pretty bad gaslighting behaviour.
“Then last year I was told that my dad had cheated on Mum with both men and women. I’m not going to lie, it really shocked me. I had never really thought much about my dad’s sexuality. It’s something I don’t think he would ever admit or share with me. I don’t think that his decision not to talk to me about it comes from fearing judgement from me, as I am a very vocal ally of LGBTQIA issues. But perhaps it comes down to something deeper within himself about his ideas of masculinity. He grew up in rural Australia with a very conservative family, so I think there might be some internalised homophobia.
“For the past year, I’ve been wrestling with what to do and what to say. Right now I don’t see myself telling him that I know what I know, for fear it will further isolate him from me. It’s such a confusing feeling.”
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11. Adopted cousins who still don’t know.
“My mum has three cousins who are adopted, but don’t know they’re adopted. They are all just under 50 years old; twin women (one has since died) and a younger brother.
“When their father died a few years ago (their mother died many years ago), he expected his sister (my Grandma, their Aunt) to tell them. They were all over 40 by this stage. My Grandma does not want to take this on and has not told them. It’s a big family discussion about whether they should be told.
“Here’s the issue: one twin died of breast cancer, and they are trying to understand the family history. The younger brother has a severely autistic son and again they’re trying to delve into the family history here. Both are extremely unfair for them to research because we are not their biological family.
“But, they are from the forced adoption era, and the adoptive parents are on the birth certificate, not the bio parents. Finding bio parents will require DNA, and given their age, it’s unlikely the biological parents will still be alive. Plus, everyone in the family knows, except them. It would crush them.
“It’s a constant family discussion about whether they should be told – do you tell them and throw their entire lives out? Or leave them to search family history that’s just wrong, but let them keep their sense of who they are?
“They have no parents left to ask questions. I am personally in the camp of telling them will cause more hurt that outweighs the questions it will answer but other family members say they have a right to know.”
12. An affair at the pub.
“My Dad was married prior to my Mum which I always knew about as I have a step-sister. What I didn’t know until later in life however is that my Mum was the barmaid at my Dad’s local and well you can come to your own conclusions there. Needless to say, it’s like a real-life episode of Coronation Street.
13. Secret surgery.
“I was very flat-chested as a child, so growing up into my teens it became a ‘thing’ and we often made jokes about it at home e.g. every Christmas I would sing around the house, ‘All I want for Christmas is my two front bumps’, my brother called me a surfboard, etc.
“My parents led me to believe I would ‘grow’ boobs in time as my mum has amazingly perfect ones. I found out when I was 21 that hers were fake, one of the first in Australia to have them ‘done’ I’d imagine as it wasn’t a thing women did in the early 70s! They said I had a big mouth and didn’t want the neighbours to find out her secret.”
14. A divorced mum.
“My mum was married before my dad and I didn’t find out until I was 14 which happened to also be my peak dramatic teen girl era. I overheard my aunty say, ‘Haven’t you told them yet?’ at my cousin’s 21st birthday party and then mum had to spill. She didn’t have kids though, so I don’t have any secret siblings.”
15. A runaway and teen pregnancy.
“During a rebellious phase, my aunty ran away from home when she was 14, not long after my Nan had moved the whole family here from New Zealand.
“She was gone for two years and during that time my poor Nan had to ID bodies at the morgue because they didn’t know what had happened to her. Then she turned up on their doorstep with a two-year-old! She was too scared to tell my Nan she was pregnant. I found out about it in my early twenties. I still don’t know all the details because my Nan is very private.”
16. A secret divorce.
“My parents-in-law’s marriage certificate got caught up in our paperwork when my partner and I moved house. When I found it, my MIL’s details on the certificate indicated ‘divorced’, which was a surprise. They’re very religious, so still see divorce as something that’s quite taboo and shameful.
“My parents-in-law were always vague about their ‘how we met’ story and timeline (I LOVE asking that stuff) so this explains why they’ve gotten so weird about it whenever I asked about it over the decade I’ve known them. Five years on, my partner still agonises over how to bring it up with his parents. His siblings have no idea either!”
17. A missing Aunty.
“I’m several years older than my cousins. Growing up when I spent time with my maternal aunt, quite often her husband’s sister would hang around as well as she lived on the same street. Christmas, birthdays and other celebrations she would always be there and I thought she was cool. Anyway, she just up and left one night. I understand her mum was very controlling and never gave her much freedom. The family never spoke about her again. Even when both parents passed away, they never mentioned her or tried to look for her or anything.
“No photos of her were included in the slideshow at the funeral and she wasn’t mentioned in the eulogy. My cousin has no idea she exists. I asked my dad about it recently and we agreed it wasn’t our place to share but I often wonder what happened to her and think that if I was her, I’d want to know my parents have passed.”
18. A secret half-brother.
“My husband was in his mid-30s when he found out he had a half-brother. His father got a girl pregnant prior to dating his mother. It was all controversial over 50 years ago and happening in Dubbo, NSW. We found out when this half-brother called my FIL while we were in the car and he was on speaker. My FIL reacted with, ‘Didn’t I tell you?’”
Do you have a family secret you wish to share for a story? Get in touch with the Mamamia team via email: [email protected]
*While all these women are known to Mamamia, some names and minor details have been changed to protect their anonymity.
Laura Jackel is Mamamia’s Family Writer. For links to her articles, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.
Feature Image: Getty/Canva.
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