People Are Sharing Their Deeepest Darkest Family Secrets (25 Stories)

Families are often a mix of warmth, support, and… secrets. Sometimes these secrets are so intense or awkward that they’re labeled as the family’s “we don’t talk about that” topic. Recently, someone on Reddit asked, “What’s the ‘we don’t talk about that’ in your family?”, and the responses came pouring in. From funny to heart-wrenching, these stories offer a glimpse into what families prefer to keep in the shadows.

#1

Image source: chernchern, SHVETS production / Pexels (not the actual photo)

My wife once made some kind of chicken with a chocolate glaze…. we don’t ever speak of that evil lest it rise again!

#2

Image source: SharonWit, Nicole Michalou / pexels (not the actual photo)

My family didn’t talk about anything beyond the weather, prices at the grocery store, and light gossiping about other family members. I was 12 when my dad died. No one said his name again, and there were no stories about him. As an adult, I reflect on how pathological the avoidance was.

#3

Image source: 520Madison, tabitha turner / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

When I was a teen in the ‘60s no one in my family was allowed to talk about Aunt Rita because she preferred the company of other women. I thought that she was a strong vibrant happy woman who never had a bad thing to say about anyone and didn’t care what anyone had to say about her. She was friggin awesome.

#4

Image source: tattedupgirl, Allan Mas / Pexels (not the actual photo)

When I was 5 my dad one day took me with him to visit a guy about buying a wagon. While they were talking I went into the backyard to play with the guys grandson. My Dad forgot I was with him and just left. He came back 25 minutes later and that was the very last time my Mom let my Dad take me anywhere until I was old enough to call home. The biggest plot twist is I’m now married to the grandson. But yeah my Dad hates if anyone brings up I got left so we don’t.

#5

Image source: Senior-Geologist-166, Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels (not the actual photo)

My uncle committed s***ide to escape the hatred of the family. He was gay and their “Christian” values said to treat him like absolute garbage because of it. After he passed my grandmother tried to destroy all of his things; they were/are apparently possessed by demons.

I was allowed to know him, though. He was still blood, after all. I loved him so much. Now the only memories of him that I have are playing Legos and solitaire in the computer room. I have a few of his things that no one will *ever* get their hands on. I’ll just be over here, hanging with my demonic spoon rest.

#6

Image source: MPD1987, Lochlainn Riordan / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

When I was 12 (in 1999) my parents told me they were taking me to Disneyland, and dropped me off at a boarding school and just left me there for 2 years. I had no warning and no idea what was happening or why, and no idea when I would see them again. All these years later and I still cry when I think about it.

#7

Image source: cleanpage4adirtygirl, Brock Wegner / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

We all pretend we don’t know my uncle is gay. No one has a problem with it at all aside from my uncle himself, who has a lot of shame about his sexuality due to some childhood trauma. So we all pretend we think he’s just such a hermit that love isn’t for him and all he needs is his cabin and his fishing pole.

He knows we know, we know he knows we know – but for now this is how he feels most comfortable.

#8

Image source: Confident_Artistic, cottonbro studio / Pexels (not the actual photo)

My dad’s old hairstyle in the 80s. We have an agreement to never bring up the perm again.

#9

Image source: Popcorn_Blitz, Daniel Martinez / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

My aunt talked my cousin out of an abortion (not her kid, just her niece) and it *f****d* my cousin’s life up. She lost the kid, ended up on all the d***s and spent a while in jail. She’s got her s**t back on track at this point but she was headed somewhere until that f*****g meddling holy roller got involved.

My family doesn’t talk about it, but I sure do. Every time I see that Aunt. She can f*****g rot in hell and I will never let her forget what she did to my cousin- we were thick as thieves. It’s been thirty years and my rage still burns white hot.

#10

Image source: lostinthecapes, Kateryna Hliznitsova / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

That today is the day my mom died. No one has mentioned it. Rip Bobbi Jo Caraway. I’ll always remember, even if they don’t.

#11

Image source: Travelgrrl, Giulia Squillace / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

My grandmother sadly had to enter a TB sanitarium when she still had a handful of children at home. A couple of older sibs moved back home to help raise them. Eventually my grandfather started seeing another (married) woman in their small rural community. (My mother always said that once her mom learned of the affair, “she just gave up” and died at the sanitarium. This was about 3 years before the advent of antibiotics that might have cured her.)

So now grandfather was widowed, his youngest two kids moved to town to finish out high school by themselves, and the Other Woman had a baby that was putatively her (still) husband’s child. I don’t remember if her husband died or they divorced, but by the time I came along, my grandfather was married to the Other Woman, and had been for decades.

He was the patriarch of our very large family, the only grandparent I ever knew, though surely he couldn’t have picked me out of a lineup, along with his dozens of other grandchildren. Anyway, this side of the family was fun, gregarious, beer drinking, Catholic church attending, poker players. Once during a pretty lubricated family get-together, the Affair Baby, now a grown woman, said something like: “I just don’t know where I belong in this family” (because supposedly she was no blood kin to any of us). My lovely Drunk Uncle Nick said: “Well hell, you’re our SISTER!” I was about 12. I swear the windows rattled from the seismic release of emotions over what was finally acknowledged.

#12

Image source: Sparkling_Wishes, Tom The Photographer / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

How I was forced to marry my second cousin at 16, and when I finally couldn’t take it anymore when I was 23. I called my Mother begging her please let me come home he is gonna k*ll me, actively beating me as we are on the phone, all she could say was “Baby I can’t help you.” Then she hung up on me. Thankfully I made it out alive, nearly a decade later living a completely different life as a new wife and Mother.

#13

Image source: mokutou, Crypto Crow / pexels (not the actual photo)

My biological maternal grandfather smothered my newborn uncle in retaliation for my grandmother sticking up for herself during his abusive tirades. He’d been abusive in every sense of the word towards my grandmother and their children, and for the most part my grandmother just took it out of fear. One day she got a bold streak and argued back at him. He stopped arguing and my grandmother thought maybe he just decided to leave it alone. Later that day he smothered their newborn son in his cradle, and told her if she ever talked back to him again, she’d be next. He lead the authorities to believe it was crib death, and so it was ruled to be such.

Thankfully my grandmother escaped him some time later. I didn’t hear this story until I was an adult. I never met my maternal grandfather and I’m quite content with that. If I cared enough to know where he was buried, I’d go p**s on it.

#14

Image source: Super_Estate89

Oh, in my family, it’s definitely the mysterious ‘potluck fight of 2016.’ Like, no one will tell me exactly what happened, but apparently, it involved my aunt’s potato salad, my grandma’s deviled eggs, and my uncle making a ‘harmless joke’ that escalated into full-on chaos. 😬

All I know is that someone stormed out, my mom ended up crying, and to this day, the phrase ‘potato salad’ is basically a trigger word at family gatherings. We’ve all collectively agreed to just pretend it didn’t happen, but the tension every time someone brings a dish to share? Palpable. 🥴

Family secrets are so weird, right?

#15

My brother SAing me from age 6-12.
Finding videos of him recording girls at school….like under their skirts and stuff like that without them knowing.

Me trying to reason with my mom that he needed help after a s***ide attempt….but she didn’t listen.
He…left a s***ide note saying cremate me and sped and crashed his truck.

After he died went through his computer and it was filled with even more videos he took of girls at school.

But my mom REFUSES to the core to say it was a s***ide. Talk about the note, talk about the behavior that led up to it. Refuses to discuss or bring up any of the findings…..refuses to acknowledge my sexual trauma in any capacity….the family doesn’t talk about any of it. Thats a big fat sack of nope.

Image source: Berdname-

#16

My aunt. She abandoned my grandmother on her death bed leaving my dad to sort out everything. After he did the only thing she cared about was the money, didn’t even try to show up for the funeral. F**k you Kelly, you hateful, conniving, racist c**t. She won’t even talk to her own daughter (my cousin), because she had kids with and married a black man. They’re happily married BTW.

Image source: i-might-do-that

#17

Image source: littlest_bug, DESIGNECOLOGIST / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

The fact that my father is likely responsible for the disappearance of his 1st wife.

#18

Image source: cat_prophecy, Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

On my dad’s side: my parental grandmother died from “complications from diabetes” when my dad was in his 20s. My grandfather was dating a woman he knew less than three months later.

The elephant in the room is that my grandmother, who to be fair had mental illness issues, k*lled herself by putting herself into a diabetic coma after finding out my grandfather was cheating.

#19

Autism. We’re all autistic. I’m just the one who got my kids diagnosed.

I absolutely cannot have that conversation with my mother. She used to have meltdowns over how I wasn’t masking very well. Not the words she’d use, of course.

Image source: 52BeesInACoat

#20

Image source: ValeriaCarolina, Curated Lifestyle / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

My Mother sleeping with my BIL while he was still married to my sister. Big time family drama.

#21

Image source: wittyusername0708, Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

My mom had a brother who was a couple of years older than her. From what I’ve put together, he was autistic and was sent away for electric shock therapy some time in the 50s/60s, which eventually k*lled him.
We have no idea when he died, or where he is buried. My mother apparently found out when her parents casually mentioned it over dinner when she asked how he was doing. My grandfather (with whom I grew up with) refused to speak about him. Would change the subject or leave the room if he was asked anything about him.
The only evidence we have of his existence is a picture of him and my mother when they were children, and some forms from the hospital he was in describing an episode where he was hitting and scratching the nurses. Just really sad all around.

#22

Image source: ComeHereBanana, Sandra Seitamaa / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

One Christmas, we had to pretend my cousin wasn’t 7 months pregnant because her dad “didn’t know.” She was thin as a rail with a big beach ball belly. Denial was strong in that part of the family.

#23

Image source: gothiclg, Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

My late uncle had schizophrenia or something schizophrenia adjacent, things weren’t bad enough to force him into treatment but mental illness was completely undeniable. I once asked family if he’d been taken to a doctor to see if there was something diagnosable he could have been helped with and you’d think I’d kicked a baby. That uncle is “a little weird” and that’s the end of that conversation.

#24

Image source: Potionofhypocrisy, National Cancer Institute / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

The fact that I have two half sisters…….my dad cheated on my mom. My mom knows about one of the girls, not the other. Ancestry DNA for the win……no one says a word because we don’t want mom to have to relive that trauma.

#25

Image source: CaptainFartHole, Drazen Nesic / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

My Great Aunt.
She and my grandma (her sister) hate each other so much that I didn’t even know she existed until I was 30 and I was accidentally shown a picture with her in it. I still don’t know why they stopped talking and grandma is obviously not willing to talk about it at all.
The funny thing is, I know my great aunt’s children. They’re really close to my grandma and come to every holiday dinner. I always knew they were related to me, I just never knew how.