14 people share the secrets their friends and family didn't want them to know about.

Deep down, we know that everyone has secrets (even if they're itty bitty ones). But it can be easy to forget that even your close friends and family members have secrets floating around that they've kept carefully concealed from you and the rest of the world.

Finding out a secret about a loved one can be confusing, clarifying, exciting, and sometimes downright depressing. It all depends on whether they told you or you stumbled on it, and what precisely the secret reveals.

In a popular Ask Reddit post, people shared the secrets their friends and family didn't want them to know.

1. From HoopOnPoop:

For me, it's a friend's dad. He left the family when my friend was young but would occasionally send a gift or card. My friend got a Facebook message one day from a woman who had been doing ancestry research. It turns out the dad had done the same thing (get married, have kids, bail) several times and my friend has a crap load of half siblings he never knew about. They're all friends now.

2. From MrsJimmyJohn:

I got so many half siblings out there I have to cross reference my Tinder matches with my 23 and Me data.

3. From Greedy_Information96:

My parents had a son before me. Neither one ever talked about him. In fact, nobody in my entire extended family (uncles, aunts, grandparents) ever mentioned him. I was adored and doted on. It was a happy, loving childhood. When I was 21, I found a box with old photos and saw my parents with a kid, asking my mum who it was.

She simply looked at it and said that was her son. It came as quite a shock. When I tried to press for more info, she simply told me he died when he was 3, I wanted to know how, what, and when, but she stopped me in my tracks and he's never been brought up again.

4. From partial_birth:

My mother treated my wife like shit during our wedding because we didn't let her 'host the rehearsal dinner'...at my wife's uncle's house, didn't let her plan any of it, and did all of the work ourselves.

I only learned that she'd been dragging my wife around by the arm to try to get her to cede control of aspects of the wedding a week after the wedding. She wonders why we don't see her more than twice a year.

5. From OhWhyNotMarie:

My mom used to str*p. No one will admit it. My dad got drunk once and let it slip out about the “club” she worked at when he met her. I’m fairly sure she did a p*rn or 2. I hope to NEVER stumble upon it.

6. From Competitive_Juice627:

My maternal grandmother was married to a widower who had 4 children from his previous marriage. She made him give up his kids before she married him. I guess she didn't want to take care of his children.

She became pregnant with my mother, and when my mother was about 5 years old, her parents (my grandparents) got divorced. He just couldn't live with my cold-hearted grandmother any longer. My mother didn't tell me that. I found d out by coincidence that I had 4 uncles.

7. From JerkCircleton:

I learned a bunch of stuff about my grandfather after he died. He was a bootlegger, running whiskey from Canada down the coast into New England. He was an arsonist, burning down several buildings owned by people he had grudges against. He eloped at 16, had several kids, then completely bailed on that family a couple years later.

8. From deevee234:

When I was 17 I found out that my dad wasn't actually my biological dad, my mother had an affair and got pregnant. My parents knew I wasn't my father's child and decided to keep it a secret from me and my mother's side of the family. I grew up with 2 older and 1 younger sibling who turned out to be my half siblings.

I was treated differently my entire life and when I found out I was an affair baby, I felt instant relief. I knew my whole life something was wrong within my family dynamic. I moved out when I was a teen, at 16 the last argument I had with my parents ended with me saying 'there's no way I'm related to you people, something must have happened at birth'

9. From 12Fatcat:

I grew up thinking my father abandoned me and my mom. but years later far into adulthood I learned from my grandma that my mom left my dad and didn't allow him to see me so that she could extort money out of him. I to this day still don't have a relationship with him.

10. From Bmc00:

When I was a little kid, I was wading around in the ocean. Suddenly my mom's boyfriend told me to come to shore, then I felt something hit my leg. It looked like you rubbed my leg with sandpaper. They said it must have been a crab, I was dumb or something and believed it. It was actually a shark.

He saw it swimming towards me and that's why he told me to come to shore. They didn't want to tell me it was really a shark because they were afraid I wouldn't want to go back into the ocean.

11. From Talesmith22:

Going through the old family computer one day and found out the real reason why my dad moved us to the other side of the country. Turns out it wasn't to be closer to our extended family like he told us.

Apparently, dad had turned in one of the fellow doctors at his clinic for giving out prescriptions for painkillers that was neither ethical or legal. What dad hadn't been expecting that all the addicts getting drugs from this guy were VERY upset. A few things started making sense after that: the time the dogs broke the glass door? Nope, someone had tried to break in and got scared off by the dogs.

Dad's sudden interest in g*ns and teaching us how to shoot? Surely that's because stepmother's family is all ranchers, right? I mean, that's why I learned to throw a lasso when I was like 6-7.

Nope, it was because dad was scared for our family's safety, but also wanted to make sure we knew that g*ns were not toys and we'd know how to use it if we were ever in a situation where that knowledge could save our lives. Never told him I found out. He tried so hard to shield us from the reality of the situation.

12. From JennFoogle:

I didn’t know much about it my grandfather other than the fact he was a politician in El Salvador and was very much involved with the school my mom went to in her village. He died when my mom was around 15 just a few weeks before her quinceañera from a gunshot wound. He was murdered.

One day after coming home from work. My mom was on the phone with someone so I just waved hi because I didn’t wanna be rude and interrupt her phone call, but then she tells me to come say hi to my aunt. My mom only had two sisters so I thought it was one of the two sisters. But it wasn’t either of my two aunts turns out my mom had a half-sister.

I said hi and found out my other aunt lives in California with two of my other cousins one who is my age and the other was in her mid-20s. After the call I asked my mom how come she never told me I had another aunt. Turns out my grandpa had an affair with another woman.

The woman’s husband died of a sickness and when my grandfather comforted her they both fell in love. He told her how he was gonna leave my grandma and my mom and her sisters. He never left them. He was murdered by the father of his mistress because he didn’t keep his promise. Since then I never looked at my grandfather the same way and no one visits his grave.

13. From dragonfeet1:

Obviously, it's a secret and my mom went to her grave without ever telling us, but long before my mother met and married my father, she fell in love with a man in Italy, Ricardo. SOMETHING happened between them and they never spoke again. My sister and I suspect she had an abortion.

This was in the mid-1960s where this would have been a life-ending scandal for an unmarried woman. We never knew if she actually loved my dad or if Ricardo was the love of her life and my dad was just...the settling DOWN. (Not that my dad, a well-educated, devoted, and honestly great guy is trash, just, you know, we don't know if she ever gave Ricardo the boot from the number one spot in her heart).

14. From California_Sun1112:

My mother didn't want me to know that she hated my brother's wife. Probably because she knew that if I knew, that I would tell bro and the b**ch at first opportunity. I found this out from my mom's best friend after my mom passed away.