Lots of people have some small secrets they keep to themselves. Usually, they end up telling their SO and those closest to them. But, what if their boyfriend or girlfriend finds out a secret they didn't want them to know?
Here are stories from Reddit about people who found out the secret their SO didn't want them to know. Content has been edited for clarity.
Girlfriend Or Secret Agent?
“She has secret weapons and Meals Ready To Eat buried in the forest and a couple of locations in the US, including Yellowstone. Every five years, she takes a road trip with the ‘girls.’ She also has a false shelf in her apartment with a weapon hidden inside.
I learned about this because I was watching one of those Youtube videos about secret rooms and hidden furniture and it clicked when I saw the shelves. I checked it and when I opened it, there it was. Then I checked her computer and found nothing. But after snooping around enough, I found a go bag, with a weapon, ammo, Meals Ready To Eat, medical supplies, a medical stapler, among other things. There was also a few paper maps marking locations. One of those places was nearby enough, 30 miles, so I decided to check it myself. It was a buried hard case about four feet deep, that had a weapon, ammo, what seemed like a bucket of rations, about $400, plus ten 1oz silver coins. Everything was vacuum sealed. I think all the locations have the exact same stuff.
It’s hard to imagine, but all in all, there are seven locations marked. I’ve never brought it up, but now every once in a while, I notice that she has things hidden all over her apartment. I was going to change a light switch that was sort of not working properly. I found a key in a thin plastic container. I googled around and its a safety deposit box key for a bank in the middle of nowhere Michigan.
Like, what am I supposed to say to her? Are you James bond’s daughter? Jason Borne’s sister? Is Skynet hunting you?”
Letting Lies Slide For His Daughter’s Sake
“My ex-wife talks poorly about me to her family and friends. My daughter hears it all and sometimes feels embarrassed when I have her and when we go out to do something. My ex petitioned for an anullment and got it. She doesn’t know that as part of it I got to read everything she made up about me. She propagated it all to her family. I could have shown the panel at the tribunal the racy pictures and videos she used to send to me while at work where she would ask for all kinds of things to be done to her. They could have been a defense for her claiming I made her do it all for 9 years, but at that moment I just put the phone down and said that it isn’t true and that they shouldn’t believe her.
Then, I confirmed that I was diagnosed with depression. They granted her the anullment. My daughter is dealing with it ok and seeing a shrink. I do my best to be a role model to her in every aspect and don’t touch on the subject because she doesn’t want to.”
Bills, Bills, Bills
“My significant other has some substantial debt from a couple poor decisions right after high school that she thinks I don’t know about. She racked up about $25K after graduation between getting herself a car, not paying attention to her credit card, and student loans. She’s not the best with money, and she doesn’t know how much our apartment or any of the bills related to it are. We’re evenly splitting the bill across all our roommates, but she hasn’t paid her full share in about a year and a half. She thinks she has because I’ve been the one telling her how much she owes each month. I’ve been paying about $300 for her on top of my portion and the portion for my siblings.
But she’s too proud to ask for help with her debt. I don’t want to make her feel insecure by drawing her attention to it, so I’ve been doing things behind the scenes to help her out. I’ve been teaching her some about budgeting. She’s getting close to paying it all off. Once she’s done, I’m going to explain to her what I did.”
She Was 16!
“He’s my ex now, obviously, but we were together for 9 years. He cheated on me for over a year with a coworker. He kept her a secret because she was underage. He was 26, she was 16. Once she turned 18, they made it public. He used to mention her in work stories here and there and I never thought of it as being anything. Then, he started driving me to work and keeping the car then picking me up. He wanted me nowhere near his workplace. He put a password on his phone. He got texts at odd hours, like at 6 am while she was waiting on the bus. I left work early and a friend took me to his workplace to meet him instead of him coming to mine to pick me up. Surprise! They left together, hand in hand, several minutes after everyone else exited the building.
I had already figured it out at this point, but I stupidly waited for him to come clean instead of calling him out. He wouldn’t. He worked as a retail manager and had a keeper box and magnet in our house. I locked his phone inside while he was in the shower and hid the magnetic key. I made him tell me everything, which he knew I already knew, before I would unlock his phone. Then I kicked him out.”
Ghosts Of Boyfriend Pasts
“One of the last guys I dated made me feel like we hit it off right from the very first date. I could see myself having a future with this guy, so much so that I took him to meet my mama after only a month of dating. About 6 weeks into the relationship, we were talking about past loves and heartbreaks. I felt comfortable with him, so for the first time ever, I tell him about why it’s hard for me to trust people, to accept that they really love me. Not that I don’t believe in love, just that it takes me a little longer. Too many times I’ve let myself fall in love, just to be ghosted and left wondering what I did wrong. He had already said that he was falling in love with me, so I said I could easily see myself falling head over heels in love with him, but I still had a little trouble accepting that he was being honest about loving me.
He’s the first guy I’ve ever admitted that kind of thing to, really laid my heart out on the table so he could see that I’m not dead inside, and even though I want to love and be loved, I’m just a little cynical that anyone would truly love me.
A week later, that man up and ghosted me, just stopped answering my texts, calls, and snapchats. A few months later, I run into him and we end up chatting a bit about the ‘break-up’ (more like a disappearance), and he tells me it was mostly because he didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t believe in love.
This idiot literally did exactly what I told him I was afraid of, and he still thinks I’m ridiculous for being so distrusting. I want to love and be loved, but I don’t want to invest my feelings in someone who thinks so little of me. He can’t even talk to me about the relationship not working out, and he thinks disappearing is the best solution.”
At The Gym Or With Jim?
“After my car was almost stolen, I installed a tracker on my car and my ex-wife’s car for safety reasons. She saw me working on her car and I mentioned a bunch of times that I was putting it in my car as well. I kinda figured she knew what I was doing. But, that’s how I found out that when she would go to the ‘gym,’ she was actually at her ex’s house.
I confronted her about it. She lied through her teeth every time.”
A Horrible Discovery
“My husband of 15 years was spending a couple of hours reading gay smut about young boys before coming upstairs to bed, and usually I’d be asleep by then. ‘Reading’ as in stories of men with little boys, or their grandsons, sons, or nephews. Stories of the scoutmaster, or the teacher enticing a boy into the barn. ‘Reading’ is legal. Pictures are not. He was very careful. Once I stumbled across it, I had to deal with the shock that our marriage had been a lie. I’d been useful for breeding, nothing else.
I also knew he was in denial about something deep. He wasn’t going to make good decisions on my behalf, or for his own life, and for our marriage, our sons and our futures. So, I put key tracking software onto the computer with the only justification being that if he spent any money or tried to contact a boy, that I would have to act. Meanwhile, I tried to work out what I was going to do. He never knew that I knew exactly what he was doing. He lied to my face when I sympathetically tried to discuss it. The story is long and sordid and didn’t end well.
I knew about wives who turned a blind eye. I thought, ‘Oh god, what if something is going on under my nose and I’ve not noticed?’
There was as school teacher in the local school who got into trouble for touching boys and it was in the papers. So I left it on the table, and while we were having lunch one day, I pointed it out to my sons (casually) and said, ‘Did you know this guy?’
They are millenilals so they are aware and savvy, it can be anyone you know, even a family member. ‘You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’ They both laughed it off and said ‘Of course we’d tell you, Mom.’ And they went on with their lunch, while I felt sick and anxious inside. When I finally went for help to authorities the first question was, ‘has he ever touched your sons?’ and I realized that it was so obvious to everyone else. I couldn’t be sure, so my desperation at the situation got worse. He didn’t touch them, though they were in his target age.
He is an intelligent man and was VERY careful, skating so close to the law. He did lose his job which gave him access to young people. He continues to deny everything (the second shock) and blame me (the third shock). The Police, court, and legal process was brutal, but the process of having my motives, evidence, and actions picked over and challenged and the truth doubted and denied, was another shock. I was so naive.”
Vacation Betrayal
“My girlfriend went to Hawaii with her mom over Father’s Day weekend. I had no phone during that time so our only communication was through email. She was being so lovey-dovey and telling me how much she missed me, how badly she wanted me to be there with her there, and how terrible she felt about being out of town during Father’s Day.
Fast forward two months. I was taking the recycle out one day and saw a torn up sheet of paper. I grabbed it out due to curiosity. It was a sheet from her journal talking about how she cheated on me. I tried to erase it from my memory but this one part that stuck with me: ‘I cheated in Hawaii. This is what I get for not being honest.’
What does that even mean? It sits in the back of my head sometimes. It’s really messing with me
What makes it more exciting is that she just gave me a four-week notice about her moving to Costa Rica for four months with her best friend. If she cheated on me while on vacation with her mom, imagine what she’ll do with her friend.”
Secret Journal Entry
“My girlfriend went to Hawaii with her mom over Father’s Day weekend. I had no phone during that time so our only communication was through email. She was being so lovey-dovey and telling me how much she missed me, how badly she wanted me to be there with her there, and how terrible she felt about being out of town during Father’s Day.
Fast-forward two months. I was taking the recycling out one day and saw a torn up sheet of paper. I grabbed it out due to curiosity. It was a sheet from her journal talking about how she cheated on me. I tried to erase it from my memory but this one part that stuck with me: ‘I cheated in Hawaii. This is what I get for not being honest.’
What does that even mean? It sits in the back of my head sometimes. It’s really messing with me
What makes it more exciting is that she just gave me a four-week notice about her moving to Costa Rica for four months with her best friend. If she cheated on me while on vacation with her mom, imagine what she’ll do with her friend.”
“The Most Brutal, Unfiltered Tirade”
“He is my ex now, but had a sinking suspicion that was then confirmed that he was ashamed of me. When we’d spend time together, he’d lie to his friends that he was doing something other than going on a date with me. It didn’t bother me when he lied to roommates, they were dudes and probably would have teased him. However, his old friend gang also included his first ex, and it stung when I saw he was directly messaging her that he couldn’t make it to hang out because he was ‘still picking his dad up from the airport’. It stung, but I didn’t want to confront him. I was a coward about it.
It was confirmed after he broke up with me. We were at a party two days later, and I was trying to stay away from him, but I had to use a porta-potty. I heard him nearby, completely wasted, and suddenly the topic of me came up. I received the most brutal, unfiltered tirade of why he broke up with me. I was the most pathetic person he had met in his life, with no hope of improvement, aimless in life, haven’t even graduated yet, don’t even know how to drive, that I was hopelessly insecure, and that he was just 100% done with dealing with me or having to be associated with me.
Somehow I was able to escape the porta-potty without being seen, and I ended up bawling at the front away from everyone, with a friend I confided in.
He doesn’t know that I had heard any of that, nor do I believe he even remembers what he said, and I only just recently told a couple of other friends about it, two years later. He had some anxiety issues himself, and I’ve been told he was probably projecting a lot of it, or just hated my insecurities because it reminded him of his own. Still, it hurts to think that I had loved him even long after he had fallen out of love with me, let alone the fact that he held so much resentment for me.”
An Obvious Hiding Place
“One day, I walked into the bedroom and my longtime girlfriend was kneeling by the bed on her side where she sleeps. I didn’t think anything of it at the time but eventually, it got into my head. So one day I went to her side and picked up the mattress, I found a short length of straw and a bottle of painkiller medicine with her mother’s name on it. I put it back. I called my mom and my friends to see what I should do. Then I called her mom, who asked me what the date on the bottle was. I was only like 90% sure on the date, but turns out they were the prescription that had gone missing from her mailbox.
It took me a few more days to work up the courage to actually confront her. Just before I did, I lifted up the mattress again and there was nothing there. Despite that, later that night, I caught her falling asleep standing up and I confronted her. She, of course, denied it and denied it so well I started to question what I had even seen. I think the kids call it gaslighting. She was obviously too high to leave, so I left and got a room at the closest fleabag motel. She did finally confess. I wish I could say that was the end of the relationship, but it wasn’t.”
Sneaky Selfies
“We broke up a few days ago. She would send lewd snaps of herself before or after showering to her guy friend. One time, I was just laying in bed and she went to shower. She turned the water on and I heard her clothes fall to the floor. Then, I heard the iPhone camera sound. I didn’t think anything of it but weeks later there was a similar situation. I walked in to use the restroom and see her camera right as she took a Snapchat.
It was a picture of her posing suggestively and biting her lip. I couldn’t read the name of the recipient, but the name had unmistakable emojis on it. I knew who it for. I just said, ‘Oookay’ and did my business. She kind of fumbled some sort of excuse but I just didn’t say anything. We broke up the following week for a multitude of reasons, but that definitely didn’t help any.”
Covert College Application
“I’m a high school senior in California. My girlfriend and I are applying for college.
Her family is mostly in Colorado and she considered colleges there before dating me. However, we understand that we will stay here now and not move out of state. We’ve been dating for almost a year now and she’s applied to two universities there in Colorado.
I know the real reason is to have those colleges as backups in case we break up. Obviously, it’s a reasonable thing to do, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t sting.”
He Texts His Ex But It’s Not What You Think
“He talks poorly about my son and me behind our back to his daughter’s mother. I’m a no-nonsense parent who doesn’t allow children to run the house. His daughter’s mother loves to text him complaining about us. He has complaining sessions about how awful we are every time she does it. I don’t know if he really thinks we are awful or just likes to complain.
I found this out about seven years ago. I think it is a combination of thinking his child can do no wrong and his ignorance of children on the spectrum, like my son. I could have confronted him. I knew if I was confrontational, he would be defensive and shut down. I took the approach of having our family do in-home therapy. My husband has come a long way through in-home therapy. He obviously still struggles with being a prick. I haven’t checked in recently to see if he still does it. I would say he still does because he did it so often for so long. I hope not though. I try not to think about it always bothers me.”
She Wasn’t At A Friends For “No Reason”
“My ex cheated for the better part of our relationship. I knew about most of it but stuck it out for the kid. At one point, she stayed at a friend’s house for a few days. She gave no reason why. A couple months later, while looking in her wallet, I noticed an ultrasound with date stamps for around the time she was gone.
I assumed she had an abortion during that time. I finally worked up the courage to leave that ‘relationship’ about a year later for many reasons. I have never talked to her about that. I don’t ever plan to. But I can’t help wonder if it could have been mine? Probably not, but you never know.”
Sneaky Student
“When my husband and I first started dating, he didn’t know how to tell me he didn’t enroll for college this year, so he would pretend to go to class every day and go hangout with one of his friends. I started to catch on when I noticed a pattern of him always skipping class, or if we were doing something and I remember he was supposed to have class, he would always just say it’s cool, I don’t need to go. The final straw was when it was mid terms and he still hadn’t bought any books.
I never called him out about it, and after a few months he finally came clean. We didn’t fight about it. I said I was disappointed that he didn’t think I would understand the situation. He didn’t enroll because he was having some family issues, which he didn’t want to burden me with because we had only been together a few months. He is a big ball of anxiety so I knew it wasn’t from a malicious place what so ever.
Still together and married and stronger than ever.”
“Forgiving, Not Stupid”
“About 10 years ago, my wife made out with a guy friend of hers at a birthday party. I only knew of this because she left her messaging client open, where she confessed it to her best friend. I let it slide because she seemed genuinely upset that she did it and vowed to her friend that it would never happen again. We’ve been married for over 20 years now so it hasn’t dampened the relationship at all. Now mind you I never left the two of them together alone again. I’m forgiving, not stupid.
Wild Detective Work!
“A guy who I was seeing would casually mention his roommate as just that, ‘my roommate’. At first, I didn’t even question it, but when he started acting weird, (saying he had to pee and he’d call me back, but it would take him 3 hours, and stuff like that.) I started to investigate.
I swear, I should be a detective. I knew his address, so I googled it and found a list of everyone currently renting. I knew his name wasn’t on the lease or anything, so I cross-referenced everyone on said list with his Facebook friends. Found a match, and his roommate was a woman, and not just any woman, his fetish woman. Then I found out that when he would tell me he was at work, he was actually just at home watching TV. Adding all of this information up I realized he hasn’t had a job in years and lives off of women he is dating.
Sad thing is, I didn’t find this out until after I had sent him an expensive birthday gift. It took him 2 weeks to actually open it, claiming that the office was closed for renovations. And to make it even worse, my birthday was less than 3 weeks after his, and I have yet to even receive a birthday message.
I haven’t talked to him since he opened his gift, and I won’t. I was informed by a mutual friend that he was hospitalized, so I checked out his Instagram just to make sure he was ok. Oh, he’s fine, just begging for attention like the pathetic man-child that he is. I was so in love with him too, it sucks, but now I’m just angry and I want to go to his hospital room, pull all the plugs he doesn’t need because he’s a faker, and punch him in the face. He makes me cringe.
His ‘roommate’ would stalk me too, and whenever I would mention something on social media, she would post similar things to one-up me. I didn’t even know until a friend mentioned it. So apparently she knows about me, and they probably laugh about me. They have no clue that I know the truth about everything, and they never will, until I see him again.”