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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to want to know your Family secrets (light hearted) or not

188 replies

99pokerface · 01/04/2015 19:20

Four years ago we found out my uncle was not my grandads

Nana was having a op and was dosed up to the eye balls she very old any way and just kept repeating the baby's not his you know he looks nothing like him I was 4 months gone before we were wed Confused

My uncle is the first and their has always been hushed coversations and dark clouds surrounding uncles birth
Tbh were all very dark looking and my uncle looks more mixed raced than black

OP posts:
butterfly2015 · 02/04/2015 00:14

Hstar, your poor mum.

I don't think my story is that shocking any more, probably because it's my life. Some of these stories are heart breaking. Really brings home how lucky we are to be living in an era when forced abortions and adoptions are not the norm.

The thought of a 15 year old girl begging to take babies out for a walk to pretend for a short time that it's hers has brought a lump to my throat.

butterfly2015 · 02/04/2015 00:26

Freudianslipper, I feel for you. Sins of the bloody father etc. My half sister has struggled to deal with everything. She was searching for her birth parents and found me as I had the same birth name (Spanish and unusual) so I think she thought she'd get her happy ending. She has not coped too well with our mum giving her up but keeping me and my little sister. She has gravitated towards her bio dad and his family as they are "not to blame" and my sister and I have become the target of her resentment as our mum is not here to blame.

The irony is she has amazing adoptive parents, was adopted very young and had a brilliant upbringing. My little sister remembers nothing but did not have a great upbringing and was put in care at 14. I had a good upbringing but I was the one who remembered it all and had flashbacks, night terrors, sleep walking etc for years and years. I was diagnosed with complex ptsd two years ago. I'm not sure why my half sister envies being left in a house with a dead body.

I hope your siblings and you can continue to build your relationship. I am really put off searching for robbie now. The thought of another rejection is too much. I have a fantastic relationship with my little sister now and I doubt I could ever build that with another sibling. As much as I always wished I had a big brother.

Life's too bloody complicated!

IAmACuboid · 02/04/2015 01:32

About 15 years ago my cousin was staying at ours and told me that he'd fathered a baby girl in awful circumstances a few years before - he'd been drug dealing at the time and one of his customers 'paid in kind' and became pregnant.
She wasn't able to raise the baby as she was an addict and had apparently given the baby to her v respectable Aunt to raise as her own.
Cousin wanted to keep in contact but was cut off by her family as he was still using.
He got clean soon after, but said he didn't know how to find his daughter and thought it was probably best to let her be brought up by her new family.

He's stayed clean ever since, married and had DC, but we're not really in touch due to distance and I've never had the opportunity to ask him if he was able to find her again - not really a question for Facebook Messenger is it... He said at the time that he'd never told anyone else, not his parents or fiancée (now DW), but I sometimes wonder how she's doing and if she knows about her father. She'd be about 17/18 by now.

pineappleshortbread · 02/04/2015 04:02

Not a family secret but my mother had me when she was 17 and my dad 19. The lived with my paternal grandparents but she left when i was 1. My grandparents got custody of me and raised me but made sure to keep contact with both my parents and ensure visits. My dad has never forgiven my gparents for giving him a chance to have a future having custody of me and even pinned my nan up by her throat at the court although i wasnt present for that. My gp have been my parents and i love them to death and as far as im cpncerned my real dad died when my gf passed away

dementedma · 02/04/2015 08:09

mrsflannel your great grandfather might have arrested my grandfather....Grin

thegreylady · 02/04/2015 08:16

We don't know who my dad's dad was but that's not a secret and we will never know now.

DisgraceToTheYChromosome · 02/04/2015 08:27

DF was told his mum was dead twice. Once when he was 7, after she was put in an asylum for having post-partum psychosis, and again when he was 17, when she actually died. He also had 2 second cousins through his illegitate GM, both of whom were famous gay socialites. One of them spent an evening fending off Guy Burgess, the spy and traitor. The other ran the V&A for a bit.

His youngest sister married a charming cocklodger while abroad, had a child, and when she finally threw him out he had their daughter kidnapped by his well connected amd deeply corrupt family. She was then escorted to the French border with a bag of cash and a bullet. Her divorce papers turned up a month or so later, pretty startling given the local bureaucracy and Church.

Still, they both died happy in the presence of loved ones.

DM's family were pillars of rectitude, although the one who became Prime Minister was always regarded as being "pushy".

MamaLazarou · 02/04/2015 08:34

My uncle's brother was imprisoned for child sexual abuse, rape and sexual assault - including his daughter. He also allowed a friend to abuse both his children (a son and daughter) and the subsequent investigation revealed that the children had been badly neglected. The children were taken into care and have now been adopted.

Cariad007 · 02/04/2015 08:36

Disgrace, you're related to Mrs Thatcher??

DisgraceToTheYChromosome · 02/04/2015 08:39

Christ, no. Much further back and wrong Party.

Wonderous · 02/04/2015 08:42

My ex MIL confessed to me than l that when A ex FIL had a massive heart attack she stood over him for more than five minutes wondering whether to call an ambulance or just let him die. Can you tell she hated him...

FernGullysWoollyPully · 02/04/2015 08:45

There's loads of interesting stories in my family!

I had a great aunt who's mum was actually her grandmother. So the girl she thought was her sister was her mum. The aunt was also single all her life but did have plenty of male 'friends'. She had a son, nobody knows who his father is.

One of my uncles was a guitarist for Eric Clapton but threw his career away as he was always in trouble with the law. He spent time in prison for drug trafficking.

His mother, my paternal grandmother, hated my grandfather, she didn't want to marry him, her father forced her because it was the 'right' thing to do. She wanted to marry a pilot who flew during the war. She also wanted to be a doctor but her father would never allow her an education.

Her family were Cornish convicts. They ran away to Wales and changed their name.

My paternal grandfather kept in touch with his sweetheart all his life through letters. When he was very old and ill, he'd suffered a stroke, my mum used to write the letters for him. They never stopped loving eachother.

My mum had an affair with a french man when she was 16. She got pregnant and had an abortion. My grandad had to pay a lot of money at the time for her to go private.

My great grandmother had a baby with primordial dwarfism. Nobody knew what it was at the time, she died as a child, my grandma said she was "tiny like a little bird", she also had a set of twins that were born premature but kept a complete secret from the rest of the family.

Cariad007 · 02/04/2015 08:54

My grandmother had an illegitimate half-brother/cousin who was the result of her father impregnating his 15 year old sister-in-law while his wife was pregnant and he was the same age as one of my DGM's older brothers. Apparently he was brought up with her family but her mother treated him so badly he left home in his teens and never returned. My grandmother met him again once when she was married with kids but does not know what became of him after that. She is 91 so he's probably dead by now. Strange to think he may have married and had children and my mother probably has a whole lot of cousins she'll never know.

Another one of DGM's brother got his aunt (only a few years older than him) pregnant and she killed herself. It all came out at her funeral where he was apparently practically rending his garments in grief. Whether she was the same aunt in the first story, I don't know. I'd hope not, poor woman.

snickers251 · 02/04/2015 09:16

My grandmother had a fling with a traveller which resulted in two dc, the first was given up for adoption, the 2nd being my dad.

He was adopted by my step grandad, despite him treating my dad unfairly to his biological children, my dad has no interest in looking into it and is quite loyal to my now deceased step grandad

I always wanted to know more but sadly my nan died a couple of years ago. My dad didn't even know I knew and asked me at the time if I knew he had a different dad but that was as far as he was willing to talk about it.

I have the child's name and even the biological dads nam but out of respect to my dad I have done nothing

FryOneFatManic · 02/04/2015 09:39

My dad's parents eldest child was born before they were married and adopted. This sibling did find Dad and the rest of the family later on, but they were never massively close.

One of dad's brothers became a drug addict, and ended up in prison for GBH, even though he never laid a finger on the victim. The whole story was incredible but it boils down to uncle pointing a shotgun at someone, who got understandably terrified and jumped out the window, falling two stories and breaking his legs.

I have very little to do with my dad's family, they thought my mum was a snob as her dad owned his own house.

MamaLazarou · 02/04/2015 09:56

My father is an unconvicted sex offender. I found out as a child when my mum left her divorce papers lying around and I read about the abuse (her grounds for divorce). My siblings have never found out.

They never went through with the divorce, got back together and have renewed their vows.

sashh · 02/04/2015 09:57

My mother was the first in five generations to not be pregnant on her wedding day. That was in early 1960s so go back through my gran, great gran etc it goes from being exceptional to being the norm.

Cariad007 · 02/04/2015 11:40

My other grandmother had an older brother who was jilted by his fiancée and then "went mad" and spent the rest of his days (he died in his fifties) in an institution. My grandmother blamed the jilting fiancée but I'm sure it was more than that. Poor man probably had some sort of breakdown or depression that these days could be treated by therapy of medication.

My grandmothers other brother was married twice but rumour had it his first wife left him because she found out he was gay. He had a son who was also gay and sadly he committed suicide in the 1960s.

ampersandand · 02/04/2015 12:09

My dm told me only this week that my df 'could have got another woman pregnant' before she married him.

After a few questions it turns out this 'could be pregnancy' is a half brother and they have no way of finding him 'apparently'.

I have no idea what I want to do with this information.

hodgepodgepanda · 02/04/2015 12:17

My Dms sister borrowed some money off her Grandma to start up a business (early 80s) & nobody in the family new apart from my Dm , when she found out her Grandma had died she went straight round to her house (grandma still dead in chair) & destroyed any evidence of the loan so she didn't have to pay it back.

Same 'Aunt' tricked her mum in to signing her house over to her , she waited til my Man had one of her black outs (epilepsy) & got her to sign n she didn't have a clue what she were signing , she was subsequently made homeless by her Daughter so she could sell the family home and keep the money .

My Cousin was left money and property by his grandmother when she died , he was only five but she left it all to him because his parents (including her son) were complete twats and she didn't trust them to ensure he got anything, his parents took him to court so they could have what was left to him and the court found in their favour so cousin were left with nothing & still doesn't know about any of this despite me trying to tell him .

My Dm didn't find out until she were 17 that the man she thought were her dad actually wasn't even though she was the middle child. Dgm and dgd split up and dgm fell pregnant with dm and then they got back together .

hodgepodgepanda · 02/04/2015 12:18

*Nan not man

FryOneFatManic · 02/04/2015 12:29

My late MIL always had a twinkle in her eye about being born 6 months after the wedding. So not exactly a secret but never actually specified.

dementedma · 02/04/2015 12:36

"although the one who became Prime Minister was always regarded as being "pushy".

Well, quite! Grin

Cariad007 · 02/04/2015 12:55

My uncle (aunt's husband) had murky origins. His father was a wealthy Englishman who went out to the colonies and started a relationship with a "native" woman and had two children with her. When she died he went on to have three more children with her sister. He died when my uncle and his siblings were young and his business partner basically cheated them out of their inheritance and threw them out of their home. However my uncle's oldest sister was of age and refused to leave. Some months later she died in mysterious circumstances and the family think the business partner murdered her, probably by poison. Sadly my uncle and his other siblings never got to see their inheritance, although they all did fairly well for themselves eventually. Another mystery is that nobody knows the origins of his father apart from his name. He could well have had a family in the UK too!

GreatAuntDinah · 02/04/2015 12:57

My father, born in England to good farming stock, has rather unusual facial features typical of another ethnicity. My uncle did some digging and found a great-great-grandmother who was a missionary in said part of the world until she was hurriedly sent back to England for reasons left unexplained Grin