... if you've every learned something totally surprising about a close friend?

[BSideLeeSide]

This is no biggie, just something very surprising for me.

I've a very close friend that I'd known for 10+ years, we met through work several years ago. A few weeks ago I was helping her move/unpack to a lovely new house, and staying there for the weekend.

The house had a piano. I was amazed to discover that she is an incredible pianist. Really really amazing! She says she was somewhat of a prodigy when young, but lost interest and motivation in teen years, and is just re-connecting with it as a hobby.

Sadly, if I was that good at something I'd have let everyone know :(

@twosticksandanapple

I found out when in my 40s that my mum had been married and divorced before she met my Dad. I only found out when my gran was researching our family tree. For some reason my mum didn't want me to know and still refuses to talk about it

She might be like my mum who had a shotgun wedding at 17 (with me) and was divorced by 19. A massive disgrace to a Catholic family in the late 1950s. She remarried very quickly and completely erased the first one from her own mind to the point that one day she made a scathing comment in my presence about women who have children by more than one man. I pulled her up on it and she was genuinely surprised to be reminded that she had kids by 2 fathers. Her comment "oh that's different'.

When the internet was fairly new I googled our family surname (a very rare and unusual name) and tried it with misspellings too just to see what would come up. Up came a misspelling of my great grandmother on a ‘searching for my birth mother’ message board.

One private investigator later, we found my great grandmother had gotten pregnant by another man when her husband was off at war (she already had 2 children) and when he returned and found out, he made her give him up for adoption.

She had died a few years previously sadly and nobody ever knew except her best friend who was sworn to secrecy. My grandad had also died by then but his sister was (and is) still very much alive and now they have a wonderful relationship.

It was just absolutely astounding that we never knew she had another child. She used to holiday frequently in the place where he was born, I can’t imagine the pain she must have gone through her entire life not keeping him. I think he was around 6 months old when she was forced to have him adopted.

[quote SnowWhitesRestingBitchFace]@hensintheskirting it's such a strange situation isn't it! Doesn't make a difference to me or the way I feel about my dad at all but as a parent I guess I can understand the worry. I'm in my 30's now though and I don't think he'll ever tell me 😂 The only part that does concern me is that I'm not 100% sure I don't have another sibling/siblings out there. Children were never mentioned when I was told but I have this horrendous gut feeling about it that I've never been able to shift.[/quote]
I’ve got an Ancestry subscription and may be able to find that out for you, @SnowWhitesRestingBitchFace. If you want that, drop me a PM.

I chatted to a school mum for years, every night picking the kids up. One day I asked if she was doing anything interesting in the evening and she said "No, I'm just working on my robot".
She was building some kind of experimental robot in her garage .

[quote SnowWhitesRestingBitchFace]@hensintheskirting it's such a strange situation isn't it! Doesn't make a difference to me or the way I feel about my dad at all but as a parent I guess I can understand the worry. I'm in my 30's now though and I don't think he'll ever tell me 😂 The only part that does concern me is that I'm not 100% sure I don't have another sibling/siblings out there. Children were never mentioned when I was told but I have this horrendous gut feeling about it that I've never been able to shift.[/quote]
This is interesting. I’m DH’s second wife - I wonder if DD (9yo) knows. We don’t keep it a secret, but it’s not something that comes up in conversation much (no other kids to keep them connected). I know we have spoken about exW in DD’s presence, but it would have been some time ago and she might not remember!

"She might be like my mum who had a shotgun wedding at 17 (with me) and was divorced by 19. A massive disgrace to a Catholic family in the late 1950s. She remarried very quickly and completely erased the first one from her own mind to the point that one day she made a scathing comment in my presence about women who have children by more than one man. I pulled her up on it and she was genuinely surprised to be reminded that she had kids by 2 fathers. Her comment "oh that's different'."

My sibling and I only found out that we had a half-brother (and subsequently were told about an older half-sister) when he came to stay with us out of the blue (his mother had just died of cancer and nobody knew what to do with the poor boy in the aftermath) in the early Sixties. My/his father hardly knew him, it was shocking. I believe my father gave financial support but not much else, sadly. Anyway, he and his sister had been kept a secret from us as our father was divorced from their mother but in the Catholic church the marriage had been annulled as it had been a civil wedding, not a church one, so it didn't count and my mother and her family liked to pretend these children didn't exist. Talk about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children.

@RAFHercules

I chatted to a school mum for years, every night picking the kids up. One day I asked if she was doing anything interesting in the evening and she said "No, I'm just working on my robot". She was building some kind of experimental robot in her garage .

I love this!

A woman I worked with was planning her parents 50th wedding anniversary celebration. She couldn't understand why her mum wasn't enthusiastic about celebrating.

Turns out they'd only been married 49 years. My colleague was born about three months after they'd got married so they lied and said they'd got married a year earlier so no one would know she'd been pregnant before marriage!

@RAFHercules

I chatted to a school mum for years, every night picking the kids up. One day I asked if she was doing anything interesting in the evening and she said "No, I'm just working on my robot". She was building some kind of experimental robot in her garage .

Love this 😁

Is not seen my cousin in about five years and he had been in university close about 30 miles away in comparison to the 230 miles he had historically been. We had always been the best of friends as kids.
I got back in touch and visited at uni, he brought along a two years old little girl and I assumed he was taking care of her for a friend. He told me that he had a ine night stand in his first week at uni and the woman had got pregnant. They stayed friends and were bringing up their daughter. None of the family new. Shortly after he introduced her to everyone he is an ace dad and they have gone on to have two more children who are ten and eight. I went to their wedding five years ago. Happy ending.

DH and his siblings did not know until their mother died aged 90 that she had been married before. It came up when their uncle gave the euology and they were floored.

She had had a war time marriage but it collapsed when he left her for a man apparently.

Found out my BFF voted Tory. We still speak though.

A lovely person in spite of it then? Who'd have thought it possible?!

Want to know how to spot a Labour voter? Wait ten minutes and they'll tell you what utter scum all Tories are. if you don't know how someone votes because they haven't mentioned it, then it's a safe bet that they are probably a Tory.

Just quietly going about their business of doing what they think is best/right, without haranguing everyone else for thinking differently.

Labour voters should try it. They might win a bit more often if they could just grasp the concept of not alienating people by insulting them.

Some time ago… At my granddad’s funeral two women in their 90s showed up and revealed they were his elder half sisters from Great-Grandads first marriage. They knew about the second family but second family didn’t know. My aunt then started looking into the records to check it was true and it turned out Grandad’s parents never married officially as he had never divorced wife 1.
It’s most amazing that Grandad never knew this about his own family. I guess in those times (he was born in 1915 and his older sisters in 1901 and 1905! ), these things happened but were hushed up.

@MatildaTheCat

My close friend told me she has a serious mental health diagnosis after I’d known her about 5 years. I’d never have realised as she’s about the sanest person I know, she just manages her condition really well.

Because people with MH issues are usually insane?

You know people with MH issues often don’t reach out for help for a long time because of the stigma attached.

www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/s/stigma-and-discrimination

Not a close friend, but I only found out in my mid-teens that my mother was not born in the UK. It wasn't a total surprise though, as she'd either been very vague about her childhood (except to say she had four siblings and went to boarding school), or she'd lie and say she was from X town, which I later learned is where she'd first moved to when she immigrated here. She is not-quite-white-passing (think Cliff Richard's colouring), but made herself look as pale as possible, plus never went in the sun. She also speaks with a very posh Surrey accent. I later found a recording of her when she had made cassettes for her sister in the seventies who had emigrated elsewhere (when phoning for long was prohibitively expensive), and she had a totally different accent (but still unmistakably her).
My siblings and I only found out when my brother was snooping in her stuff, as a teen, and found her passport, stating where she was born. And her DOB! She was also five years older than she'd told us.

About 30 years later, looking on a family tree forum, I found out that her father had been married before, and had three children, about 20 years prior to the family he'd had with my mother's mother. I did not tell my mother that I knew this, but only this year, she nonchalantly dropped into conversation about the three half-siblings, as if she'd always told us of their existence.

@SnowWhitesRestingBitchFace @hensintheskirting same here! Also my dad. But my rents knew I knew and charged me with hiding their marriage certificate when they died so my sibs didn't find out... that wasn't stressful at all 😳

my MIL revealed 3 weeks ago she had a daughter in the '60s, who has now got in touch having been adopted.
Aside from the sympathy I feel for the young MIL, I feel so angry she's trusted no one with the "secret", which probably contributed to her anxiety, harshness, and judgemental attitudes.

We wouldn't have judged her, she judged herself and has become toxic. She was nasty to DH growing up too. She is now trying to control who knows and who doesn't.
I feel weirdly betrayed and gutted.

Discovered a friend had done soft porn. Was told by a mutual friend (I was angry this person told me tbh as it wasn't her story to share.) Friend is unaware I know her secret. Have not told her or anyone and don't intend to. If she chooses to talk about it, that's her business. It doesn't change my relationship with her.

A work colleague repeatedly had his weekend plans thrown into chaos by his flaky sister-in-law who would turn up and disappear without warning.
Twenty years later, we saw her on a TV programme talking about her work for the CIA behind the Iron Curtain. That came as a shock.
Jeremy Clarkson got a bigger shock at his father-in-law's funeral. The initials 'VC' were on the headstone after his name. It turned out that he was a very modest man and never considered it worth mentioning to his daughter.

@RAFHercules - that's the best story!!

I expect that many (all?) have surprising things about us that we don't disclose. Many years ago a good friend of mine told me she had faked orgasm all her life with DH, in fact she'd never had an orgasm. Not with a partner which I can kind of grasp. But not even solo, I'd have though everyone had that figured out?

I've lost contact with her over the many years, and sometimes think about how she is doing.

DH’s younger brother is a half brother from DH’s mums second marriage. At his grandads funeral he was introduced to two older half siblings from his dad’s first marriage. He was 21. No one could believe that it had been kept secret for such a long time. We live in a small rural town and the half siblings live locally so they may have met over the years. I think the half siblings knew about it.

I'm thinking about her DH, wondering how well she fakes it? Marks out of ten? A good one? An average one?

Our much younger next door neighbour is stunningly beautiful, and did some baby sitting for us over the years. Once I complimented her and told her "you look like a model", in fact she had been for a few years before a career change. My DS was infatuated with her when he was younger, now he's 17 he still in (and his friends), but in a different way :(

I work under my maiden name, and don’t tend to advertise what I do for a living. I’m not sure why but friends are often very surprised when they find out what I do for a living.
I’m a dentist but I obviously don’t come across as a typical dentist. Most people ask if I mean dental nurse when they ask what I do 🙄 I am blond and can play dumb so maybe I just fit the stereotype. Or maybe I’m of a generation where women didn’t enter the professions.

@starrynight21

I've known my friend for over 40 years - both in our 60's. Last year I spent a few weeks with her and we had some deep conversations. She told me that because her father had sexually molested her, she has avoided getting close to any man and that she is a virgin.

I was so shocked ! I'd thought that we'd been totally frank with each other during our teens , as you do, but she'd kept the stuff about her father very quiet. She said he never raped her, but constantly used to touch her . Ugh . She never wanted a man to touch her again after that.

Feel weird reading this. This is something you tell someone in complete confidence, not expecting them to go and tell strangers about it.