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You might feel like you know the people in your life pretty well, but everyone has parts of themselves they keep private. Most of the time, it’s nothing dramatic. Every now and then, though, it turns out to be a very questionable side business or a whole second family in the town next door. It sounds like something out of a movie, until the truth actually comes out.
One Redditor asked others to share the biggest double lives they’ve ever seen exposed, and the answers were seriously shocking. We gathered some of the wildest stories below. Scroll down to read them and upvote the ones that surprised you the most.
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#1
There was this kid at our church who started attending the youth group when he was about 15. Everyone loved him, but he was always a little standoffish. Fast forward 3 years to graduation time. Everyone kept asking him what he planned to do after high school and if he was looking forward to it, but he always changed the subject. Finally, he revealed to one of the adults that he wasn’t graduating because he hasn’t been to school since he was 8 years old. His dad removed him from school and never let him return.
A whole bunch of stuff went down after that, but the church members helped him do a fast-track hs degree in 3 years and have now paid for him to attend a 4 year university.
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#2
My aunt didn't come out as a lesbian until she was in her mid 40s. Coming from a pretty traditional Mexican family she was scared that nobody would accept her for who she was, so she hid and lived this double life for the longest time. When she finally came out it caught everyone by surprise, but everyone was extremely supportive of her.
#3
In one of my previous jobs a few years ago, we hired this guy who turned out to be a really good partner, worked hard, never complained. After about a year and a half of working with him I get called into the office, he's there with the manager, assistant manager and two beefy guys in normal clothes with the exception of ear pieces. He wanted to say goodbye to the bosses and I and explain why he had to leave the company. Turned out he was the son of some leader in his country and they had to relocate him, an opposing faction found out he was in our state and would have kidnapped him for leverage.
#4
Fellow grad student has two young kids; one that is struggling to walk and communicate and is in the process of being diagnosed. She is pulling 10-16 hour days (between interning and classes) plus being a mom and wife.
She gets a call from a friend that expresses how excited she is to see her at the husbands work party. What?! She didn't RSVP, and her husband said he would pop over for less than an hour than come home to be with her for a quiet dinner. Turns out he was bringing a date that wasn't her. They had been seeing each other for about 6 months and even had taken a trip together under the pretense of a business trip. Anytime he had been late or gone we assume he was with her.
Friend did her a solid and took a couple pics for the divorce lawyer.
#5
I worked with this guy once who was known for his stories. No matter how loose the connection was, he'd find a way to turn anything into a personal anecdote of a thing he'd seen or done before. All of them were interesting the first time (he'd lived an interesting life - grown up in America, moved to Australia in his early 20s, worked in a lot of really cool places over the years), but it wasn't long before he started repeating the same stories over and over again. I worked with him for just over three years, so it got pretty ridiculous. We knew how he'd met his wife, all the obscure things he owned, his pets, his kids - we knew every detail of his life.
It became a bit of an in-joke within the office about how the guy never shut up.
Then one day, he didn't come in. He'd passed away of a heart attack. The whole office was at a loss, especially our little department (which had about 8 people in it, including him). When it came to his funeral, our little group took the afternoon off and attended. And that's how we found out, none of his stories were true.
He'd grown up locally, his family wasn't at all who we thought they were, none of his old jobs had happened... Everything we'd known about him had just been made up.
The most interesting thing for me was that at one point, our boss needed someone to head to China to double check something in person at one of our company's factories. When the usual choices couldn't do it, he was picked. It seemed like a no brainier, since he was regularly going to and from America to visit family and had travelled a lot on his other jobs. We now think that may have been his first time overseas.
#6
My family hosted a number of exchange students while we were growing up. We hosted about 7 high school students over the course of my childhood; each stayed for a year in our house, attended high school in our town etc. One girl, Irinia, from Russia came to us no differently than any of the other students had - through the AFS program. To be an student through AFS meant you had to fill out an application, be 17-18 yrs old, be attending high school in your home country, whatever. So Irina arrives as our exchange student. She goes to high school in our small home town on cape cod Massachusetts. But at Christmas time she says she has to go home to Russia because her mother was extremely sick. Going home during the exchange year is really unusual, really rare. So Ok fine she’s going to Russia for the Christmas break, nbd, she’ll be back in January. Except she never comes back. AFS can’t find her, we don’t know where she is, if she made it to Russia, if she’s hurt, nothing. And we’re terrified because we’re her host family during this year and we always took the students in like family. Anyways she’s gone. Maybe 3 months later my mom is driving through our tiny town (again, middle of nowhere cape cod) and she see Irinia, with what looks like her mom, and some other kids. Turns out Irinia has graduated high school in Russia already, was like 25 with children and had posed as an exchange student so she could ‘case’ the place before bringing the rest of her family.
#7
My uncle runs a business hooking up internet in hotels. He travels all over the West coast for it.
Recently he asked my aunt to have an open relationship. Turns out most of his "business trips" were actually trips to go meet with his business partner, whom he has been having an affair with for the last year or two. This business partner has even had two pregnancies with my uncle. Both were miscarriages, but both were also INTENTIONAL.
My aunt and uncle have been married for 12 years, and have a five year old son. My aunt also has terminal cancer. He's been introducing their son to his mistress as their son's new Mommy without my aunt's knowledge.
Needles to say, that open relationship isn't happening. They're getting divorced.
#8
Guy I used to work with. He lived in a small country town with his wife and 3 kids. When he was fired from his job (where I worked) he could only find something at his level in the big city 2 hours away.
So he would go to work in the city Monday to Friday, and home to his wife and kids on the weekends. This went on for years. It came out about 5 years into the arrangement that he wasn't living in the small lousy city apartment as he said, he was living with his girlfriend, and their 2 kids!
So he had a wife and 3 kids, and a girlfriend with 2 kids (all his). Apparently the girlfriend knew about the wife, but the wife had no idea about the girlfriend. And his 3 country kids had 2 younger siblings that they knew nothing about.
It of course blew up spectacularly, the wife kicked him out and he went to live with the girlfriend. 6 months later she was sick of him and kicked him to the curb too. So now he pays child support for 5 kids to 2 different women and is actually living in that small crappy apartment!
***edit - Posted in response to a comment below - I mean it was in the city not the little country town, but the city isn't that big. Eventually someone who knew him/wife/kids was going to run into him with the girlfriend, or in a place he isn't supposed to be or just something! I actually can't remember how he got outed, I think the wife went to visit the 'small crappy apartment' and found the other woman there? I got my info through small town scuttlebutt - so I could be wrong..
#9
My high school football coach. This guy was a holy roller: church elder, started a chapter of Fellowship of Christian athletes at my school, made us run for saying bad words, the whole nine.
He was married to the school guidance counselor and had two kids who went you our school.
A few years after a graduated, it came out that he had an entirely separate and secret family in the next little town over. Everyone was shocked. This was a small town of 3,000 people, so it was amazing that he kept it under wraps as long as he did.
I feel bad for both families, but I must admit I was also a little delighted to see that smug, self-righteous SOB get exposed as a phony.
#10
A friend close to me, who worked with me, had always talked about her boyfriend (let's call him Dave). She would talk about her evening plans with him, holidays they went on and so on.
Other friends tried to Google him, and search for him on Facebook (out of an morbid curiosity to see what he looked like), but never came up with anything.
Then, one Christmas party she took me outside and told me she was engaged! But that wasn't the full story. She was actually engaged to Danielle, a woman, and had spent the last few years covering up the fact she was gay by completely fabricating Dave. He had never existed, and all stories and anecdotes were actually about Danielle.
I remembered being so pleased she was engaged, but just had an overwhelming feeling of sadness for her that she had had to hide her true life at work.
I met Danielle later on and she introduced herself as "Dave".
#11
I served in the Navy from 1985 to 2005. While in my first squadron, from 1985-1989, we were away from home often, either on short detachments of 2-5 weeks or 6-month deployments. During one period when we were at home for awhile, I was on watch in the duty office after hours. Me and another guy just had to man the office, answer the phone, and monitor the guys on watch down in the hangar bay.
Shortly after our watch started we got a phone call from a wife of someone in our squadron. She was asking us when the squadron would be back from detachment. I asked the other guy if he knew about anybody out on det, and he just looked at me funny. I told her we didn't currently have anyone one on det. We've all been back home for a couple months. She insisted her husband had been out on det for 3 weeks and needed to know when he was coming home. I assured her nobody was on det, and told her I had seen her husband earlier that day at work. She just hung up after that.
Turns out, the guy was telling his wife he was out on det and shacking up with his girlfriend for a few weeks. She called the Commanding Officer to find out when her husband had been part of a detachment and found out he'd done it many times over the previous couple years. Infidelity is officially against the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It didn't turn out well for him.
Edit: Screwed up the dates.
Edit2: As pointed out, it's adultery, not infidelity, that against the UCMJ, and there does, in fact, have to be evidence or a confession of actual intercourse. In this case, the guy admitted to everything. He went to Captains Mast; I don't remember exactly what his punishment was, though. I don't think he got kicked out, probably a reduction in paygrade, restriction for several months, and 1/2 pay for several months. And a divorce, I'm sure.
Additionally, I had no idea what he was doing at the time his wife called. I thought maybe she was pranking me our something. I probably still wouldn't have covered for him, as some have suggested. He didn't deserve that.
#12
My grandmother passed away a couple years ago. While going through her house, my family found a box with my grandfathers name on it in his handwriting. My grandfather died before I was born. It was taped closed and the dust on it suggested it hadn’t ever been opened.
Inside, my family found newspaper clippings and other documents.
Turns out that in the early 1900’s, my grandfather took a road trip with friends to see the ocean. During their time at the beach, their car was stolen. They decided to stay awhile; being in their late teens and out of school, they decided to earn some money and have a good time.
My grandfather met a Mexican girl and married her within the course of a month. There was an article on the vehicle theft, as well as another on the marriage and a marriage certificate.
We could never find information on what happened next. We don’t even rightly know if they married for love, to get her citizenship, if they had kids, or even if he was legally divorced when he married my grandmother in the 1930’s. We don’t think my grandmother knew.
We did find out his first wife returned to Mexico. She did have children (who say they don’t think their mom had kids before she remarried). We sent them copies of the documents we found and they were as flabbergasted as we were.
kissmychakram 8 hours ago
Not exactly a double life, just a bit of his past that he didn't talk about. My parents never spoke about my mother's first marriage (it didn't last very long, she married at 19 in the late 1950's and met my dad shortly after).
#13
My boyfriend’s sister’s friend was married to this guy and had started a family with him. They just had their second child actually (the first was probably 7-8 years old). Every year he went on a hunting trip to Missouri for about a week. Turns out he wasn’t hunting. Turns out he had another family there. Two kids, almost exactly the same ages as the other two. The friend divorced him immediately when she found it.
#14
Probably my mum... she's a practicing Luciferian/Satanist but my upbringing seemed very normal and mostly absent of strict religious practice.
We celebrated Christmas and Easter, we owned a Bible (and a Quran, and a couple of other religious texts), I did scripture class at school, and I was even in a nativity play when I was five. She was really nice to my friends, had a good job, and volunteered for an animal charity and at a DV centre. The DV centre was run by a Baptist Church and she was well liked by the community. But behind the scenes...yeah, she was and still is really big into Satanism.
Edit:
I think I was pretty clear at the beginning of this comment: my mum is *Luciferian*.
Luciferian Satanism is not like LaVey Satanism at all. LaVey Satanism is the one where the rules are pretty light and it's roots are more closely tied to Ayn Rand's philosophies than any Christian mythology. Luciferian Satanism is more like occultism or wicca.
#15
My ex-step father was a well-off pilot for a local med-flight helicopter. He had three daughters who adored him and was always very nice to me and my sister. He was one of the nicest and most soft spoken men I've ever met. He worshipped the ground my mom walked on.
He also had blackout rage issues. After a year of marriage he gave my mother a concussion and broke her leg in three spots. I was told she slipped and fell. It wasn't until a couple years after they split that I was told the whole story. My mom was smart enough to get out while she could and even smarter for not telling me. I was and still am significantly larger than he is and have a lot less to lose.
I've seen him once since then. He tried to be nice. I told him I knew everything and if we weren't at the hospital that my girlfriend worked at, I would most likely have tried to end him.
We don't talk anymore.
#16
A manager at a Jimmy John's I worked at in Cincinnati. He was quiet, kept to himself, and was always on time and did a good job. I was in school so I wasn't there all the time but when we worked together he was reliable. He was taking online courses at UC (we were literally right across from it) for business, I don't really remember.
One day, he didn't show up for work. No one could get ahold of him and no one really knew where he lived (his address was checked, no one answered). While we were worried, we figured he just bailed and went on with our lives.
Well, one night when the shop was closed (we closed at 3am) a man knocked on the store door, wanting in. My coworker wasn't having it and tried ignoring and mouthing "we're closed". She figured it was a drunk student and figured he'd lose interest and leave. Until he held up his badge for Homeland Security.
Apparently our "missing" manager was a cyber criminal who was using our job and his online courses as a cover to steal money from old folks. Who knew.
Beak Hookage 9 hours ago
Wow, what a giant gaping a$$hole. I hope they caught him and threw him in the pokey.
#17
Our family cat.
Was outside one night and I see my cat walking directly towards my neighbor's house and then I see their front door open. Walks directly inside like she'd done it a million times.
She was outside quite a bit so we assumed she was outside doing cat stuff. Nope, little kitty was just at home #2.
#18
We had a guy in highschool who faked a deep voice for the 7 years weve known him and senior year he revealed that it wasnt his real voice.
edit: typically kids in highschool also went to middle school with the same people.
#19
Not really revealed because it was always in the open, but my parents' friend has the weirdest double life situation I've ever seen.
Paul was married to Clarissa for 12 years, and they had a son together. However, Paul and Clarissa break up, and Paul moves out. Shortly after Paul starts dating Jenny. Shortly after Jenny get's pregnant Paul realizes he misses Clarissa, and somehow talks Jenny and Clarissa into sharing him. Then, a few years later, Paul adds Renee to the mix. (I should throw in these are decent looking women with jobs, and Paul himself is no rich Adonis either)
So, Paul has a wife and two girlfriends. They each have their own house on the same street, and their own individual family lives. Paul spends the night with a different one each night, and they trade Holidays. The women aren't romantically involved and they barely interact, so it's not like a poly relationship or even a Sister Wife deal. How he pulled this off and how they make it work is beyond me, but it's been years now.
Edit: I didn't think this was Poly because the women aren't with each other, but apparently it can be Poly by just them being with him.
#20
So went I first left home in my late teens I shared a big house (I think 6+ bedrooms) with a close friend, his brother and some other randoms. Think frat house except no college/university. Splitting the expenses worked out pretty well. So one of the guys worked at a port in customs or something. He had a uniform and ID etc. Left for work at the same time every morning and hung out with us after work. He was always down for attending social events with us and most of us liked him. Fast forward about a year and he starts telling us about how he can get us discounted TVs and other merchandise from the port. Unclaimed/seized property that apparently no one sweats about if just a few items go astray. Everyone gave it a pass as it seemed sketchy. Then one day we come home to one of our housemates in shock and bawling like a baby. Turns out not only did he give the guy his life savings he also gave him money borrowed from his dad. The customs guy had said he could get him a new car cheap! The long long con. Turns out the guy doesn't work at the port, the name he gave us doesn't exist and we have no idea how he spent his days or came up with his share of the rent/bills. Still creeps me out a little knowing I lived with a stranger for so long.
#21
A work colleague was exposed as an illegal immigrant using a false identity. He absconded back to his home country of Iraq and on arrival was arrested and hanged for war crimes. We only found this out when his wife threatened to sue the company for exposing him.
#22
On my grandmother's 85 birthday, a party was organized. My whole family was there. This is all happening in northern Mexico, so the invitation rules were pretty loose.
I was about 17 at the time, so were most of my cousins. One of them, Gerardo, didn't have a girlfriend at the time so he came with a friend, Oscar. They had been hanging around for about 4 years, but this was the first time Oscar was gonna meet the family.
When they arrived an older cousin was going around the parking lot collecting money from every cousin so we could buy some booze. Gerardo said he would ask his father for some money. Oscar accompanied him. When they entered the hall where the main party was taking place. Oscar ran back out. He said he had seen his father who he had only seen twice before. Gerardo couriosly asked who he was. They both entered and Oscar pointed to the man. Turns out my uncle was also Oscar's father.
Oscar got to meet all of the family. We all got to meet the cousin we didn't knew we had.
EDIT: Hi everyone. Regarding Steve. I started out with fake names, using Steve for Oscar, but then figured there must be at least a houndred thousand Oscars on Mexico, so I changed MOST of them back. So Steve is Oscar. Sorry it wasn't someone more interesting. You can imagine it was Oscar's boyfriend if the edit doesn't please you.
#23
There was one dad in our mother's group* that lost his high flying big city financial job due to a market crash. To pay the bills, and because there were no jobs in finance at the time, he took the first job he could get - in a chicken abattoir. Bit of a change from a desk job to slaughtering chickens, but when you have a newborn baby and bills to pay you step up.
(I know that sounds crazy - it's a group of new mums that meet weekly to swap war stories about newborns, and occasionally there would be a bbq or something that the dads would come to as well.)
Every time I ran into him I was always impressed with how much he was up to speed on current events and world news. We would talk about the latest political, financial and scientific news; there was not much discussion about chicken butchering.
Turns out he was fired on his first day. Every day after that - for months - he would leave home in the morning, go to the pub, read newspapers all day, and then go home in the evening.
She eventually found out. They are divorced now.
#24
A guy I knew was a tattooist so worked late hours at night. He had a family with 4 kids in one neighbourhood that was about an hour away from his shop. Then he had another girlfriend with a kid about 20 minutes away. The two didn't know about each other, he lived out of both of his girlfriends houses and when he wasn't at one of the houses, the girlfriend would think he was at his parents due to working late.
Anyway, it all unfolded on him when he got arrested and ended up in prison and both girlfriend, all the kids and another side girlfriend that he was "seeing" all rocked up to visit him one the same day...
EDIT: I believe in karma, this guy definitely deserved what was coming to him - I feel sorry for his partners. He treated them poorly but unfortunately some people are drawn to that type of person.
EDIT EDIT: Tattooist is just slang for tattoo artist where I am from...
#25
A friend of mine lives in San Diego, and was recently telling me the story of her grandfather who has an entire family in Mexico that he kept hidden for decades. Im talking he has kids that have kids, and one of his secret granddaughters has ANOTHER kid. Dude is a great grandfather and nobody knew. Her grandfather is nearly 90, so its unbelievable how much a quiet old man can keep from people.
#26
A local pastor in Florida gave me private marriage counseling many years ago. He was pious and godly, and I respected him very much. He insisted that the sanctity of marriage demanded that I make sacrifices of some of my desires, and that God would reward me later (in this life and marriage) for those sacrifices.
About a month after the counseling concluded, he was forced to resign from his church. Turns out he got caught with his assistant pastor’s wife.
#27
I lived with a Moroccan immigrant for two years. We were in a relationship and I worked with him as well.
He was married to a woman in a different country. France, I think. At some point early on in our relationship, he went home to visit family. Nope—he actually got married. Came back, and we went right back to our lives together. Eventually he came clean, and she moved in with him from France and I moved out, understandably angry and hurt, etc.
Allegedly she hated it here and wanted a divorce. So I was suckered back in with all the lies like “it was an arranged marriage. Our families forced us and it’s obviously not going to work out.”
Yeah, I’m an idiot. She moved back home because she was pregnant. He eventually admitted it to me, and then left the country again when she was going to have the baby. He said he was going to see his child and come back. He never did.
The funny part is, he was a Muslim and strict about no drinking or smoking and keeping halal around her. Around me, even before we lived together or were in a relationship, he smoked Marlboro reds and drank Bud Light. He ate bacon. He did follow Ramadan every year.
So...yeah. That.
#28
Not exactly a double life, but my cousin was a secret for 4 years.
When my uncle was 21 he and his girlfriend had a baby with out telling anyone in our large, very nosy family. No one suspected a thing and they went on dating.
When I was 8 and their daughter was 4, her adoptive parents perished in a fire and left in their will that they wanted her to go back to her bio parents.
My uncle and his girlfriend sincerely regretted giving their daughter up and so they were thrilled.
Everyone just went with the fact that they were essentially keeping a secret child for 4 years and were pretty much ok with it.
My cousin is 14 now and she has 2 full siblings and my aunt and uncle are great parents. Every now and again someone brings up the situation but it’s pretty much just laughed off. I do find it a little odd though.
Edit: this is what I understand of the story. I don’t know any more than what my mum told me and the few things my cousin has said, so I don’t know how the adoption worked really.
Also, when I said they laugh about it, they don’t laugh about the tragedy of my cousin losing her adoptive parents, they laugh about how none of them though to question why my uncle was acting so odd- you know, over losing a child and all.
Currently, my cousin doesn’t seem to be screwed up over the situation. But it’ll be something she has to deal with when she’s a bit older.
#29
A friend's mother is adopted - no big deal, she knows about it since she was 5 and loved her adoptive mom to bits, so it was never an issue. When she was in her late 20s, she discovered she had a brother which lived in a nearby city (for the Brazilians amongst us, we are all in São Paulo and her brother was living in Santos), so she decided to go after him.
It turns out her brother, who was in his early 30s, did not know he was adopted. He had a fit and even slapped his mom in the face.
#30
My sister-in-law had a second child. She was still married, but separated with her husband (because she caught him cheating). The man with whom she had the baby was her father's old prodigy, who was also married with a couple of kids.
This all took place in China, while the one-child policy was in full effect.
So: to her parents, the separation and affair were secret, up until she had a baby. Once they were looped in, they helped her to maintain the lies, because 'face'. From her ex-husband's perspective, the child and the affair were secret; from the perspective of his family (with whom she remained in touch), the separation, affair, _and_ baby were secret. This was complicated by the fact that they shared custody of their first kid (in fact, they pretended they were still living together for years). So the older kid was warned not to mention _his brother_ to _his father_, while spending plenty of time with both. It was all a secret from _most_, but not _all_ of their close family (i.e. cousins, aunts, and uncles). And then there was the prodigy's family, and really the rest of the outside world, for whom there was no separation, no affair, and certainly no _kid_. That included the government. I'm not even sure how that worked.
She wasn't living _another_ life. She was living _fractals of lives within lives_. Just try to imagine the logistics of getting your nonexistent kid to school (under a false identity?) in time to pick up your older kid, who was waiting with your secret lover, so that he could get back to his real family, and you and your kid could meet up with your cheating ex-husband, so that you could all drive together to lunch with family from both sides, doing your best impression of a perfect platonic family who had come straight from a shared, loving home (while being careful that neither you nor your older boy mention to anyone that you have to pick up your other son from school soon).
Now I've got a headache.
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eversokind 12 hours ago
What is with Bored Panda and the obsession with exposing cheating partners for the past year??? People cheat yes, but everyday a new article to fuel worry and insecurity? Change the name to Insecurity Panda... christ
LakotaWolf (she/her) 11 hours ago
I say cheating should be made super visible so that people who are tempted to cheat might have a moment where they stop and think, "Oh shít, I might end up as a viral post on Reddit and Bored Panda!" and maybe they don't cheat. Let cheaters see that there are consequences to their shítty behavior.
Load More Replies... eversokind 12 hours ago
What is with Bored Panda and the obsession with exposing cheating partners for the past year??? People cheat yes, but everyday a new article to fuel worry and insecurity? Change the name to Insecurity Panda... christ
LakotaWolf (she/her) 11 hours ago
I say cheating should be made super visible so that people who are tempted to cheat might have a moment where they stop and think, "Oh shít, I might end up as a viral post on Reddit and Bored Panda!" and maybe they don't cheat. Let cheaters see that there are consequences to their shítty behavior.
Load More Replies...
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