This American Life 878 New Lore Drop was about this sort of thing. Worth a listen
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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I was the secret.
My brother and I were adopted at birth by an abusive, hyper-religious Christian family. Both of us walked away and never looked back when we were old enough. I knew they moved out of state not too long after my brother left but never bothered to follow-up.
About 24yrs later I get a call from a young woman claiming to be my adopted sister. Turns out my parents moved to the Midwest, reinvented themselves as an older couple who’d never had kids and adopted a Korean girl through their church. She started to suspect in her teens that something wasn’t right because the two decades they raised my brother and I were full of gaps, stories they’d tell one time didn’t match the next time, but it wasn’t until she was a bit older she realized “holy shit, they completely covered up an entire family”. Also lied to her about the nature of her adoption (did that to my brother and I too) as well as learned nothing from their mistakes with us about how to care for a child. So now they have three kids that don’t talk to them and I have a sister that’s young enough to be my daughter that I never met until she was in college!
Does it have to be just suspect?
When one of my grandfathers died, there were two equally-sized groups of people at his funeral who had never met or heard about each other, and knew him by a different name.
I wish there was much more to say about it. He wasn't a spy; if he was hiding anything from the other group it was just that he was married and divorced.
my grandfather on my mother's side had a secret second family, he was in the merchant navy half the time he said he was.
Yeah, my ex girlfriend lol
I started to suspect my Dad might have a secret second family when I was in high school.
Maybe 10 years later, I learned that suspicion was correct.
You're not the first person I've known who has experienced this. What made you suspicious?
He moved out of the family home to go to grad school across the country.
When I went to go visit him (at the behest of my mom), he was incredibly careful about who I met and where we would go. It felt like there people he really didn’t want me to meet. During that trip I also overheard some bits of conversation while he was on the phone with… probably the mother of my secret half brother.
When he finished his degree, he didn’t come home and never really gave a coherent explanation as to why. He’s always been a bastard though, so I didn’t much care to inquire as long as he stayed gone.
Eventually I got a little older and got my first job. Suddenly he always needed money from me. I didn’t know it then, but I was paying part of his child support payments.
As to how I found out, I ended up going to grad school at the same institution where the mother of my half brother was employed, and so he confessed to things before I found out by running into this person.
I've often dreamed of going fully analog - no internet, no mobile phone, etc. But then I realized that if anyone ever found out or noticed this, I'd instantly be suspected of being a criminal on the run.
I don't see that as a downside. Be mysterious.
Me and a friend joke about a guy (We're all middle-aged) we knew who seemed kinda shady, but not in the hitman/gangster aspect. More in the relationship department.
He would go off "camping" on his own, never inviting his girlfriend, for a few days in the woods, that was about 5 miles from his home (he owned that house, leaving her there alone)...
He'd go to 4 day music festivals alone, even though he had no interest in music.
One time he had plans to visit his girlfriends family on Xmas day, which was about 200 miles away. By 4pm he still wasn't ready to go, which caused an argument... Which resulted in him walking from his home to another city, about 25 miles away.
He kept, in his bedroom, a box of women's underwear, which didn't belong to his long term girlfriend of about 15 years. She told us about this after she found them (queue the Se7en jokes).
More red flags than in Moscow ‘45
I certainly don’t live a double life, nope…
I don't even live a single life (aside from my relationship status)
Uh huh sure, Shusty Rackleford
No. But I know a whole helluva lot of people living a life of quiet desperation.
The closest I came was the downstairs neighbor of an old girlfriend who was a paid hitman. He was a "former" gang member who did contracts on the side. It was all gang related stuff, nothing high profile, not like the movies. If you met the guy, you'd believe everything he said about this. Scared the fuck out of me, I slowly backed away from that situation.
How does a hitman with a static address stay out of prison while telling boyfriends of upstairs neighbors their business?
They pay their bills on time.
I used to go to Germany several times a year for work, my wife joked that I must have another family there. Naturally, the child’s name was Klaus.
My mom had a long distance truck driver boyfriend for a while. He'd be gone for three weeks, and home for two. We used to joke about him having a secret family or a gay lover.
Haven't heard anything about him in years, but I'm not ruling either scenario out.
I drove OTR a couple decades ago. I knew several drivers that had regular stops across the country. If he was hanging around for 2 weeks, and not just a few days waiting to catch up with his log, he's probably not having another big thing going. Just the normal.
I mean he was a trucker so it checks out
No. But I've been accused of this sort of thing by people before.
You've got to expand on that
Shhhh, I told you not to post about me on the internets.