As the youngest, it’s hard to imagine not keeping some kind of secret from your sibling, even if it’s not on purpose! Some things are just better left unsaid.
So I asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell me about some secrets they’ve been keeping from their siblings, and even I didn’t expect what I was about to read:
Content Warning: This post contains mention of domestic abuse and suicidal ideation.
1. “My brother doesn’t know, but the guy his girlfriend cheated on him with was me. They are still together; he never wanted to know who it was, so we never told him. It was only a couple of times, and we both felt really guilty after, but he found out about her cheating, and they decided to work on it. Christmas was awkward…”
2. “Any time I need to enter my email address to access public Wi-Fi, websites, or something but don’t want spam messages, I just put my brother’s email.”
3. “How many times I’m in her city and don’t tell her. We live two and a half hours apart, and I have several friends that live there for work or school. I visit them all the time. I’ve seen her twice in four years. She just is so egotistical, it’s stressful to be around.”
4. “Everyone hates her. She probably suspects that me and our brother can’t stand her; we’ve both blocked her and cut her out of our lives. She has no idea that the rest of our extended family actively plans their vacations around when she is unavailable so that they don’t have to see her.”
“Our mom still loves her, which is understandable, but even mom, when someone does something incredibly lazy or self-centered, she calls it ‘pulling a (my sibling’s name here).’ She had a horrible divorce, and in the beginning, everyone was sending messages of support to her ex; he ended up turning into a huge asshole and suing our parents (in the midst of our dad’s brief but terminal struggle with cancer), but we were all rooting for him. We’re all actively panicking about all the ways she is fucking up her kids.”
—Anonymous
5. “I was looking through my brother’s phone and found his porn stash. I always had a feeling he was gay, but I knew in this lifetime he’d never admit it; no judgement here, but I look at him with a very critical eye now every time he spouts his homophobic rhetoric.”
6. “My (30 F) sister (45 F) spent her first year as a newborn in an orphanage in a city close to us. I found this out when I was going through some of my mom’s documents during her move to a different apartment.”
“Basically, it detailed how my mom was a person with a drug and alcohol addiction who kept ending up in bad company and was deemed an unfit mother, so the social services took my sister away when she was just a few months old. This was not news to me, as my mom has been open about her struggles as a young woman. She eventually got cleaned up, got rid of her abusive husband, and got my sister back shortly before she turned 1.”
—Anonymous
7. “I (26 F) slept with my brother’s new fiancée (29 F) before they met… Here’s the thing: This is normally the kind of thing I wouldn’t hide from my brother; we’re close, and I wouldn’t want to hide something so big from him. I’ve even spoken to his fiancée about it, and she wanted to tell him, too. The issue is that I’m not out to my super-conservative Christian family.”
8. “I think she may be a shopaholic. She is constantly at stores buying things, and her apartment is full of random crap that she’s bought over the years. Whenever something bad happens to her, she goes shopping, and she doesn’t buy one or two cheap things, but a lot of really expensive stuff.”
“She doesn’t really seem aware of how much money she’s spending, but she’s not wealthy, and this is a habit that she can’t afford. She’s constantly asking me for money, usually when her rent is due. I’m tired of picking up her slack, but more than that, I’m concerned about how this will affect her long-term. I tried bringing it up once, but she got super defensive and kicked me out of her apartment.”
—Anonymous
9. “I spy on their social media after they blocked me from everything and ruined several of my friendships by spreading lies about me. They changed their pronouns, didn’t tell me, and then claimed to everyone that I was transphobic.”
10. “None of them have a clue where I live, what I do, or about my children. They literally don’t even know what I look like anymore. We don’t talk (five years now) since I turned one of my siblings in for inappropriately touching children. They know about my spouse, but as for my kids, they know nothing, and they never will!”
—Anonymous
11. “She thinks I’m estranged from my father because I’m a lesbian. I’m not. I’m estranged from him because I slept with his girlfriend.”
12. “None of my three siblings know that my dad had an affair. I was the one that caught him and told my mom. I thought I was doing the right thing, but she resented me for it. My mom was always physically abusive with me, but it definitely escalated after that.”
“For three to five nights a week for over a year, when they would start screaming at each other, I’d sneak into my little brother’s room and put noise-canceling headphones on him so he wouldn’t have to deal with it (the older siblings had already moved out). I was only 14 when it started. Two decades later, they are still married and have been miserable ever since. My siblings and I all talk about how they hate each other, but I still haven’t told them why. It was too much for me to deal with then, and I honestly just don’t care enough about it now.”
—Anonymous
13. “I hate his wife. No matter how much I try to like her, everything she does makes me cringe. She’s such a narcissist that while he’s out working or deployed somewhere (military), all she does is make oddly sexual TikToks. She won’t even bother to call him because of the ‘time difference,’ despite her being chronically online.”
14. “I have a daughter. When I was 17, I got pregnant. My aunt and uncle raised the child (who also doesn’t know). My parents told my sister what they told everyone else, which was that I would be ‘working at my aunt and uncle’s farm’ for nine months. My sister is extremely religious and very much against premarital sex, so she is 100% never going to find out.”
—Anonymous
And finally, here’s a change of pace with a super wholesome and sweet story someone shared about the secret they kept from a sibling:
15. “My closest older sister (I have four siblings) is two and a half years older than me and was always very shy and insecure, whereas I was always very outgoing. When I was 9 and she was 11, I sent her a Valentine’s card from ‘a secret admirer,’ as she was going through a really lonely period where she didn’t really have any friends, and I wanted to cheer her up.”
Have any secrets you’re still keeping from your sibling? Let me know in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity
