Yahoo Lifestyle People Who Found Out About Their Spouses' Sinister Secrets After Marrying Them Are Sharing What Happened, And It's Really Frightening
We recently covered a Reddit thread that asked users who discovered major secrets about their spouses after marriage to share their stories. This inspired members of the BuzzFeed Community who have endured similar revelations to open up about their experiences. Here's what people shared:
1."My ex-husband neglected to tell me that he was more interested in men than women. When I did find out, I was pregnant and not working due to severe morning sickness. I wanted to run, but I felt trapped. More of his lies came out, and we divorced a couple of years later. I found out during the divorce that he was soliciting men on Craigslist and inviting them to the house while he was taking care of my daughter."
—Anonymous
2."After working to get my husband through medical school and putting off finishing my college career until he graduated, he had an affair with his assistant, and she had his baby while we were still married. I finished my Master's and divorced him."
—Anonymous
3."This guy was pursuing me to no end, even sending flowers to my job. I finally agreed to marry him. I never loved him, really. But I was willing to learn to love him. Then, he started acting strange when we picked out a house to buy. I had a VA loan and discovered his name couldn't be on the deed because of a foreclosure. His ex-wife still lived in the home and refused to pay mortgage payments. So, once I purchased our home on my own, he was infuriated that he'd have to sign a disclosure agreement and that he'd have no rights to the property. That didn't stop him from getting a restraining order against me a year later and trying to have me forced from the home when I filed for divorce. He was a true loser."
—Anonymous
4."My husband didn't tell me he still owned a condo with his ex and was still close with her and her current husband. I found an email in which he complained to her about how rude my children were. He invited his ex and her husband to visit us, but he didn't tell me until they arrived, and we were scheduled to join them for dinner."
—Anonymous
5."My husband didn't tell me he was already married to another man. At first, I was horrified, but it turns out they are both bi and very into me. I'm now enjoying two husbands."
—Anonymous
6."He told me he didn't want to buy me an engagement ring because he'd rather use the money for a down payment on a house. I found out after we were married that there was no money. He said he had a BS in Sociology when he was actually five classes shy of his degree. I found this out after being married for 18 years. He told me he never used any drugs, but I found out when we were divorcing that he was getting high with our kids as a bonding experience and that when he was younger, he used to get so drunk/high that he'd crawl out to his car from bars. He was a Boy Scout leader for our son's troop, and I found out he was forging signatures on badges, so my son's scouting career was false. It took me 24 years to be rid of him."
—Anonymous
7."He told me he was divorced. Then, a week before our wedding, he had to go to court to get his divorce finalized. I would never have dated a married man. Then, he had an affair and told his new woman that he and I were already divorced. Pathological liar."
—Anonymous
8."My ex-husband of 20 years told me after we were married and moved to another state that he had a little girl. The little girl is six months younger than my son. My son was born in July; she was born in December of the same year. We also got married in March of that year. He claims it was before we were married, but we were engaged and had set plans to fly to Miami to get married. I never had another child by him."
—Anonymous
9."My ex didn't tell me he had a problem with being on the internet. I found out after six years of marriage that he had a secret Facebook account with only women on it, saying he liked to get down and dirty. I also found out he was doing live porn on the internet with other people posting his privates all over the internet. Needless to say, I divorced him."
—Anonymous
10."Before marriage, he pretended to be kind, helpful, a good father, and employed with a steady job. He later admitted to stealing all of my money and all of the kids' money from their savings accounts, as well as spending tens of thousands of dollars on sex workers during work hours as a children's social worker. We're divorced."
11."Lying is integral to my soon-to-be ex's negative value system. He said he loved me; he didn't. He said his grandparents had a small bank account in our name; they didn't. He said he had kidney cancer; he didn't. He said he didn't get money from his brother's estate; he did. He said he'd take me to Hawaii when I finished my thesis; he didn't. I had no idea when I married the loser that everything he said was a lie."
—Anonymous
12."This happened in the late 1990s. About a year or so into our marriage, my then/first wife showed me a final collection notice on unpaid college loans. She was visibly upset, insisting that she never got any prior notices in the mail. It got me mad. I cashed out an investment and paid it off to make the debt collector disappear. A couple years later, she asked for a divorce and moved out. In the summer of 1999, I was going through my house, clearing out her excess stuff, when I opened up a storage bin and found — surprise, surprise — all the prior collection notices she had hidden away. That was the least of the eye-opening discoveries I learned about her. We divorced in March 2000. Exactly a year later, I met a sweet woman and married her two years later. We've been happily married for 21 years. Oh yeah, and we both pay our bills on time."
—Anonymous
13."Three years after we were married, I found out that my husband is sexually attracted to men. I found a questionable male picture on his computer while restoring it from a virus, and I made it his desktop image, hoping he would object to it somehow. Instead, he didn't bat an eye. When I confronted him, he said, 'I'm working on that.' We obviously are not together anymore."
—Anonymous
14."Wooh! Where do these folks come from?!? First, it was his age (older than he stated), then a story about being in the military. Now, the icing on the cake: his baby momma was in labor with twins on our wedding day! All his guests knew what was up. I had no clue and was pregnant really soon after the wedding. Now it makes sense why he wasn't thrilled we were pregnant."
—Anonymous
15."I only found out that my husband had previously been married when I went to register my child's birth at the embassy. To top it off, he was still married to that person in another country. He did not think it counted since he permanently left that country. Needless to say, he had to pay legal fees in two countries and travel there to get a divorce. I only believed him when I saw the legal documents translated and submitted to our local courts."
—Anonymous
16."My then-boyfriend, now husband, always brought me little gifts and cards. I was young and he was 10 years older. I thought it was so sweet and thoughtful. It definitely was a big reason I fell for him. It wasn't until years later that I realized his mom and sister were buying the cards and gifts. It wasn't his thoughtfulness at all."
—Anonymous
17."I am a physician, and he is a teacher. Years after we were married, he basically told me that I was not good enough and that he would never have married me if he had been a physician or lawyer. I am his third wife. We are in the process of getting divorced."
—Anonymous
18."My ex-husband went into great detail about his yellow truck at home in California (I'm in CT) and said he had broken off an engagement. At our wedding, his mother told me that she had to break up with his ex-fiancée for him when she came over for her regular dinner time when the family was preparing to come for the wedding. Also, he never owned a vehicle. I had been driving him everywhere. He never let me talk to his mom. He cheated on me, so we are not together anymore."
"My other ex-husband, as it turned out, had never been with another woman before me. That would be fine, but he told me he had been with three. Two didn't have names, but one was named Zoe, and he made up her backstory. It all came crashing down when he said he had gone to Machu Pichu with her and didn't know what country it was in. I was with him for eight years, and so many wild stories about him exist. I've been divorced for quite a while."
19."I was working with a dental office shortly after graduating from high school, but before I started design school at the Pasadena School of Design. This character supposedly was a dental student at USC, and I was naïve enough to believe him. Two years later, married to this delusional liar and pregnant with our first child, I was still unaware that he wasn't a dentist but just a guy making false teeth for patients. It got worse. He became physically abusive, but my two children and I were able to escape his lies and abuse. I recently got a friend request from him on Facebook. No way in hell would I befriend him."
—Anonymous
20."We got engaged after 10 glorious days. A year and a half later, we married. Then, he casually told me everything he told me when we got together was all lies. He didn't know or want me, much less love me. He just wanted to 'do' me but knew I wanted to wait for marriage. Also, he was homeless because his ex left, and he couldn't pay the rent. Many years and kids later, I still feel used. People think we are so happy, but I feel empty inside. Our children, who are on their own and doing well, know their dad is only here because I pay all the bills."
—Anonymous
21."My dad was 12 years older than my mom, so he lied about being 40 since he didn't think she would be interested at 28. He had always looked young, so it was easy to pull off. The day she found out his real age was at the courthouse when they were signing the marriage license. He thought she would be so mad, but she laughed it off since she was so in love at that point and didn't care how old he was. She would always lovingly retell the story while he looked on embarrassed."
22."He only married me for a green card. He was dating other women the whole time we were married. One of his dates called and clued me in. Hello, divorce lawyer!"
—Anonymous
23."When I met my future husband, we were making small talk at a Saturday night gathering for single people. I was in my early 20s. He was 10 years older than me, incredibly handsome, and seemed kind. I asked him if he had plans for the upcoming week. He said his friend was having a baby, and he was going to see them sometime that week. It sounded normal enough. I innocently assumed he meant a guy friend, and the friend's wife was having a baby, and my dude was being supportive. Two years later, we were engaged. After we were married, he told me the 'friend' he had mentioned the night we met was actually his ex-girlfriend."
"They were going through a breakup when I met him; the baby was his. That pregnancy had ended due to a stillbirth the week we met. I was amazed that he thought he couldn't tell me the truth about that situation at some reasonable point before we married. I would not have married him if they'd had a baby, but I chalked it all up to 'live and learn.' I was trying to do the 'right thing' and honor my marriage vows by forgiving him and putting that in the past.
I divorced him 24 years later when I gradually found out he had racked up many thousands of dollars in debt over the years without telling me and had hidden that from me by eventually taking over the financial 'management' of our shared bank account, a task I had openly done for us for years. He had also invested his pension from early retirement, which was a substantial sum of money that could have sustained a humble but secure lifestyle for us for the rest of our lives, into a business venture with an acquaintance against my adamant disagreement.
The acquaintance turned out to be a crook who had convinced my ex to allow him to 'manage the finances' since they were business partners. The guy stole all of my ex's (our) money and disappeared with all of the equipment, files, and computers from the business. The acquaintance was operating under an alias and wanted in another state for doing the same thing to somebody else. I am so relieved to be out of that tough marriage. I am much poorer, wiser, and not impressed with the quality of men my age I've met. The bar now is so incredibly low. I don't know if I want to be with anyone again."
—Anonymous
24.And: "My first husband told me right after we were married that he wasn't in love with me yet, but he said he would learn to love me over time. We lasted 20 years and had three kids before his dysfunctional behavior finally made me realize I couldn't fix what started broken."
—Anonymous
Gosh, how devastating and unsettling. It's incredible how some people can hide their true colors from even those closest to them. Scary stuff. If you also married someone who hid major parts of themselves from you, what happened? Tell us in the comments or submit anonymously using this form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
