This article is based on the AskReddit question “What is one thing your SO hid from you until later in the relationship?”
[Source can be found at the end of the article]
1. Starting a new relationship without ending the previous one
He brought me to a house party just a couple of weeks after we started dating. He pointed out a young lady and said he’d been dating her before me.
What he didn’t mention was that he failed to tell her that the relationship was over. No wonder she was giving me the stink-eye all night.
I’m also 99% sure he was seeing someone else before we decided to get divorced since he was spending all his time at the place his new girlfriend worked.
Furthermore, I’m 99% sure he met someone else before they broke up (several years later) based on how they met and when they started dating.
There’s a pattern here. The pattern is that my ex is a terrible relationship partner who exits a relationship, finds someone else, and only then does his partner know he’s finished.
no_talen_clown
2. Uh-oh
One of my exes waited months to tell me that her godparents (that she lived with) were actually her ex-boyfriend’s parents.
I actually didn’t mind it until he moved back in.
pillar_of_dust
3. Oh, thats nice!
My significant other didn’t reveal until much later that a sizeable inheritance came with the relationship.
It was a wonderful surprise – especially because we were secure financially without it.
Back2Bach
4. The multimillionaire
My friend is dating a farmer. They met online. Any who, they’ve been dating for 5 months at this time and he refuses to take her to his town and meet his family because he’s had a lot of girls date him for what he owns. She waited a year and had no problems and he finally brought her to his town. His family is a multimillionaire They own like 15 farms across the US. They’re house is a mansion. She was super scared to be in the relationship after that. They’re still dating but she tries to buy her own things and not depend on him and his money.
Howeverly
5. The perfect steak
My now-husband acted like he knew how to grill steaks and just casually grabbed steaks and asked me how I liked mine and then made perfect steaks. Then continued making perfect steaks for months, then years.
And I just learned a month or so ago that the first time he made steaks for me was the first time he’d made steaks in his life, he’d just studied up INTENSELY because he felt that I would be impressed by him making me a good steak. I thought he had been making steaks for years to throw down a perfect steak like it was no big thing, but it turned out he did a ton of research and was sweating bullets trying to get it right. He’s the best.
84th_legislature
6. The one that sings beautifully
We had been together for 2 years before I heard him actually sing. He would belt out random lyrics in the car with me in a fun, playful, not serious way all the time. The first time I heard him actually feel it, I was blown away. He has such a deep, soulful voice.
Ugh. Love him.
VanessaSoIll
7. The magician
He could do magic tricks. We were together for thirteen years and one day he pulls out a deck of cards and says “pick a card, any card.” Fucker got my card and everything, just as smooth as can be. Never did it again.
wolfslaughter
8. It just wont work out
My ex-girlfriend hid the fact that she was on bi-polar medication before we moved in together in NC after moving from NY. She then stopped taking her medication, and then quit her job. Leaving me as the sole income for the two of us. I was 23 years old, and this was my first long term relationship. We broke up a month after she quit her job. That was a very long month.
Bmac1977
9. Opening up about past events
He didn’t really hide it, but I never knew the story of how his first wife passed away until we were engaged. I only knew that she had CF, and that she died too soon; I didn’t know that he came home from work, found her passed out and blue, and rushed her to the hospital himself, where she later died. He told me about it one evening when we were sitting in front of the Christmas tree. The whole story came pouring out of him, and I just hugged him and listened. His mother died six months after his first wife passed away, and to hear him tell it, it nearly broke him. I think it healed his heart a little to talk about it, and I know that it made me love him even more somehow. I’m just grateful that he was willing to open his heart up to love again. He is an awesome man and the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Queen_Dare_Bear
10. The amateur hairdresser
When I was in college, I had no money and shaggy hair, so I was wandering around the dorms looking for someone who knew how to cut hair. A cute girl overheard me and said, “Hey, I know how to cut hair!” She gave me a haircut in the hallway and then asked if I wanted to go to Steak & Shake. I said sure.
It’s been 13 years, we’re married, and she still gives me haircuts. About two years into the relationship, she confessed that she had no idea how to cut hair but really wanted an excuse to hang out with me. She did it in the hallway and asked me to Steak & Shake because she didn’t want me to look in a mirror and see the results.
She’s actually pretty good at it now, though!
ManateeSheriff
11. The one that hides candy
I found out that my significant other hides candy from me in her car. In fairness, she does this because she likes the occasional sweet, whereas I attack a bag of gummy bears like a starved hyena.
exhale_lent
12. Yall know her like that!
The year is 2015 and I had been dating my wife, then girlfriend, for about 5 years. I was surprised to learn she had not seen Tropic Thunder so I instituted an Emergency Movie Night. At the end of the movie, Tom Cruise dances to “Get Back” by Ludacris. Imagine my surprise when my wife begins to sing along to the music, word by word. Believe me when I say that my wife does not look or act like the kind of person who listens to, let alone memorizes 00’s rap. I felt like I was sitting next to a stranger.
boomstik101
13. The love for Mountain Dew
About a year and a half into our relationship I found out that my boyfriend actually does like Mountain Dew when I found a secret bottle. He said he told me he didn’t like Mountain Dew when we first started dating because I didn’t like Mountain Dew and he didn’t want me to not like him.
12993
14. The pillow hater
How much she hated my pillows! We’d been together for two years. TWO YEARS. This is the same woman who will instantly tell me if she likes or doesn’t like something. Love that about her. And then two years in, the topic of pillows comes up and it turns out she’s always hated my pillows. I felt betrayed.
Calm_down_santa
15. Found out a little too late
That he was bisexual. He didn’t tell me until we’d already been married for two years. I never cared that he was bi, but I didn’t want an open relationship. Anytime I wasn’t completely ok with him flirting with anything that moves or spending all his time out at bars I was being homophobic. I tried to be understanding but somehow everything was my fault.
Then I found out he was cheating on me with both a guy and a girl. Maybe more, that’s all I could prove. Fun times.
Harley_Bear
16. Spaghetti
I thought he didn’t like spaghetti.
Just this year (we’ve been together 6+ years), he says to me that he actually likes spaghetti, just not when I make it.
He’s such a punk.
So now, when he pisses me off, he gets spaghetti for dinner.
autumn20161990
17. The eldest daughter
I learned about her 3 months into our relationship.
I had known about his younger daughter (different mothers) from the start – he was very open about that. However he didn’t know how to tell me about his eldest because it was going to be a difficult conversation. The mother of his eldest had taken off with her years ago & he had no idea how to find her.
Within a year of our dating we found her. It was very rough at first because she had been brought up being told that her father didn’t care about her – typical parental alienation. Within the next 5 years her father & I got married and she opted to live with us. Now she is an adult, living her life on her terms & we are incredibly proud of her.
Leannderthal1976
18. 7 years later
My wife knew the sex of our 2nd child, before birth, and didn’t tell me she knew for 7 years. She ran the budget and we were single income and she needed to know if we were going to have to buy boys stuff or reuse girls stuff.
Also I found out, 7 years later, that she was really hoping I wasn’t going to propose at the moment I did.
Been happily married to her for 13 years now and terrified to find out the next “7 years later” tidbit.
FelixTheCrazy
19. Violent temper
He liked to punch walls, and himself, when angry.
Until we were married, our disagreements were always discussions. Sometimes heated, sometimes angry, but never violent and always worked out to a solution in the end. It was great! It was the way adults should argue!
The first fight after the wedding, he put his fist through the wall of our (rented) apartment. He also slammed his head into the bathroom door. Why the change? “I’ve been holding back my anger, but now that we’re married, I know you can deal with the real me.” Up until then, he’d been WAY more angry and violent than I’d known about, but had hidden it during fights so I wouldn’t leave.
Yeah, we’re not married anymore.
LordOfPoodles
20. This moving decision
One drunken night with my wife, she confessed that she decided to move to Chicago after graduating from grad school because she knew I lived there.
We originally met at a young professional conference in LA and soon after the conference, after her grad school, she moved to Chicago.
She always told me it was because there were better opportunities in Chicago for employment and she didn’t want to live in LA or NY.
Kind of creepy if I really think about it, considering we barely talked, but I’m glad she did the full creep on me. 3 1/2 months after dating, we decided to get married.
devidual
21. Drunken shenanigans
So, when I was younger, my group of friends had this tradition of messing with people who passed out; drawing on them, stacking things on them etc. Anyway, one night I noticed there were a lot of people passed out. So I started bingo daubing everyone on the forehead. Then I realized I was the only one awake. Not only that but I had bingo daubed the forehead of a girl I really liked. I didn’t want her to get pissed off at me for bingo daubing her forehead so I concluded, in my drunken stupor, that I had no other choice than to bingo dob myself…So I did. Years went by and it was always a mystery who bingo daubed everyone. The girl I liked at that party had been my girlfriend for several years now and I finally decided to come clean. She thought it was hilarious. But let me tell you, that ink they use in those bingo daubers is really hard to clean off your forehead.
madobber
22. Honesty and good communication is key!
My wife did not intend to have a career and always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I learned this about two years after the wedding. We live in a high-cost part of the US where dual incomes are the norm. She worked when we met but kept getting fired, I had assumed due to bad luck. Now I can see that there were also other factors at play. People, communicate! I’ve since given up my low-paying creative career for something more lucrative to try to make her stay-at-home mom aspirations a reality (we have kids now). But she is still working and is unhappy doing so. Had I known earlier, I might have (1) taken a more direct career path to focus earlier on higher earnings or (2) broken it off. Perhaps it is the latter risk that kept the subject from being raised.
BokenUnbroken
23. The messy long-distance relationship
My ex told me he didn’t have a Facebook. About a year into dating (long distance), he was a “suggested friend”. It didn’t bother me initially, because it’s possible he didn’t use it or think it was important.
Nope. He was very active with his in real life friends/family (some I knew), and listed himself as single. When I told him about it, he didn’t give me a reason why. Just told me to deal with it.
He didn’t have a reason to go behind my back or hide me from his friends/family. It bothered me that the ones who knew of me went along with it. It felt like he was hiding something but I never found out.
That was the beginning of our spiral downwards. Being long distance was hard enough, but he kept giving me reasons to not trust him. We broke up a year after that and boy, was it messy.
daneari
24. The orange juice secret
Early in the relationship I went out and got us breakfast, which included a bottle of orange juice from the supermarket, Classic Orange Juice with pulp obviously.
Anyway, 3 and half years later, she does the same thing for the first time and comes back with pulp-free. After dry heaving and wiping the tears of fear and anger from my eyes, I pointed it out. she gives me a “ooohhh crap… yeahhh… got the wrong one.”
Happens again months later. A trend emerges. She is consistently “accidentally” grabbing the wrong juice. She eventually broke down one rainy night and admits that she never liked pulp in her orange juice. She has suffered through four years of pulp in her OJ under my tyrannical rule.
It was a hard few months, it took a lot of acceptance from both of us. She has accepted that I like pulp in my orange juice, and I had to come to terms with dating someone who doesn’t have a soul.
great-nba-comment
25. What a terrible way to end things
Met him abroad, and when we moved back to the UK I discovered that not only was his family ludicrously rich (going by the property I was told about, in the tens of millions) after he met my decidedly middle-class and unglamorous family, he was also independently a millionaire due to inheritance. It was actually really frightening, and I felt that he had been lying through omission. He turned out to be a massive turd of a human: he went to travel in Australia soon after I began a degree in the autumn (the plan being that he would fly me out there after final submissions), met a model two weeks in, cheated on me with her, and dumped me over Skype while drunk, then blocked me on all social media platforms immediately after the call ended. Never trust someone who’s ‘slumming it’ with you.
PLAUTOS
26. The other school
We lived in the same town as kids and, although we didn’t meet until college, there were a lot of coincidences in our childhoods. We took swimming lessons at the same lake, spent time in the kid’s section at the same library, played at the same playground, etc. Turns out our grandparents even lived around the corner from each other, several states away. I had made a big deal about how we must have also gone to the same elementary school. Well, one day early in our relationship we got ice cream cones (also at a place we had both frequented as kids) and then took a walk to the school, which was down the street. As I reflected on old memories, like the mural we painted in first grade and the map of the United States painted on the blacktop, he had an a-ha moment and realized he did not in fact go to that school. He lived in another part of town so went to a different school, but continued to go along with it. On our one-year anniversary he admitted he actually went to the other school. He was so serious, I thought he was about to tell me something much worse. He never said anything because he thought I’d be mad… in reality I couldn’t have cared less but it made for a funny story.
vkittykat
27. The twins
She told me she was a twin and her sister passed away from SIDS. When we moved in together I was unpacking her stuff and I came across an old dingy onesie and a pacifier. I didn’t wanna bring it up but last year we were laying in bed together and she just said she misses her so much even though they never met. I thought she had a miscarriage that she hadn’t told me about but when I asked who thats when she told me. She says she dreams of her frequently. And she always feels like something’s missing. Really sad. This was 3 years into our relationship.
What she doesn’t know is that for her birthday next month I’m surprising her with a portrait of her and her twin. Her mom already gave me the photo of them (last photo).
grapebear90
28. The pee accident
Around the time my wife and I first started dating there was a party at my house and I accidentally had a little too much to drink. Well, being the saint she is, she put me to bed and got me a glass of water before she joined me. At some point in the middle of the night I woke up soaking wet and realized that I made the mistake of not emptying my bladder before passing out… There was pee everywhere. So in my still drunken state I devised a plan, I took the water she left me and drank most of it and dumped the rest on the ground. I then proceeded to wake her up and tell her that I spilled my water all over the bed and that I needed her to get up so I could put some towels down on the bed. We slept the rest of the night in peace. I told her about it a year later.
DeLosLobos
29. The Start Trek fan
My girlfriend (now wife) and I had been living together for two years before I told her I watched Star Trek. I was worried she would think I was too nerdy.
It was the early 90s. I had a VCR at my parent’s house and I would have dinner with them once a week, and then watch the latest episode of The Next Generation. It all came out one week when my girlfriend and I were both over for dinner. We were getting ready to leave, when my mom says “Aren’t you going to watch Trek first?” It was all out in the open.
My girlfriend immediately felt bad for me, saying she would never have judged me for watching Trek. She even watched a few episodes with me I had on VHS at my parent’s home. She liked it, and thought the stories and themes were good.
Trying to assuage my fears further, a few months later she surprised me with tickets for both of us to a Star Trek Convention that was coming to town. So we went. After about 30 minutes walking around the Con, seeing autograph booths, vendors, and cosplayers, she leaned into me and whispered lovingly in my ear,
“You were right not to tell me.
EBone12355
30. Crunchy peanut butter
My wife and I have been together six years. A few weeks ago, I came home with a jar of crunchy peanut butter after visiting my parents’ place (to avoid going to the grocery store, naturally). She found it in the cabinet and was like “where did we get crunchy peanut butter from – I love crunchy!”
We stared at each other in momentary silence as we realized we’d been buying creamy peanut butter for six years because we both thought the other person hated crunchy.
It’s like living with a stranger.
bamf_1230
(Source)