You think you know someone...until you don't. Here, 30 married men and women share something their spouse hid from them until after they got married.
1/30. My ex wife neglected to mention she was a lesbian until after we were married.
Kind of a deal breaker.
2/30. I used to be married. That's no longer the case, so it goes.
Anyways, I was getting dinosaur stuff for our boy, and his mother said something along the lines of "I don't like dinosaurs and am happy they are not real."
I chuckled, thinking she meant she is relieved her life is not like Jurassic Park, being chased by these giant predators. Nope. Turned out she believes dinosaurs never walked this earth. I had known her for 6 solid years, and this completely blew me away, side swiping me with horror....
She thinks people are guessing when the put partial bones together, and just fabricate these creatures...
I'm still affected by this- even years later. When I go on dates, there is a litmus test now. I ask what her stance stance is on dinosaurs every first date. Not making that mistake again.
3/30. When my grandparents got married, my grandmother was 24 and she thought my grandfather was 25. It was during their honeymoon that he confessed that he was only 19. Gran was annoyed, obviously, but I think she was too relieved to be married to stay mad at him; 24 was getting close to being left on the shelf for an Irish-Catholic woman in the 60s.
4/30. Three time felon looking to get married then divorced so she could get paid.
Divorced and broke now.
5/30. Well my grandpa's real name was Upton and he thought it was really weird so when he met my grandma he told her his name was James. Three weeks later (yes they got married after three weeks of knowing each other, the story is actually adorable) the priest asked my grandma if she takes Upton to be her husband.
This resulted in my grandma yelling in front of the entire church, "Who the hell is Upton?!" And then, realizing my grandpa had lied to her because he thought his name was weird, she goes, "Oh Lord yes I do to take this stupid man as my husband." They were married 65 years with three boys, the oldest of which was named James. I never saw a couple more in love or meant for each other than my grandparents, God rest their souls.
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6/30. That he could juggle.
You're with someone for a decade and you think you know him, then all of a sudden he starts juggling the four oranges he's holding and when your jaw drops just says, "Oh, I learned when I was a kid."
This whole time we could have been on the road as a circus act and he waits until now to reveal his talents.
7/30. While we were dating, my husband always told me this story about how he used to race dirt bikes and wrecked one time so badly that he had to have surgery to reconstruct his nose. I had wondered why he looked so different in his younger pictures. Anyway, it wasn't until we had been married several years that his mother heard me mentioning that story and how scary that must have been for her, worrying about her son...and she didn't know what I was talking about. The truth was that he never wrecked a dirt bike and his nose looked different because he had been ashamed of his larger-than-average Italian nose, so she saved up her money to buy him a nose job.
8/30. That despite the life plans we'd talked about, once we married he expected me to be the breadwinner, the homemaker, cook and accountant in the family. He needed to "stay home and work on his music." Oh, and that two bedroom place? No, he didn't want kids, he wanted his own bedroom. Oh, and intimacy? "I could just "do my business" in your room, but sleep in my own bed after". Nope, nope, nope.
9/30. He knew women had periods. He had no idea periods involved blood. He thought it was just abdominal cramping or something. We even lived together for a year before we got married and he never figured this out until after we were married when we got a new dresser. I threw all the underwear, both his and mine in the same drawer since it was a smaller dresser. He saw my bloodstained period panties and started crying because he thought I was dying and had been hiding it from him. I then had to explain to my 28-year-old husband what exactly a period is.
10/30. That she already had a boyfriend. This was discovered 2 years after we got married. She has been his lover for almost 9 years. Divorce in progress.
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11/30. I didn't realize until after we lived together that she can't keep the bathroom floor dry.
When she showers, I feel as though half of the time she points the shower head at the ground outside the shower.
When she gets out, I imagine her shaking her body off in canine fashion.
If she washes her face at the sink, I visualize her saying, "One handful of water for me, one handful for you" (to the floor).
12/30. My husband has some kind of crazy allergic mutation that makes lemons like sulfuric acid on his tongue. For serious, his tongue gets burned. To be fair, he didn't know that was unusual until after we got married. My fav dessert is lemon bars and he thought I just liked burning my own face off. Cute twist: he would still make and eat lemon bars with me every year for my birthday until we found out. Then he got lemon-banned.
13/30. That she loads the dishwasher like an a**hole. It's my biggest complaint about her. I'm a lucky man.
14/30. After being married for almost 4 years I learned my wife can play guitar, like incredibly well. She saw an acoustic at the flea market 2 weeks ago and she just picked it up and started playing. My jaw f*cking dropped. I bought it for her and now she is teaching me how to play.
15/30. That she was a bank robber.
She told me she had saved up $700 from working summer jobs and babysitting while in high school. We get married, and get on our way to Branson (Honeymoon Capitol of America, amirite?). On the way, she confesses to me that she did not in fact save up $700 from part time jobs. She admits she has saved up over $7000 from her jobs!!!
So, we go on an extravagant (for me) week-long spending spree of a honeymoon. We do EVERYTHING! Helicopters, boat rentals, every show, see a souvenir- we buy it. Oh a quilt? $500? Sure! We spent over $6500 extra on this trip.
We get home on a Sunday afternoon. We both have to return to work the next morning. There are several messages on the answering machine. The third or fourth message plays. It is her boss from the BANK she works at telling her to contact him at once, that there is an issue they need to discuss, and leaves a number.
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I learn that there was no mysterious savings account from high school. I learn that she had been transferring money from a couple large accounts on a regular basis into HER OWN account. The total was somewhere north of $7700. The bank was pissed, the clients were pissed, the authorities were already neck deep this and they were scary, to say the least.
After several meetings, it was decided that if WE made full restitution, the bank would not press felony charges. So, we now have one unemployed wife who is likely UN-employable, one scared husband desperately trying to get his bank-thieving wife a job anywhere, and one debt, due immediately, for $7700.
We gather ALL the money left over, borrow $500 from her parents, $5500 from mine, and my next paycheck. (You wanna know stress? Ask your parents to help you pay back money your new wife stole from a bank.) We get the bank paid back by the end of the week.
After several weeks, things have died down some. She is working at McDonald's (I pulled strings with manager friends) and we have begun paying back the parents. We actually don't hear anything for a while and the immediacy of the crime has subsided. In fact, it wasn't until 2002 that we were contacted to appear in court.
We were still young and ignorant, so we get lucky here. The "feds" were easy to work with. The bank didn't make a huge deal about it since the money was returned. It is a small town bank, (two branches total) so somehow we avoided any real heavy issues. We took the advice of some guy who represented the bank, and really we just wanted this part of our lives to be over, so we would have done anything. She went in to court, sans lawyer, and plead guilty to a class C misdemeanor. The judge gave her 2 years probation and the restriction of never working at an FDIC establishment.
And this is how my life as a married man began.
16/30. That he knew how to ballroom dance and took a cake decorating course for an art credit.
I learned it the same night. I couldn't decorate cupcakes and he took over. Later at the event, he grabbed me and waltzed perfectly.
Can't wait for the next few years.
17/30. My wife passed away. At the funeral I met her ex-husband, her 22-year-old son who she hadn't seen for 19 years, and her other 20-year-old son who she gave up for adoption (from a different father).
I never knew any of them existed until the night before the funeral when her best friend asked if I minded if they came.
Yes, it was awkward. She never had spoken of them. The closest she came to admitting it was when we were dating and she said, "Don't believe a word my sister says, she tells everyone that I'm divorced and had two kids."
Seventeen years later I found out that was the truth.
18/30. She's really bad at swimming. I discovered this on our honeymoon while we were about 100 yards from shore when she started having a panic attack.
19/30. My dad loved grilled cheese sandwiches growing up. It was the one thing that his mom could cook when she was sick (cancer), and he always associates it with happy memories.
My parents get married, my mom continues the whole "making grilled cheese because it makes him happy" deal, complete with a slice of tomato, because my grandfather (his father) grew tomatoes and she thought it was an extra bit of love.
My parents have been married almost forty years, and my dad finally told her last year that he hates tomatoes.
He had been eating the sandwiches with tomatoes the entire time because he thought it was a part of her childhood, and wanted to make her happy. They laughed for ten minutes, the tears streaming, not able to talk laughing.
20/30. That she can have an orgasm just by thinking about it. Yeah, amazing.
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21/30. We have been together 15 years and married for 7, we are watching tv the other day and someone starts speaking German and there are no subtitles - he translates it, like it's no big thing. I'm like who ARE you? Apparently he's watched so many war movies he speaks conversational German.
22/30. I met my husband online on OkCupid. I found out right before we got married, after dating for 5 years and living together for 3, that the picture of him posted on the site was staged - a profile of him using a camera timer in his room alone while holding a beer and talking to no one.
I don't know which cracks me up more that I couldn't tell or that he kept the secret for so long.
23/30. That she doesn't close any doors!
Getting a glass for a drink? Door stays open!
Getting silverware? Drawer stays open!
Taking a dump? Door stays open!
Its 4am and you are getting ready for work. What's that??
A F*CKING DRESSER DRAWER!! HELLO HUMAN SHIN EVERY MORNING.
WOMAN, F*CKING CLOSE SH*T.
24/30. He has a watermelon problem. Like. He will sit down and eat an ENTIRE F*CKING 12 -pound watermelon. Then get VERY ill, spend half the day pissing, complain about his awful stomachache, curl up and writhe around for awhile...then GO BACK to scavenging the rind for any bits he missed. I don't know how this addiction hasn't killed him. I didn't find out about it until last year. We've been together for seven. I need to supervise him when we go shopping so he only buys the mini watermelons. If I leave him alone? He buys the biggest one he can find.
I mean watermelons are delicious but dear God.
25/30. That she had been married siv other times (yes, that's a six). She said, "Only two counted because they lasted more than a year." I thought I was denied some critical, need-to-know information.
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26/30. A few years ago, after about 15 years as a couple, 7 years of marriage and one child together, I accidentally found out that my husband is a huge Star Trek fan.
I walked into our bedroom one day and he quickly changed the tv station, so naturally I asked what he was watching. He reluctantly confessed, and was obviously very embarrassed to have to tell me that he watches Star Trek all the time when he is alone. I find it hilarious that he was so embarrass about that after all those years. To this day he won't watch the TV show or older movies with me; he says I ask too many questions.
27/30. Literally 5 seconds ago I learned that my husband didn't know women have to wipe after peeing.
28/30. When I was about 20 and my parents had been married for 29 years, my mom said she was going to make squash with supper. My dad's response was to say, "No thank you. I never want squash again."
My mom was all WTF. My dad's response was that he had eaten it because a) she liked it and b) if you want your kids not to be picky eaters you suck it up and eat whatever is served. We were all astounded.
29/30. The fact that she is actually a good cook! For 10 years I cooked almost every meal because every time she cooked it wasn't very.. well.. good. Got married and ever since she has made awesome meals which are absolutely beautiful.
I asked her when she learned to cook and she told me she had always known how to cook but wanted to make sure I wasn't marrying her to be a housewife who cooks and cleans for her husband.
30/30. My wife is from Siberia (backstory: she was my exchange student girlfriend in high school. We got back in touch 17 years later and we were married a year-and-a-half ago). She is straight-up amazing, but I have always been at least a tiny bit nervous being the passenger when my wife drives. It's not that she drives poorly, she just has a very different respect for the rules that I take for granted, like signaling before changing lanes, speed limits, merging and keeping distance between other cars. You know, small stuff.
Her foreign license won't work here for long, and she studied the driver's manual HARD to pass the written portion for her Oregon driver's license. On her third attempt she passed, missing only one question.
Last night we were celebrating her victory and she confessed something that really surprised me: she acquired her Russian license with the aid of two bottles of Cognac, given to her instructor prior to the ride-along to ensure a passing grade.
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.