Seeing is a gift. Most of us feel that the sense of sight is a given. But so many people lose the ability to see, which is tragic. Being able to see then suddenly not is a hell unto itself, whether permanent or temporary. IaF you're reading this.... BE GRATEFUL!!
Redditor u/HiddenLayer5 wanted to hear from those who have lost their gift of sight by asking... People who could see but went blind, what's it like? Is it like being in perpetual darkness or something else?
Just One...
GiphyI lost an eye as a child. It is not darkness, it is nothing. What do you see with your elbow? That's what I see with my prosthetic eye. Noctudeit
The Darkness...
Oh, I can answer this. I had some neurological issues when I was younger. Once or twice this resulted in a brief but total loss of vision because my brain stopped processing the input from my eyes or something along those lines.
It's nothing. You don't see darkness. It's just nothing. Best way to describe it would be like you're trying to see out of your kneecap. There's nothing to see because your kneecap isn't sending information about sight to your brain. Or it's like asking you to tell me how I look in the infrared spectrum right now. There's no real words to describe the sensation of lacking a sensation, because it's an oxymoron.
Keep in mind too that there's different kind of blindness. What I described is probably similar to the experiences of people who were born blind because of issues with their nervous system. Other people can go blind due to degeneration of the mechanics of the eye itself, which I'd bet is much different. American_Phi
I'm Going Blind!
Someone legally blind, not going blind ...
I have several friends who are going blind, and they seem to fall in to two camps.
- Their brain tries to fill in the blanks in their blind spots, and it's just a lightly blurred section that they know not to trust.
- It's just blank, as if nothing is there, light or dark. They can't perceive anything particular there, as it's beyond their ability to see anything there. BARDLover
The 20/60 Issue....
I am legally blind in my left eye. It is a problem with how my eyes lined up as a kid, and my brain decided to ignore my left eye. I wore a patch off and on as a kid and had vision as good as 20/60 before it progressively got worse. I honestly hardly notice it. I had a pretty distinguished career in the military despite it, including shooting top gun often. I always felt bad because I could never do drills some people could, such as shooting with non-dominant hand, at least without some awkward head lean, I suppose.
Given that it is one eye, I just experience the world crystal clear with my right eye. When I got metal in that eye, I drove to the hospital, and it was incredibly brutal. I could see the red of a light, but couldn't really gauge distance. Dhoy1
Look Forward.....
GiphyStare at a wall. Now try to look out of the back of your head without moving an inch. All that nothing behind the headband of your vision is what they see. Nothing. polyjeans
The Kink....
I've always suffered from severe short sight. Then when I was pregnant with my youngest child I was diagnosed with wet macular degeneration. It manifested as a "kink" in my vision. So (in the one eye I can sort of see out of, the other is redundant due to an extremely severe astigmatism) there's this kink in the world now. The world I see anyway.
I've also been diagnosed with cataracts which means my sight is now like looking through a fog. It can be hugely frustrating. I can't read to my children anymore and that breaks my heart. I'll be having surgery to remove the cataracts in the next couple of months.
I've just been registered as disabled due to my sight loss. This hit me hard. Really hard. I've always been independent and having to ask my 4 year old which bus is coming (amongst other things) is a bitter pill to swallow. So, I see a kind of kinky fog right now. I don't know what will happen when I lose my sight entirely. I do know that the thought of it is utterly terrifying. Lilasskicker123
Migraines....
I'm seeing a lot of total blindness answers, so I'll provide my experience....
I experience ocular migraines related to inflammation surrounding one of my ocular nerves. When I get the migraines, I lose all peripheral vision in one eye and can only see pinpoint in that eye for about 20 minutes and then I'm sick in bed for at least a day. What I do see aside from the pinpoint, is this lightening-strike zig zag that slowly moves across my field of vision, and blurred colors in the peripheral field. My brain doesn't want to really process what colors I see, though.... its weird. scoobledooble314159
The Flicker....
Ok, so my eyes are screwed up in a weird way.. I can't see thing that flicker fast, like under florescent lights. this means I'm effectively blind in most grocery stores. for .me, it's weird as hell I either see blinding white that's so bright I HAVE to close my eyes to dim it, or it's as dark as if the lights were off (Walmarts are 'fun' because there's little to no other light sources) so for me, it's a near daily experience going from sighted to non-sighted and all the fun that ensues with that. gartral
Looking for Anything....
Sort of transient blindness I guess that some might find interesting. I get severe migraines with an atypical visual disturbance (aura). Instead of squiggly lines and such, I lose parts of, or all of my vision. Things like tunnel vision or missing spots of my vision are most interesting to describe.
With those, I don't see blackness around a point like looking out a tunnel, or black spots in my vision. Instead, it's like there is no data there. I actually struggle to identify where my blind spots exactly are in my field of view, until I specifically notice it blocking something I'm trying to look at (difficult if it's not in the exact centre). With the tunnel vision, even then it's hard to tell when it's happening. Whenever I suspect it might be happening, I have to hold a finger up with my arm outstretched, looking forward. Then, continuing looking forward, I'll move it out of my line of sight and work out when I can't see it anymore.
Maybe the best comparison (though still not ideal) I could make for people who haven't experienced anything like it is to consider the blind spot that your nose blocks. Our brain filters out the nose, but we don't see a great big black spot, there's just no information there. LindLin
Trauma...
GiphyI suffered from a brief bout of blindness after head trauma.
I could sort of see, but it was more like looking through a kaleidoscope. Everything was a blurry blob of color without a defined start or end--everything just blended together. Like, if you unfocus your eyes and cross them, that's a very rough idea of what I was seeing (or, not seeing).
I don't remember what the exact term is for this specific type of vision loss (it was 7 years ago and I was rather concussed), but, if permanent, it is indeed classed as blindness. murrimabutterfl
Rise Up.
I'm not entirely blind, but I'm blind in my right as a result of cancer.
There are days it becomes my biggest weakness. I can drive fine, hold down a job fine. But some days I walk in to table corners, bang my elbow on stuff etc, Or hell my fiancé pointed out the sodas I was looking for at Walmart the other day after I had walked past them 3 times, because they were on my right side.
I privately admit defeat a lot because of it, unfortunately. mattymattrick
Passport please.
I don't know about blindness, but eye migraines are a trip. Like really, it makes everything look like Im on acid. And I get blind spots in my vision. It's not painful at all, just really weird. The first time it happened I legit thought I was losing my vision. -ThunderGunExpress
Dark in the Dark.
I lost my site when I was 13. Yeah I guess it's just like being in the dark all the time… Although it's been so long I don't quite remember anymore how being in the dark when you could still see is like. browneye54
Close your eyes....
GiphyIt's hard to comprehend but in most cases you just see nothing. Close your eyes and try to see out of the back of your head. You can't. DickManning
Fade in and Out....
When I was younger and the weather was hot I would lose my vision for about 15 seconds every time I stood up quickly. I was so used to it that I would stand up at the end of class spot my path and start walking, my vision would tunnel out quickly to complete blindness (I perceived this for some reason as grey but could see nothing) my vision would fade in from a sort of static after about 5-10 seconds. I just used sound and touch to navigate. pounded_rivet
A kick!
I'm vision impaired from Uveitis that kicked in when I was 26.
My eyesight is like looking through a fly screen, black dots and floaters everywhere.
Also, due to how often people say "BUT YOU CAN'T BE BLIND IF YOU'RE USING REDDIT" whenever I post about eyesight: https://old.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/55wzgp/how_do_blind_people_use_reddit/SunnyLego
Sharp Objects....
Pretty sharp vision but an issue with my spinal fluid pressure causes stress on my retinal nerve, leading to an enlarged blind spot. Most people don't notice theirs, but it's like a tiny black hole in my vision, even to the point it's edges distort things like one ( AKA if I'm in a car looking at the street lines and the line goes through my blind spot, it looks like the line curves around the edge.) you don't see black which is why you don't notice it unless you focus on it. It's a really interesting sensation once you learn how to find yours, and you watch objects disappear moving into it. Crezelle
All I See....
GiphyI think it's different for each individual.
For me, I just see a mix of black, brown, gray, white and more rarely but sometimes everything from red to yellow. RealNicklasMCHD
Premature....
GiphyI was born with 6 months instead of 9.
In the 90's in some small city in Brazil we didn't have laser surgery so i did my eye surgery with criogeny, my retina detached and my left eye is blind
Its basically like there is nothing because your eye is shut off from your brain. Anni01
Okay-ish...
Oh, I can answer this one. I was normal, and then legally blind, and now I'm ok-ish. I was diabetic (a whole other story) and got diabetic retinopathy. My one eye which was worse was like trying to look through a running lava lamp. Just whirls and spots of color and black. Un_creative_name
Who else wants to see again?
Planning a wedding is stressful, but planning a wedding with a bridezilla? Life-ruining. From tantrums over table settings to meltdowns over money, some brides take “It’s my special day” way, way too far. Need proof? Just keep reading these so-bad-they’re-irresistible bridezilla stories from Reddit.
Just Walk Away
woman standing near treePhoto by Christopher Campbell on UnsplashMy brother's fiancé went off on my mom in front of my sister and me, all because he was 45 minutes late to the rehearsal due to his best man's car tire blowing out. "Where is your jerk of a son?!" she screamed. The dude should have never shown up for the wedding. Not only was she a bridezilla, but she was also a total utter sociopath. Soon enough, the disturbing truth came out.
She had completely fabricated her life. Her parents—who didn't show up for the wedding—called my mom to tell her the truth about it the day after the ceremony. She had a rap sheet a mile long. But my brother, who just wanted to believe that people can change, stuck it out for seven years. Don't ever, ever do that.
Worth Every Penny
I married a bridezilla and she ruined my life. After the wedding and vacation were over, I told her we needed to pay the debt we just accumulated—she wanted a huge wedding and she got it. We had a budget for the wedding and we should have had no debt at the end, but in the last few weeks before the wedding, she suddenly had to spend a ton of money on wedding stuff I had never even heard of before.
And when I say she spent a ton of money, I actually mean that it all came out of my pocket. So yeah, I wanted to start paying it off. She said she didn't have much on her credit card and I could easily pay it off in a couple of months if I just picked up some of her bills. I agreed... but that ended up being the worst decision of my life.
Three months later, she had her credit card paid off and she told me she wanted a divorce. You’d think we could get an annulment, but no. Annulment is very uncommon where we live. We looked into it, but we didn’t meet the criteria for one. Instead, we had to go to a quickie divorce lawyer who just puts paperwork together, and then we had to do everything else.
Maybe the worst thing about all this in retrospect? She comes from an upper-middle-class family and has a trust fund.
Joke’s On You
I was a bridesmaid in this winter-themed wedding. We all wore blue silk dresses with white fake fur capelets and MUFFS. At one point, we were getting ready for the ceremony and the bride said to me, “Hey, let me see your muff." I batted my eyelashes and joked, "I've waited so long to hear those words from you!" That didn’t go down how I wanted at all.
The look she shot me could have felled a moose. She started going off on me about how I was not taking things seriously enough and suggested that I should go hang out with the groomsmen instead if I was going to make lewd jokes. Yeah. Maybe I should have.
Warning Signs
My cousin married a bridezilla. He comes from a very poor area but has become successful after moving out of his hometown. His wife, however, was already extremely wealthy; you even could say excessively. They married after a year of knowing each other, and boy was it a surprise to hear about their horrific wedding plans.
They spent $250K on the wedding, including catering by seven different restaurants. Their food was from different cultures and cooked in front of you, almost like a hibachi buffet style. They even had servers in tailed suits and white gloves serving Taco Bell after midnight. Basically, it was the most lavish wedding I’d ever been to, and she was OBSESSED with the details. Well… that ended up being a HUGE red flag.
Once they got married, she was spending more money than he could make. She was getting mad because he wasn’t making enough, while she wasn’t working at all. When they got divorced, she gave him a cruel ultimatum. He could either get his ring back or keep the dog. He kept the dog. Oh, and there was one more parting gift.
Her sister, a lawyer, helped her file a restraining order on him and they haven’t spoken since. Screw her, but man, did he dodge a bullet there. They finished the divorce papers exactly one year and one day after their wedding. Once a bridezilla, always a bridezilla.
Age Is Just A Number
My uncle married a bridezilla. She had a huge spending problem. She still went clubbing in her 40s thinking she was 20 and ignored all her day-to-day priorities to party. She also acted like she was better than everyone else, which is probably why she had a hard time keeping friendships. The final straw was when she cheated on my uncle with a man ten years her junior. My uncle is now married to a different woman and he's the happiest he's ever been.
Harsh, But Fair
white plate align on table during daytimePhoto by Stella de Smit on UnsplashMy sister was labeled a bridezilla by the staff at her venue—I heard them talking about her. The thing is, she was totally justified. The chair coverings were red when they were supposed to be brown. There was no mirror in the bridal suite. The photographer was late, and the make-up artist was very late, hence the issue with the mirror. And the issues didn't stop there.
Oh, plus the buffet was totally wrong—not a single dish she chose was there, and they charged $25 a person for what was supposed to be a four-tier chocolate fountain. It ended up being a small, plastic contraption that she saw the staff unbox from Walgreens on the day of. On top of it all, the wait staff was half the number stated in the contract, and the DJ refused to honor the playlist she selected.
So, yeah, she lost it at the venue.
A Hair Don’t
As a hairstylist, I've seen a few bridezillas. This one affected me directly. So mid-week, a woman came in and asked about up-dos for a wedding for the upcoming weekend. She told my boss that she wanted something "funky" done with her hair. My boss then booked this witch with me. Saturday morning rolled around and she got in my chair so we could get started.
I was nearly finished when she started complaining that she wanted more of a classic Audrey Hepburn style. At this point, it was too late to change anything.... plus my next client had already arrived. She completely lost it. She said I wasn't listening to her and then called her mother to talk some sense into me. She was almost in tears wondering how she was going to explain her hair to her future in-laws.
Her mom showed up and basically told her that her hair looked beautiful. Then she paid me and dragged her out of the salon. A total what the hell experience for everyone.
Servant Of Honor
My best friend, who is normally very sweet and quiet, was super rude when she got married. First, she told me when I would be having her bridal shower. She set a date without consulting me in any way and decided on all the details—it would be at my house, I would be serving so-and-so types of foods, etc. I was in the middle of my honors year of my bachelor's degree in another city that was a 15-hour drive away.
Well, she set the date to be right in the middle of my exams. She also planned on making all sorts of DIY things for her wedding to save money, like an aisle runner, centerpieces, arch, veil, etc. I came into town the night before the wedding and she said to me, "I didn't have time to get anything made, so I need you to do it." I stayed up all night sewing and arranging flowers while she slept. But it gets worse.
It was in the middle of winter, and when we arrived at the hall, the floor hadn't been cleaned and it was covered with salt stains. There was nothing to clean it with but a bucket and a cloth. So after staying up working all night, I had to clean a floor on my hands and knees. I was exhausted, sore, and I hated every minute of her wedding. I didn't talk to her for months after that.
Bride’s Day, Bride’s Way
I attended the wedding of a family friend's daughter, so I didn't really know her. It was a night-time reception, with the ceremony immediately preceding. When we went into the reception, we were expecting a buffet or something to be set up, but there was nothing. Later, we found out that there was no food for the 120 guests.
Instead, there was a cheese spread, a fruit platter, and vegetables with dip. After an hour, people were really hungry and some people started to leave because they were expecting to be fed and didn't want to stay. When the bride found out, she absolutely lost it. She ran across the room in her dress and blocked the doors, screaming about how everyone was ruining her wedding. She kept screaming, "Bride's day, bride's way!" It was such a scene that her father had to peel her off the door. I don't know where the husband was; probably cowering. After that, the people who didn't know her all left. I heard through the grapevine that she was inconsolable the entire night... She got trashed and threw up—hopefully on her dress, but I’m not sure.
Oh well, Bride's Day, bride's way!
You Think You Know Someone
I had coordinated a bridezilla’s wedding. My cousin's six-month-old baby had passed a few days prior to the wedding. I called the bride and told her of my family situation, and I assured her that my assistant would be stepping in for me so that I could attend the funeral. Her reply made my blood run cold. She told me to send my assistant to the funeral and that I had better be at her wedding.
I told her I would be sending her a refund and that now no one at all would be coming to her wedding. The groom ended up leaving her after this whole thing went down. Suffice to say, he really dodged a bullet there.
Sister Act
woman in white long sleeve shirt with white flower headbandPhoto by Rikonavt on UnsplashMy sister was a bridezilla. She announced her two-year engagement and asked me to be the maid of honor. I then got the opportunity to move across the country to pursue my career. It was 18 months before her wedding, and her reaction was chilling. Instead of congratulating me, she said, "You're going to leave me here to plan my wedding all by myself?"
It was as if I had signed away my right to have a life for the “honor” of being in her wedding. Oh, but that was just the first salvo. She made us all spend hundreds of dollars on specialized dresses, and even the bachelorette party had a dress code and a steep price tag. For 10 years before her engagement, I had consistently had blue, green, and purple hair, but knowing that she is conservative, I let the color grow out.
I had natural color but a short bob with an undercut and even that just wasn’t good enough. She went on about it constantly. In the lead-up, we talked every few days to discuss her wedding—despite the problems, it was the closest we'd ever been. Then, as soon as she was married, I got radio silence. She even forgot my birthday.
Needless to say, we don't speak anymore.
Monster-in-Law
According to my mother-in-law, I was the bridezilla. We had a maximum limit of 36 people, including ourselves and my son. My mother-in-law gave me a guest list that included—you guessed it—36 names. She assured me that not everyone would come, but that they would be very appreciative of the invite. I felt totally grossed out.
Still, I left the decision up to my husband, since it was his family after all. Needless to say, they all got invites. Then, I had asked for RSVPs to be given a few months before the wedding. Since the mother-in-law had used up all of the room on the guest list, I had to reduce my side to four people, with some on hold until I knew the exact numbers. I was starting to come to terms with it, but then she did something that made me absolutely livid.
I finally lost it two weeks before the wedding when I still didn’t have RSVPs. She said she would work on it and get back to me. A week before the wedding, she outdid herself in the worst way possible. She said one family also needed to bring nine other people because they were going on a family trip and our town was on the way so they would all be here anyway.
I flat out said no and called her out. I cut off the guest list and said that I was inviting the rest of my guest list and whoever hadn’t RSVP’d wouldn’t get a chair or plate. Right up to the day of the wedding, they were making changes. We got married at a Chinese buffet so that it would be the simplest planning and everyone would have something that they liked to eat.
My dress was $40 off Amazon. My flowers were $20 from Costco. We had a Dairy Queen ice cream cake for the wedding cake. Yet she still makes it out that I was the bridezilla.
A Rollercoaster Of Emotions
My co-worker married a crazy bridezilla. Here’s just a taste of what happened leading up to, during, and after the wedding. The moment he proposed, she lost her desire to sleep with him. According to him, she also basically stopped acting like the woman he fell in love with and started acting like her real self.
A week after he proposed, she quit her job. According to her, her full-time job was now planning the wedding. The wedding was horrible, but I'm getting there. She then had a fight with his mother because she demanded that she pay for half the wedding while getting zero input on anything.
Like, the groom’s family wasn’t even allowed to contribute to the guest list, which ended up being 95% of the bride's friends and family. The bride, who was 30 years old, subsequently egged her future mother-in-law’s house. When the bride and groom had a spat about the egging, he went to work the next day. That's when he received a disturbing video.
The video was of her screaming and sobbing as she buzzed her hair off in the bathroom. I worked with him, so he showed me the video. I strongly urged him to have her assessed by a psychiatrist. In response, he made a stupid joke about how intimacy with a crazy girl is the best kind and I pitied him. There's no amount of patience in the world that would help me survive a relationship like that.
Now we get to the juicy part: the wedding. It was in a pool "clubhouse" in summer, and it was much too small for the 150+ people they invited. Someone forgot to turn the AC on until after the place was packed. A lifeguard showed up in a swimsuit to turn it on, but it did little given it was already sweltering.
Two rows of chairs in the clubhouse were ribboned off with “reserved” signs on them, so no one sat in them. They were later occupied by the six bridesmaids, leaving about a dozen chairs open once the wedding started. The one groomsman, who was the best man, stood by the groom and didn't sit, while elderly people were left standing as there was no way to get to the chairs once the ceremony started.
The bride showed up 90 minutes late. She was unhappy with her hair and makeup, so she took it all off and did it herself. All the guests were standing for 1.5 hours just waiting for her. The groom was literally standing at the altar sweating his butt off in a wool suit, and he was clearly not sure if she would show up.
He looked like he felt sick. When the bride did show up, it somehow got worse. She burst into the clubhouse, marched down the aisle, and snapped at the officiant to "hurry up and get started." During the prayer while the religious groom had his head bowed, she turned to wave at everyone (I don't pray so I was looking up), then she told her mother to go get her some water.
She drank a bottle of water during the prayer and kept grinning and waving at people in attendance, paying zero attention to her groom in front of her. When the ceremony was over, tables were crammed into the clubhouse…and apparently only family and immediate friends of the bride had seats at the tables. The rest of us were to stand outside during the reception. I didn't see a dance, a speech, the cake cut, nothing.
The food was served outside where there were bugs everywhere. The bride made the groom get her food over and over. He meekly stood in line with the other 150 people, until people insisted he go sit and let them get food. Nope, she told him to do it, so he said he had to be the one to get it for her.
She never left her table to greet any of her guests. And when it was over, it went nuclear. Apparently, they had a massive fight as they were leaving the following day for the honeymoon, with the bride laying all the failures of the wedding she planned at his and his mom's feet. She threw his luggage out of the car and tried to drive to the airport by herself.
However, he had their tickets and jumped on the hood to stop her from driving off in his car. He then got fired about a month after the wedding because he kept showing up late and leaving early to deal with her personal crises. One year after the wedding, I got a thank-you note for my wedding gift, and it revealed the whole story.
It was signed by just the bride with a note that said, "As you may have heard, Ryan and I have had a bumpy start in our first year as a married couple, and we're separated now. Thanks for the lovely gift." They divorced a couple of months later.
Start The Way You Mean To Go On
This was a groomzilla. A friend of my father was remarrying, and it was both his and the bride’s second time around. They were both in their early 40s, and it was an arranged marriage. The guy was an utter mess. He demanded that every event be at top-notch hotels with obscenely expensive catering and hired string quartets and whatnot for the entertainment.
This was mostly paid out of the bride’s family’s pocket, I might add. The parties on the nights leading up to the main wedding event were opportunities for him to make a rather public jerk out of himself, talking at the top of his voice everywhere he went and showboating the entire time. But the kicker came the next day.
The bride was missing from her own wedding reception. Obviously, it was very odd and conspicuous, and the few relatives from her side made some non-committal excuses about her not feeling well, etc. Turns out, this idiot had divorced the poor woman right after he had his wedding night fun. He said that he “didn’t like her enough,” and that’s an almost literal quote.
The marriage was officially over before the festivities even ended.
You Need More Than A Priest, People
As a minister, there’s only one ceremony I had to walk away from. I received a call from my sister-in-law that one of her friends was supposed to get married and the priest had passed the week before. They didn't want to change the date or move anything, so they asked if I knew anyone who could help out.
I said, "Sure, when is the wedding?" It was supposed to be in an hour. Okay, no problem—I was on my way home from work where I had finished up an important meeting, so I was already reasonably well-dressed. I called home to say I was going to be late. When I arrived, it went wrong almost immediately. The "happy couple" looked at me and asked if I had proper priest’s vestments.
Um, no, I didn't, and if I did, I probably wouldn't be carrying them in my car. This is, after all, was an emergency. Still, the bride asked if I was able to go buy some and come back. I told her that I didn't even know where to buy garments like that. The groom then told me that if I couldn't even try, then maybe I should leave. So I did. Oh, but it gets better.
My sister-in-law told me they later cornered a priest at the church and told him he had to marry them, or they would sue the church for a breach of contract and that it was the moral thing to do. They divorced nine months later when her "surprise" baby was of a different ethnicity than he was. It didn't help that he had a side-piece as well.
Mother Knows Best
woman in white tank topPhoto by Fallon Michael on UnsplashThe store I worked at was a women’s formalwear store, so I have plenty of bridezilla family stories. More than once, we had mothers physically fighting over dresses for their daughters, including two moms who were sisters. These ladies came to blows because their respective daughters ended up wanting the same dress.
The worst moms weren’t actually the obviously rude moms, though. They were the 40-something yoga moms who’d spend the entire time body-shaming their daughters. There was even one yoga mom who, instead of approving of her daughter as she tried on dresses, spent the entire shopping day trying on dresses herself. No, really.
Telling On Yourself
I have to confess, I was a bridezilla. It was a small wedding, like 50 people, and it was going to be a casual celebration in a park. Everything was handmade or from the dollar store. I only ended up with a dress from a David's because the first little bohemian dress I ordered was more of a shirt, and my mom refused to let me wear it.
At the bridal shop, my mom told the lady not to tell me any prices, but I told her I would only consider dresses under $200. I tried on one dress and cried because I loved it so much. My mom bought it, and I later looked it up and saw it was $3,000. That changed everything. No more wedding at a park. Instead, we booked a small venue. We served pizza and pies still, and the groomsmen were still wearing polos and shorts.
The bridesmaids were in some Rue21 dresses I bought for them. That’s when it all unraveled. I only became a bridezilla on the day of. None of my family showed up, so my husband's side was full and mine was empty. Even our friends sat on his side. I was already primed at that point, and then the wheels came off.
Our MC read the speech I wrote before we were even at the altar, and our camera lost battery so we didn't get the recording, I tripped going up to the altar, and I had herniated a disc a week before the wedding. I was miserable and in so much pain. I cried so hard afterward. It felt like it was terrible; like everything was ruined, and I took it out on everyone.
I did my best to hold it together as much as I could, but I was so relieved when it was over. If I could do it all over, I would change everything; especially how I acted. None of that excuses my snippy behavior or my crying constantly on the day. Being stressed and upset didn't give me the right to make others feel bad.
All In The Family
My mom was a mother-of-the-bridezilla. She’s generally pleasant, with her annoying habits here and there—but man, she was a nightmare during the wedding planning. The woman cried because we refused to have a receiving line...when we got married in our backyard. The reception was on the other side of the yard. Why the heck would we have a receiving line?!
She was beside herself for the better part of an entire year worrying what we would do if it rained—we had a giant tent, and we ordered like 20 umbrellas. She also had a cow that the hem on her dress had gotten pulled loose by the ridiculous rhinestone stilettos she chose to wear (to a wedding in a yard...on grass). I told my maid of honor to get her some duct tape and my mother, again, cried her eyes out.
To this day, she complains about the fabric runner we used for the aisle because her heels dug into it, saying how silly of a choice that was. Everyone in the wedding party was aware of it and wore wedges or flats, but she snorted that that wasn’t elegant. She LOATHED that I wore ballet flats. She was also appalled that our rehearsal dinner, which was at our home, consisted of takeout from our favorite local pizza and sandwich place.
She decried it for being “borderline trashy.” Thankfully, following the ceremony, my brother gave her a talking to and all was well for the party thereafter.
My Way Or The Highway
My mother-in-law was a momzilla. My wife wanted a regular-sized wedding—nothing fancy, just a cozy celebration at a historic venue she loved. We had planned for about 100 guests at most, and we planned to do a lot of the work. Suddenly, my mother-in-law started to pressure us about having to invite tons of people, since she’s loaded and a social butterfly.
She also wanted us to change the venue, the photographer, etc. I didn’t care since I just wanted to make my wife happy. I did my best to adjust. Then, one day, about two months before the wedding, my wife had a breakdown crying because of all the changes from her mom. That's when I had enough. I told my wife I would handle her from now on.
I called her up and read her the riot act, telling her to cool it or we would just get a courtroom wedding and forget about the religious wedding, which was a huge deal to the family. She fought me for weeks. The whole family fought me. I told them all to pound sand. We had our original wedding; I was folding invitations and favors the night before until 3 am, but by heck we got it done.
Of course, my mother-in-law still changed the DJ and photographers without me knowing, so we had completely wrong music, and we have yet to see the pictures (16 years later). To this day, we have minimal contact with the family.
All About Me
My brother married a bridezilla. She yelled at my mother on the day of the wedding for asking her where she wanted certain decorations put at the reception site. For what it’s worth, there wasn’t a written plan, so my mom had nothing to go off of. She never thanked my parents for financially contributing to the wedding, either.
She also accused a bridesmaid of trying to upstage her by getting a spray tan before the wedding. My brother wanted me to be part of the wedding party, but she told him to his face that I was too pretty to be a part of it, and that all of her bridesmaids had to be less attractive than her. Oh, but she was just getting started. She yanked my sister-in-law’s jacket right off her back at the reception because one of her bridesmaids was cold.
The list goes on. Well, they got divorced about a year later because apparently her demanding attitude carried over into the marriage. Needless to say, the rest of my family had a little party when we heard about the divorce.
Sibling Rivalry
a woman holds her hands over her facePhoto by Anthony Tran on UnsplashMy sister was a bridezilla. She asked me to be her bridesmaid. The dresses were hundreds of dollars, and my mom ended up paying for them because she knew I couldn't afford them. 70 bucks in alterations later, the stupid dress finally fit. I lived in Edmonton at the time and my sister was in Abbotsford, BC, which is far away.
She demanded I fly down for her bachelorette party. Fine. 300-dollar for a flight there. I stayed with my mom until my sister kicked me out on the night before her wedding. Apparently, she wanted a "special night" with her TWO maids of honor and I was “just” a bridesmaid, so I couldn't be there. Whatever.
During the bachelorette party, I was told I needed to bring drinks for myself and the bride. Fine. I went to the store and she ran up 100 bucks on my card with what she wanted. Whatever, it's her wedding. She proceeded to drink none of it; then went to bed at the hotel early because she was angry for some reason. She then gave my bottles, all 100 bucks of it, to her husband for his bachelor party the next night.
But that's not all—she also got angry that my gift for them wasn't off her registry. I looked at the registry and there was nothing under 200 bucks. I mean, this witch even put a 900-dollar vacuum on there. When all was said and done, HER stupid wedding cost ME over a thousand dollars.
She then didn't speak to me for years after, and even when she did reach out, she only wanted to tell me that she didn't actually want me as a bridesmaid and that I ruined her wedding. She said she only asked me out of courtesy and that the spot was actually meant for her wedding planner, our cousin. At this point, we don't keep in touch. Her wedding ruined our relationship.
Mr. Wrong
I married a groomzilla. I bent over backward to make the wedding as magical as he wanted, even though I would have been happy in someone's backyard with a potluck. In couple’s counseling seven years later, he made a disturbing confession. He admitted that he never really wanted to marry ME so much as he wanted a huge show and party.
Everyone liked and approved of me, so he wanted them all to see he was making a good choice and be envious of him. He wanted them to be proud of him. We used up most of the money I got from a car accident settlement on the wedding. It could have covered a down payment on a small house. After all that, he asked me for divorce in 2020.
Tux-e-Don’t
I spent four years of my life working in a formal menswear sales and rental chain, where the average wedding gown from the bridal shop started at $3k. My most memorable bridezilla was this woman who came in with her fiancé. Poor dude never said a word. She wanted a very specific color of shirt to match her "diamond white" gown.
She also wanted it in a mandarin collar, with a mid-range shawl collar and two-button jacket. 14 of them. Okay, pretty straightforward...but when you're renting shirts, particularly these shirts because they were newer so some were closer to white and some were VERY ivory, I can't guarantee that every shirt will even be the same color, let alone that exact shade of "diamond white."
I explained this. Twice. And she still signed off—but she emphasized the shirts WOULD all be the same color, and they WOULD be the right color. Okay, lady. I'll do my best. Cue six weeks later, the Thursday before the wedding. Bridezilla comes in with her poor fiancé. We pull out the tuxes. OF COURSE, the shirts are exactly as I warned her they would be.
There were several shades, and only one was her perfect color—and it wasn’t the groom's shirt. She lost her ever-loving mind. Crying, pounding on our glass countertop, WAILING at the top of her lungs. She got so agitated she shattered our front counter with her pounding.
We called the authorities and officers detained her. The groom took his and everyone else's tuxes and left. On Sunday, I happened to be accepting returns. The father of the groom came back with 14 unworn tuxes. He explained that the bride spent 24 hours behind bars after my spineless manager refused to press charges.
At the rehearsal dinner, the bride threw some insane temper tantrum, complete with throwing glassware, swearing, and finally punching the groom in the face. He decided not to proceed with the wedding. I will never forget that woman's crazy eyes or her insistence on the perfect colored shirts from a $90 rental. It was truly wild.
Total Eclipse Of The Heart
I ended a friendship with a bridezilla who desperately wanted me to attend her wedding. She had it scheduled for the weekend of the eclipse in 2017, which was something I had planned for literally a decade. She asked me what my plan was, and I told her that I would be flying to the Missouri/Kentucky area. She wanted me to fly to Idaho instead, which was where she lived.
I would have, but all flights, hotels, and rental cars in Idaho were completely booked out. I couldn’t get there even if I wanted to. In response, she said I didn’t care about her or her wedding and that I didn’t want to see her on her big day. She claimed I put the eclipse—something I had planned on seeing for 10 ten years—before her “Lenny,” who I had known for six months.
So I ended things really fast after that. But from what I see, she still posts photos of her wedding to this day. Like, every day she posts different wedding photos. It’s almost like she stopped living after her wedding.
Big Little Lies
They had the expensive $75k wedding. Afterward, they split—and the astonishing truth came out. It turned out the bride never turned in the paperwork to make their marriage official. The groom didn't even know he wasn't married until he wanted to file for a divorce. The bride never returned the gifts either, even though they never got married.
She'd just lied to everyone about it...
Happily Never After
woman with brown hair and black eyesPhoto by Raamin ka on UnsplashI married a bridezilla. In the 18 months that we were married, she was such an unfit mother (too many instances to list here) that when the divorce was finalized, I got custody of our kid AND the kid she had prior to our marriage. Also, she was a blackout drinker and cheated on me with several different men. But the final straw was brutal.
I had to travel out of state to check on my grandmother. I came back a day early, saw used Marlboros in the ashtray—not her brand, and I don't smoke—and then I heard grunting and groaning in the bedroom. Yep, there she was. And there he was. And there HE was. Devil's Triangle. Contacted a divorce lawyer the next day, finalized it as fast as possible.
Toxic Waste
My ex-best friend was a bridezilla. She always had a short fuse, but I put up with that side of her because I cared about her dearly. I met someone who I was engaged to for three years, and even before that, we’d been friends for four years.
Before we got married, she used to stay over at our house all the time, and we all got along. Then she met a guy. After being together for about four months, they got engaged. That's when everything changed. She would talk to people in a really posh voice as though she was above everyone, and she even went out and bought a horse to appear like she had money.
She asked me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding, and of course, I said yes. I really wish I hadn’t now. A couple of months after that, we met for coffee and I told her I was pregnant. I thought she’d be as happy as I was, as we’d been trying for a while. Nope! According, to her I got pregnant just to ruin her wedding and take the focus off of her.
Um... ok. Once we got pregnant, we planned to finally tie the knot before the baby arrived. We decided to do this on our anniversary. We envisioned a really small friends-and-family wedding. This was only three weeks after her wedding—not ideal, but we wanted it on our special day.
When her wedding day arrived, she had it in a church. She’s not religious at all and he was a very vocal atheist. Still, she had an expensive wedding dress and booked out the most expensive hotel in our local city. It was a huge affair. That’s fine, it was her special day. I was there for her through it all—I did everything a bridesmaid was meant to do even if I did have morning sickness.
I kept a smile on my face holding her ridiculously long veil up for most of the day. Then my wedding day arrived, which was a very small registry office affair that was perfect for us. She sat there looking like she was chewing a lemon and didn’t smile once. Afterward, she spoke with my mom who’d she’d known for years. My mom said, “You’re probably used to all this by now,” or something like that. She replied, “Yes, but mine was a lot grander.”
When she came to the reception, she accused my other best friend from childhood of playing footsie with her new husband under the table! My friend was not like that at all, and she’d only caught his foot while crossing her legs. I let that one slide...but later on, when I finally had my baby, she did something that made my blood run cold.
She visited for the first time in about six months and said, “Oh, it’s got red hair." She didn’t even refer to her by her name at all. That was all she had to say, so I cut her off at long last. It was the best thing I ever did. I hadn’t noticed how toxic she was until that moment. Now my husband and I live in the same little house we did before we got married. We did not have any debt at all from the wedding and we are still very happy six years after our wedding.
She, however, got into loads of debt from her wedding. Her husband also lost his job for gross misconduct, and she had to sell her horse. Now, six years later, I heard they’re living in her dad’s basement.
Nothing Hurts Like Family
I worked at a popular bridal store and I dealt with a few bridezillas while I was there. The biggest issue we had was the plus-sized section. These women would come in convinced they looked awful in everything. They would find a dress they loved and we would talk them up, but it would unravel in an instant.
They would come out and their family would act so vicious. The disappointment and pain was palpable as their excitement melted away. They'd throw comments like, “Oh NO, you look ginormous in that,” or “You can’t wear that! Your arms show and you know how flabby they look!” You could kick out mom or talk the bride up in the dressing room, but you could tell they still were in pain.
And Your Little Dog Too
My sister decided to marry a guy she’d been with for less than four months. It was her second marriage and it was a spur-of-the-moment decision with less than one month’s notice. Flying across Canada is expensive...Anyway, I had just started a new job and it was imperative that I be there at work during her wedding.
Like, there wasn’t the slightest option for time off, or I would have been let go. She didn’t talk to me for over a year. Well, the marriage lasted less than the year, if that. She took him for everything—he lost his house and his car, and he drank himself out of his job. She took his dog and told him it had been run over. She’s a peach. Single, if anyone’s looking.
Cold Feet, Cold Manners
I’m a wedding planner. The bride was in her late twenties, while the groom was in his mid-thirties. From what I understood, they had never been in relationships before; at least, not serious ones. On top of that, they were in a long-distance relationship and never actually lived together. Since the groom was living in another city, consultations and communication were done with the bride only.
She seemed a little awkward, although generally nice and easy to talk to. When I got to the ceremony, the groom was very stressed. I figured it was the normal pre-ceremony stress and he would warm up to me later, but nope! Once we got to the reception venue, I wanted to chat with him and check if everything was okay.
I can't remember what I said exactly, but it was something like, "Hey! I could tell you were very stressed before the ceremony! How are you feeling now?" For some reason, he took it the wrong way and refused to talk to me for the rest of the evening. He asked his mom (remember, he was in his mid-thirties) to tell me to leave the reception because he didn't like seeing me walking around, even though I was just doing my job.
After asking the bride if that's also what she wanted, she reluctantly agreed and asked me to come back later. I ended up sitting on a chair in the hallway for 30 minutes like a child until he gave me permission to come back and complete my job. He also refused to do the couple portraits after the ceremony. The bride managed to convince him at first, but after 10 minutes, he was done and refused to cooperate.
Needless to say, they ended up with very few good photos! Something tells me he grew up very sheltered and didn't know how to act with people, but who knows. To this day, I have no idea if they're still together, but one thing is sure: I will never work with them again.
You Can’t Choose Your Family
woman in white floral dress beside woman in black and white polka dot shirtPhoto by Marius Muresan on UnsplashI had a momzilla; my mother-in-law. She had insisted that she was a "traditionalist, so since I was marrying her daughter, she said she would be paying for the whole deal. That was fine with my wife, so it was fine with me. My mother-in-law took no further role in the planning process.
Then, very late in the game—after 18 months of planning—my wife sent her the seating plan just to make sure it would be workable. After what sounded like a robust discussion over the phone, my wife came to me and told me that her mother wasn't happy with the seating plan. She was demanding that she sit at the bridal table, or she'd pull her money.
I called my mother-in-law back and asked her to explain the problem to me. She got very emotional, ranting about how it was the "tradition" she wanted to follow. She was threatening to withdraw her money if she didn't have her way. I took a second to consider my options and told her that it was fine—fortunately, a seat at the bridal table had just opened up. But then I continued with a slam dunk.
I said that spot was mine, and I wouldn't be needing it. I then hung up the phone and handed it back to my wife. On the day of the wedding, my mother-in-law sat where she was told.
Better Off Alone
She told me she regretted marrying me a day after our wedding because it wasn't exactly how she wanted it to be. She also told me, on my birthday, that she was going to have an affair. When a few of my closest friends passed away in a short period of time, she told me to “get over it” because “life goes on.” She then filed for divorce because apparently I never loved or cared about her. She wants nothing to do with me.
Do Not Disturb
I married a groomzilla. I wanted to elope because I didn’t like the idea of being stared at by people. He demanded a wedding of 200+. He had my parents build a giant gazebo on our farm and said he’d help pay for building costs. My dad and I built it by hand with our neighbor, and he wasn’t anywhere in sight for what was a year-long project.
Shortly after the wedding, we retired to our hotel and he didn’t want to get intimate. I was like, okay; it was a long day, I get it. But later, three months into a dry marriage, I walked into an awful sight. He was getting it on with our 60-year-old male neighbor. I opened my bedroom door, saw him, and said I was sorry. I then shut the door, got my dog, and drove home to my mom and dad who lived a state away.
Why did I say I was sorry and not yell? I will never know.
Master Manipulator
I was married to a manipulative narcissist. She got a hold of me in college when my parents didn't deliver on their promise to provide financial support. Now, that would have been fine since I could have made plans and changed how I did my schooling or something, but no. They promised a certain amount of money per month but only gave half.
I had rent to pay, so I basically stopped eating. I had no furniture in my apartment—I slept on egg crate foam. She saw this and I guess she felt bad because she started feeding me. Eventually, we would end up sleeping together in her nice warm bed. Then, later on, I moved in with her because things were going well…Little did I know that was when things would hit the fan. I owed her now and I could not get away.
She convinced me that she "needed" me and that I had to be there to support her in her every endeavor. Every single one. I went to her classes with her, I went clothes shopping with her, and I didn't go out with my friends because she needed me to sleep. She made me feel so obligated to her that my life almost fell apart. I felt so indebted to her that I let her treat me like garbage.
But the worst thing she ever did was emotionally blackmail me into getting married. "If you actually loved me, you'd marry me." She knew I was a sensitive person who genuinely cared about other people, and she used that to say if I didn't marry her I was an evil person who didn't care. The marriage lasted two years. She kept us financially off-balance by moving us around a bunch.
At some point, I got a good job and finally managed to get my own car and everything. I started building a new life, but she still tried to pull her old shtick on me. I had been going to therapy and she dropped out of our joint sessions because she didn't like that therapist. Eventually, we got divorced, but what's messed up about that was that after we were separated, all she wanted was to get me back in the sack.
I noped the heck out. That would be all I needed, to get my estranged wife pregnant. She never knew I was sterile…heck, even I didn't know at that time. All she wanted was a baby and she probably would have left me had she known. She got a new boyfriend and, get this—she moved with him out of state. One day, she called me up and said, "I want to thank you for breaking up with me in person, like an adult. My current partner just took the Xbox and disappeared."
She's a monster and I regret ever meeting her.
Love All Of Me
She paid for a life-size portrait of herself in her wedding dress. It was very important at the time. The marriage lasted one year before she cheated. I hope her future suitors take that as a clue.
Cutting It Close
woman wearing round eyeglassesPhoto by Alex Perez on UnsplashI'm a bridesmaid in an upcoming wedding. So a few weeks before the actual ceremony, I decided to knuckle-cut off all of my hair because the heat was unbearable. When my friend, the bride, saw it, she was really upset with me because she envisioned all of the bridesmaids with up-dos, which I never knew about in the first place.
Still, if I had asked for her permission to cut my hair, I would have been denied.
The Wedding Planner
I think I was a reverse-bridezilla. I've been married twice—the first time around, I had a medium-sized, stressful church wedding. My parents probably spent $20k on the whole shindig, about 20 years ago. The marriage lasted less than five years. The next time I got engaged, I was like, yeah...been there, done that on the whole "big wedding" thing.
My parents had already been tapped enough and I still felt bad that they had to shell out for a wedding when the marriage was over so quickly. I said we should go to the court and maybe have a nice dinner at a restaurant afterward. However, my husband, who was a little younger, had never been married and his (huge) family was all excited over the idea of a big, white wedding for their only boy.
So he dug in his heels and told me that he really wanted a wedding. My compromise, which I did not expect him to take me up on, was that if he really wanted a wedding, he could plan and pay for it himself. This backfired on me so hard. He excitedly agreed. Well, folks...I'm here to tell you that he did as good as his word.
I was 100% checked-out of the entire wedding planning. Zero stress level. I was a few months pregnant and working, so this was very agreeable to me. I literally only showed up when he asked me to, like when he said I needed to pick out a dress at David's Bridal. I pointed to the first reasonably priced, reasonably attractive gown I saw, tried it on, and was out the door with it in 15 minutes.
Our wedding day arrived, and my husband-to-be had gone ALL OUT. His whole family had pitched in, and they had produced a band, a sit-down dinner, flowers, a cake, horse and carriage, photographer, everything. Considerably more fun than my first wedding, and less money spent overall. I never had so much fun in my whole entire life.
Everything was a surprise because I legitimately had no idea what he'd arranged. My parents were so thrilled that they didn't have to pay for a big wedding again that they sent us on a pretty nice honeymoon instead. So I guess I married a groomzilla? But it was pretty awesome all around, so I honestly have no complaints!
Better Without You
My ex was a bridezilla and our wedding was probably in the $20k plus range. She is very much a person who wants to appear like everything is going great. She wants to hear about your gossip, but she doesn't ever open up about herself. One day, all her secrets came tumbling out. She cheated on me after less than three years of marriage.
She seemed repentant and appeared to try. We had a couple of kids (that look just like me, thank goodness), but then she cheated on me again. I divorced her, which she is still furious about. I'm now happily married again to a woman who loves me and treats me well. Honestly, I didn't know love could feel this good or that I was worth this much.
If I Could Turn Back Time
My brother-in-law married a bridezilla. She made him spend something like $45k on the wedding, and within a month she was cheating on him. They managed to somehow stick it out to have two kids, but she left him for one of his high school buddies after three years. They're divorced now, but she's a giant piece of trash and ignores her kids most of the time.
Money Talks
My first marriage was to a bridezilla. She 1) drank before the ceremony, 2) wouldn’t dance because she was “too anxious that people would make fun of her,” 3) tried bragging to my cousins during the dinner that our wedding was better than theirs, and 4) invited her “ex” boyfriend to the ceremony. I later found out she had been sleeping with him both before and after our wedding. But that wasn’t even the cherry on top.
She later took the money we had received as gifts—money we were planning on using for a house down payment—and spent it on random stuff. Actually, she had a ton of debt she kept from me. I left her a year after I found out and never looked back. Now, I’m happily married to a great woman. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but there were a lot of red flags I should have noticed.
Take The Money And Run
men's gray suit jacketPhoto by Scott Webb on UnsplashMy uncle married this lady who was an insane bridezilla. She put him into an enormous amount of debt because she wouldn't settle for anything less than her perfect dream wedding. Then, she had the marriage annulled after the fancy honeymoon, saying she didn't want to be his wife but she always wanted to have her dream wedding. Witch.
A (Sad) Tale As Old As Time
My husband’s long-term, childhood friend married a bridezilla. She is Evangelical and religion is pretty much her life. Meanwhile, he was agnostic and a very big metal-head geek. They asked us to be part of their wedding entourage. My husband and I are both tattooed, and when we arrived at the wedding, we were his only friends present.
Everyone at that big wedding was from her church. The preacher kept saying to him that his old life was behind him now and his new life was just about to begin, yadda, yadda. But while he was giving his sermon, everyone kept looking at my husband and I like we were beasts. Worst day ever.
She is that kind of person who wants to be an influencer. EVERYTHING is on her Instagram. Their relationship seems perfect there, but he always seems so unhappy and so apathetic. When we actually talk to him, he always brings up how they are so different.
She made him stop talking to us. Eventually, he got out of every friend group we had, and he stopped answering my husband, who is very sad he lost his friend. Even worse, I believe she is the one replying in the few weird messages he does get.
Keep It Simple, Stupid
Kind of the opposite end of the spectrum. My wife and I eloped a few months before our "wedding" and kept it mostly a secret. Then, on the day of, we just focused on having an awesome party for us and our friends. Well, our pastor canceled last minute and stood us up for the rehearsal. My wife checked into the hotel the morning of.
Lady at the hotel counter: "Is there anything else I can help you with?"
Wife jokingly: "Yes, a pastor."
LAC: "...Our omelet chef is ordained..."
LAC: "Hey TONY! You busy tonight?"
Tony:…"NO"
Wife: “Ok!”
Buyer’s Remorse
My first wife was a bridezilla, but I didn’t find out the true extent of her wrath until just after we were married. During the honeymoon, reality hit her like a truck. She realized she just wanted the big wedding, which she had, but not the marriage. The next two years were a nightmare until she finally tapped out. I was young and stupid, so the thought of divorce never crossed my mind.
I don't know why it didn't. I guess I just assumed I'd be miserable the rest of my life. When she told me she was leaving, it felt as if the weight of the world was off my shoulders. On a happy note, her parents were still paying off the wedding when we divorced. That's what happens when you give your daughter everything she wants…like two freaking wedding dresses.
Get Out, Girl
I married a groomzilla. This guy had costume changes planned for the wedding and reception. He would yell at the wedding planner over menial things like serving fruit kabobs so that people would maybe get enough to eat. There was zero compromise—he made a lot of promises for things I had been wanting after the wedding and they never materialized, like a beach vacation and such.
Turns out, no compromise at the wedding meant no compromise anywhere else, so I left him after four years of marriage. Best decision ever!!!
Fool Me Once
man in black suit jacketPhoto by Jakob Owens on UnsplashI married a groomzilla. He is a lovely, sweet, and thoughtful man; but boy did he lose it at the wedding. I would have been more than happy with a small wedding—literally, I would just three special people there. He needed 200+. As far as I was concerned, we could eat off paper plates and have a big bonfire to burn them afterward. But no, he needed personalized moist towelettes.
You get the point. He is a lovely person and I love him dearly, but I will never marry him again.
A Whole Lot Of Baggage
My sister was a self-centered jerk during the six months before her wedding, with her coup de gras being the wedding day itself. I know it was all nerves so I don't harbor any grudges, but ugh, I wouldn't relive that day for any money in the world. My strongest memory is her holding a bag of her stuff and SCREAMING on the church steps:
"Why am I holding something? WILL SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY I AM HOLDING SOMETHING ON MY FREAKING WEDDING DAY??? Someone better take this out of my hands immediately."
Read The Room
I knew a woman who was a bridesmaid at a relative’s wedding. She was married and had been trying to get pregnant for a while. Finally, she and her husband got lucky and she conceived. The bridezilla got furious and kicked her out of the wedding because she would be pregnant in the pictures. But that's not even the most tragic part.
Three months later, sadly, the woman miscarried. The bride called her with a response along the lines of "Good riddance. Now you can be a part of the wedding again." Needless to say, she did not even attend it.
You Get What You Put In
My ex-fiancé was super normal…until we got engaged. She went from wanting a small, simple wedding with less than 100 guests to a grand hall and wanting to invite everyone she ever exchanged more than three words with. She even wanted to import flowers. But the final straw was when she scheduled an appointment with a real estate agent to SELL MY HOUSE to pay for the wedding.
Also, her family was loaded but they weren’t going to contribute anything. I broke it off, and she got engaged again one year later to an attorney…Unfortunately for her, she didn’t read the prenup before signing. They got married and divorced one month later. She got nothing and is still alone.
The Grandmother Of Tantrums
I had a friend who threw a temper tantrum complete with screaming and foot-stomping because her grandmother had the audacity to pass a few hours before her wedding. She said it would throw off the seating arrangements since there would be a big empty space. She is currently halfway through her second divorce.
Parents play an important and unparalleled role in the lives of their kids. But even this special relationship has its limits. There are certain parts of many kids’ lives that, for one reason or another, they choose to keep completely separate from their relationships with their parents. These secrets can be anything from harmless little guilty pleasures to absolutely scandalous and horrifying behaviors. Don’t believe me? Here are 50 stories of secrets that will make any parent stop and wonder what their kids are really up to when they’re not around.
You’ve Got A Friend In Me
woman holding kid at the streetPhoto by Sai De Silva on UnsplashMy mother has always wondered why I didn't have too many friends back in high school. The real reason is a secret that I would never want her to know about. It is because, growing up, my family was always broke and I knew that she was struggling financially. So, in order to avoid anyone seeing how we lived, I always refused anytime people from school wanted to do things with me or have get-togethers at my house.
To make matters even worse, I decided during my senior year that I did not want to burden my mother by asking for money when I needed to buy things. As a result, I started working as much as I could outside of school. This gave me even less time to make friends. I would never want my mother to find out about this, and I would never want her to feel guilty or blame herself for my lack of social life as a child.
Always Remember Where You Came From
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is the truth about my location for the past 25 years. They have no idea where I have been living that entire time, and I want to keep it that way. It’s a long story, but I have now spent more than half of my life going out of my way to make sure that they never suspect the true location of my residence.
No More Pomp And Circumstance
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I knowingly recorded one of my favorite movies over the video tape of my sister's high school graduation. It was the only copy of that ceremony that we had, so we will never be able to look back on that memory again. Luckily, it's been about 18 years since I did this, and no one has noticed yet. Nevertheless, I still feel really bad about it.
An Unwanted Gamble
If my mom ever found out, she’d never forgive herself. The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is the fact that my cousins used to repeatedly take physical advantage of me when I was a kid. Throughout my childhood, my mom would regularly leave me at their house for hours at a time so that she could go to the casino and play her favorite games. If she knew what had taken place while she was away on those casino trips, she’d be horrified.
Handling Things On Your Own
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is the fact that I was falsely accused of violently attacking someone when I was 17 years old. I am legally considered an adult in Texas, so the authorities didn’t have to tell them. A detective actually confiscated my cell phone for an entire school day to verify the veracity of the text messages proving that the encounter was consensual.
The whole thing was a really scary experience and a really weird time in my life. I had to deal with the fallout at school, as well as the challenges of not telling my parents about it.
Moving On
persons hand on white surfacePhoto by Ruthson Zimmerman on UnsplashThe secret that I keep from my parents is that I’m not straight. Me and opposite gender fiancé don’t consider it cheating as long as whatever I do is with someone of the same gender, and as long as we inform each other prior. I hate my parents and can’t wait to leave. I don’t trust them to take my feelings seriously if I come clean to them about this secret.
The only reason I’m getting mentally healthier nowadays is that my therapist and fiancé have worked hard to help me learn that some things can’t be fixed and need to be thrown away, in this case, my relationship with my parents. My doctor is very excited about me becoming mentally stable enough to care for myself so that I can pursue university in a place where they are not around.
There’s just one thing that makes me want to stay—and breaks my heart. My 11-year-old sister trusts me more than she trusts them, and one time she cried asking me not to leave because she didn’t want to be left there alone with our parents. She’s been showing very obvious symptoms of anxiety and depression due to being bullied at school for the past few months. I want to help her, but my mom keeps getting in the way.
When I say anything about the situation to her, she quickly shuts me by saying “She probably did something wrong and that’s why she’s scared". I can’t do anything because I’m not her legal guardian, so I’ve been trying to teach her grounding techniques. I tell her the things that work for me other than my meds.
Money Makes The World Go Round
The secret that I choose to keep hidden from my parents is that I make a lot more money than I let on. My parents have always been and always will be the "I took care of you all your life, time for you to pay it back" type of parents. Except as far as they’re concerned, there is no end to this "debt" that I allegedly owe them. So, I just hide money from them so that they can't take advantage of me.
Swiper, No Swiping!
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I once swiped some money from them in order to buy a bunch of illicit substances that they would never approve of me using. I regret it to this day. It was a horrible thing for me to do. My lazy self should have just listened to their good advice and gotten a job instead of getting myself into that kind of bad behavior.
Blame Canada For This One!
The secret that I have always kept hidden from my parents is that, for my entire childhood, I used to frequently watch South Park on TV when they thought I was sleeping at night. Not only would they have been angry at me for staying up past my bedtime, but this was also a show that my parents considered inappropriate and would never have knowingly allowed me to watch.
I guess this explains why I was always tired as a kid!
Thrown In The Slammer
My mother has no idea that I have been locked up twice—but that’s not the worst part. One of those times, I was in there with my father. He has been just as adamant as I have been in refusing to tell her about what happened. I don’t plan on ever letting her find out that we were there. I don’t think she would be too happy about it if she found out...
An Untarnished Academic Record?
man in black jacket sitting on chairPhoto by christopher catbagan on UnsplashThe secret that I keep hidden from my parents is the fact that I became extremely depressed during my first year of university and nearly failed out of school because I couldn't handle the pressure. In their eyes, I am a model student and the farthest thing possible from someone who would have ever come close to failing academically. Little do they know…
A Family Man
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I recently got someone pregnant and I'm pretty sure she kept the baby. She never told me officially, so I honestly don’t even know if I have a child. If my parents found out about this, they would be horrified. It would totally go against all of their deeply-held values, not to mention it would shatter their impression of me as a person.
Sister Act
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that my sister is a lesbian. She openly admits it to everyone she knows, except for our family. She eventually opened up to me about it, but both my parents and our older brother still know nothing about it. Since then, she and I have become a lot closer to one another than we were when we were growing up.
Does Not Compute
When I was around 14 years old, I once overheard my parents arguing with one another. My mom was yelling at my dad about some inappropriate adult searches that she had found on their computer’s internet history. But I knew the dark truth It was really me that was going on the computer in their room without permission and watching adult videos. But I chose to keep that a secret and say nothing as they argued.
Needless to say, my silence meant that my mom blamed my dad for the searches. He kept adamantly denying it, and she kept calling him a liar. As a result of this whole ordeal, he had to sleep in the guest bedroom for an entire month after that fight. The secret truth was never revealed, and hopefully, it never will be…
Not Very Sweet Emotion
They knew I had a nervous breakdown during my freshman year of high school and they knew that I went through a very dark phase at the age of 15. However, they didn’t know the heartbreaking reason why. I was attacked and taken advantage of as a kid, and I wanted to take my own life for many years afterward as a result of the incident.
Nothing Of Substance
woman in blue denim jacketPhoto by Naomi Suzuki on UnsplashMy parents have no idea that I have ever used a single bad substance. In reality, the first time I ever got high, it was right under their noses. I was with one of my best friends. We were at my house and my parents were at home. I made sure we stayed mostly upstairs and we tried our best to be quiet. Things were going fine until I started seeing colors all around us.
I started to hallucinate and I thought the colors were fighting each other. At a certain point, I just started laying there on my bed because I was no longer enjoying the experience. I literally felt like I couldn’t move. Everything felt numb. She kept trying to do intimate stuff with me and I kept saying I wasn’t interested. I ended up not knowing whether it was real life or not anymore.
My parents would kill me if they ever found out that I had done that, especially in their own home. I hated having to act like everything was just okay and normal afterward while I was still feeling physically and emotionally confused. They spent years trying to instill in me that playing around with substances was a bad idea, and I went against their wishes. I feel awful about it and can never let them find out.
Following Doctor’s Orders, In Private
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I always suspected that I suffered from some kind of mental health struggle, and I now know this to be the case thanks to a doctor I have secretly been seeing. As far as my parents know, there is nothing wrong with my mental or emotional health whatsoever.
For The Love Of All That Is Holy!
My parents are very devout members of a strict religious sect, and they raised me to be the same way. Members of this sect believe that their church is the only true church on Earth, and so it is very important to members that all their loved ones remain believers. My secret from my parents is that I no longer believe that their religion is true. They think I still go to church and believe, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
Keeping Up Appearances
The secret that I have always kept hidden from my parents is that I spent several years living as a barely functioning and depressed alcoholic during my college days. My life was really out of control back then, but I always managed to keep it together just enough to still be capable of putting on a facade for my parents. They never suspected a thing.
This Is Pretty Dark...
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I don't actually love them. I care about them in the same way that I care for a hurt stranger, but I won't be crying when they pass except for over the stress of handling the funeral arrangements and finding a place for their kid and animals to live in their absence. I know this sounds harsh, but that’s the way I truly feel.
Some explanation is probably needed. Let’s start with the fact that my parents have done some pretty heartless things towards me over the years. They ran up a whole bunch of debts in my name and never helped me out with trying to pay them all off. That is just one example of their reckless and inconsiderate behavior towards me over the years.
Another example is that I was homeless twice in my mid-20s, but they absolutely refused to let me stay with them. At the age of 18, I still didn't have a driver’s license because I was never allowed to borrow their car. Eventually, I saved up and paid for my own lessons. Not that I could afford a car anyway until a few years later.
At the age of 20, I had a job interview at a well-paying company. I asked my parents if they could drive me for an hour to get there or let me drive. They agreed, but then the day of the interview, they never showed up. They also completely wrecked my confidence and self-esteem when I lived with them from the ages of 16 to 22, when they went off on outings almost every weekend while leaving me behind to watch their other kid and their animals.
There is also a lot more to the story that I would prefer not to talk about publicly. Of course, their other kid is technically related to me and would be considered my sibling by most people, but we do not have a good relationship or really much of any relationship to be completely honest. I know that it’s not his fault, but for my own mental health, I can’t bear to associate with anyone who reminds me of my awful parents.
How Much Is That Secret In The Window?
a bathroom with a window and a yellow towelPhoto by Shaylyn on UnsplashThe secret that I have kept hidden from my parents for a very long time is that I used to frequently sneak out of the house from our second story bathroom window to go nightclubbing with my friends after the two of them had both gone to bed at night. This little secret of mine made some of my greatest high school memories possible.
The Suspension Of His Disbelief
My dad doesn't know that I was suspended from school for an entire semester back in college due to my low grades. He always thought of me as a terrific student and not at all as someone who would spend a lot of time partying and neglecting my studies. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that this happened to me, but it really did.
No Tech Support Needed
The secret that I have kept hidden from my parents is that I actually did know why my laptop wasn't working when I told them that it had suddenly broken and that I needed a new one. I had spilled a fair bit of Jack Daniel's on it during a night of partying, and it has not been working properly ever since. But as far as my parents know, it just failed to turn on one day and there is no logical explanation as to why.
A Lot To Deal With
The secret that I hide from my parents is that I've been struggling with depression, crippling loneliness, abandonment issues, and social pressure ever since I was six years old. I've come dangerously close to nearly ending my life on many occasions. I've been managing my life better as of late, but I have kept all of this hidden from my parents regardless. I don’t want them to ever know.
Passing The Bar
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I’m not going to finish my degree and I’ve already paid off all my student loan debts. My degree was pointless and I don’t do well in school anyway due to my ADHD. My dad constantly asks me when I’m going to finish and stop bartending. I just keep saying I’ll be finishing soon.
I hate disappointing my parents because my father always gets very proud of my sister and me with all of our accomplishments. But truth be told, I’m quite content with the $60k a year that I make bartending right now. My degree would only have pulled in about $35k as a starting salary. I really like my current job and don’t feel that I’m missing out on anything, even though it’s so different than the vision that my parents always had for me.
I’m planning on keeping my true intentions a secret from them for as long as I possibly can.
Playing With A Full Deck
arranged blue grocery cartsPhoto by Fabio Bracht on UnsplashThe secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that when I was at Walmart with my mom one time, I swiped two of those big cartons full of Pokémon Cards. I took the cards and stuffed them all into my back pocket. I planned the whole operation more than a week before. It was completely premeditated. I was the best and craftiest thief in the world at the age of nine.
But my parents had no idea, and they still don’t to this day…
Brothers In Arms
I kept the truth of how I got the giant, noticeable scar on my forearm a secret from my parents and others for close to 15 years. In order to understand the real story, you first need to know that I had an old metal bed frame and one of the posts had snapped off, leaving a pretty good sharp point that was dangerous but also pretty avoidable.
When I was about 16, I got very intoxicated with my older brother one time and we got into a huge fight. He tried to hit me, and in the process of the fight, he accidentally slashed my arm with a sharp blade while I was trying to avoid a punch. We both started freaking out when we saw the damage and the huge bloody gash that we had left on my arm. We rushed to the hospital and I was given 21 stitches for it.
When we got home, we realized that we would both get into huge trouble if our parents found out that we had been drinking. But we had to be able to give some kind of explanation for the giant scar on my arm that had never been there before. So, in the end, we told my mom, grandma, and pretty much all other concerned parties that I had merely fallen next to the bed and accidentally sliced my arm across the open part of the metal post.
And none of them ever doubted that story for a minute!
This Is The Worst Trip I’ve Ever Been On
The secret that I have always kept hidden from my parents is that I had actually planned on ending my life during a school trip overseas back in the day. I was really having a bad time on the trip and it made me feel incredibly depressed. My head became filled with such bad thoughts, and I wanted nothing but for them to go away.
I didn’t go through with what I was planning, as you can tell. But I seriously considered it, and that fact alone still shakes me to my core to think about. In the end, the only thing that stopped me was that I didn’t want to ruin the trip for everyone else. That’s how close I came. I couldn’t imagine ever telling my parents that this happened.
I Know What You’ve Been Up To...
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I once found my dad’s stash of illicit substances hidden in his room. I feel like I don't even know him anymore. I never want him or my mother to know that I found this. I’m still a minor and I still live with them. I just don’t want them to think that I violated their privacy or found out about something that I wasn’t meant to see.
Such A Sad Situation
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I was taken advantage of in our home for years when I was a child by the person that they know I hate the most. If they knew about this, they might finally understand why I hate this person so much. This is also the person that they would probably least suspect of ever doing a thing like that.
I doubt my parents would even believe me if I ever told them about what happened. In fact, my mom once actually walked into the room during one of the times that this was actively happening to me but she did not pick up on what was going on. She held a full, nonchalant conversation with us while it was going on right under her nose.
I was horrified because I was very obviously in danger and yet she was totally oblivious. I didn’t know what to do about it, and I’ve never brought it up to her ever since.
To Tell, Or Not To Tell?
grayscale photo of woman doing silent hand signPhoto by Kristina Flour on UnsplashThe secret that I keep from my parents is that I fully know that my mother is cheating on my father. He doesn’t know that it’s happening, at least not to my knowledge, and she doesn’t have any idea that I know what she’s up to. I honestly have no idea what I should do with this information, but for the time being, I cannot bring myself to let either of them know that I know about it.
The Green, Green Grass Of Home
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I sold weed in high school. This may seem like nothing compared to some of the other stories that people have shared here, but it is still something that would cause a whole lot of shock and disappointment with my family if they ever found out about it. Thankfully, it’s all in the past now, so hopefully, I will never have to say anything.
Stepping On The Wrong Toes
The secret that I keep from my parents is that, as a teen, I used to constantly fantasize about ending the life of my verbally and physically abusive stepfather and then ending my own life right after. He treated my mom like garbage and one day he actually punched me in the face for not washing my dirty dishes. This blow left a permanent gash above my eyebrow.
I was really depressed and wanted to end my life anyway, so I thought that I might as well take that jerk with me if I was going to have to go. I always tried to talk myself into finding some way to do it, but I could never actually bring myself to go through with it. The closest that I ever came to doing something was when he was asleep on the couch and my mom was off at work.
I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and just stood over him for a few minutes, contemplating whether I should do it or not. Of course, I never did. Thankfully, he and my mom separated less than a year after that incident. He is now out of our lives completely. My depression has been minimized tremendously since that. And no one ever needs to know how bad things were in my head before.
Seriously though, screw that guy!
Big Plans For The Future
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I have a secret plan to take my own life many years from now. I've crafted the plan carefully, and it is specifically designed so that I can focus one year on spending time with each of the people that I love. I'm scared to tell them about it because I don't want them to get stressed out about it. But at the same time, I just can't mentally take life anymore and I can't cope with living like this for 20 or so more years.
Living On The Edge
The secret that I keep from my parents is that I lived with my girlfriend for more than a year and a half prior to us being married. We lived in a house less than 45 minutes away from where my parents lived, yet they had no idea that we were there. My parents are very conservative both socially and religiously, and they would have likely not attended our wedding had they known about this.
Getting The Job Done
computer cablesPhoto by Randall Bruder on UnsplashMy parents have no idea that I left my job with the cable company to sell cars and write up oil changes for almost a year. I was emotionally burnt out from all the nonsense of the corporate world and I just couldn't take it anymore. So, without telling my parents, I tried switching careers. It didn't really pan out as I had hoped, but it did get me away from that trash heap of a company and allowed me to figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life and where to go from there.
A Strong, Independent Woman
It may seem weird to some people, but I prefer to keep it secret. My parents don’t know that I work out regularly. Pretty hard and heavy, too. My mom thinks that muscles on girls are gross, and for the years that she knew I worked out she treated me like I was gross too. It was heartbreaking for me. So now I pretend that I lost all interest in lifting weights and that I'm much happier this way.
The true fact is that I gave it up for about two months and couldn't stand life without it. It's sad that I can't keep my own mother in the loop about my most loved passion, but I've accepted it as just the way things are. In the grand scheme of things, this is far from the worst secret I could have had from my parents!
Food For Thought
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I have a pretty serious eating disorder. I’ve had it since I was just 11 years old, and I even went to the hospital for it. I am keeping it under control more now than I used to thanks to the help of the doctors at the hospital. But my parents still have no idea that anything is wrong with me.
A Work Of Art
When I was in my early teens, we didn't yet have a computer or the internet at my house, but we did have Cinemax and my friend Doug introduced me to the late-night movies that were shown on the weekends. The secret that I hid from my parents was that, as a teenager who read comics and was not fully aware of the female anatomy, I would try to draw pictures of my favorite characters from those movies without their clothes on. Well, my mom found out…but it didn’t really go how I thought it would.
I used to hide the drawings either inside my comic books or in between my mattress and my box spring. I never considered the possibility that my mom would one day change my sheets. When she did, she discovered my secret. She told me that she was disappointed with me for drawing the pictures, but she was also impressed with the artwork.
So, she put the drawings into her special “hope chest” with all of my other stuff that she was proud of. I was embarrassed then, but now in my 30s, it's just nice to know that my mom cared that much about me and the things that I did. I bet not everyone could say that about their parents. Especially not after they discovered your secrets!
Three Square Meals A Day
My secret from my parents is that I sometimes grab lunch or dinner on the way home from class, and I don't tell them about it. If I did tell them, I would probably just get yelled at for "wasting money when we have perfectly good food at home". My mom's cooking is great, but sometimes I just want to grab some pizza! Is that such a horrible thing to want? I enjoy variety from time to time!
Recently, this whole situation has gotten even more intense since my mom has gotten into some kind of obscure health diet plan that she's forcing everyone to take part in. It’s a bit ridiculous, but I don’t mind humoring her.
Little Brother Is Watching You
person looking in the middle of two beige cushionsPhoto by Cristina Gottardi on UnsplashI know an awful lot of things that my parents don’t realize I know. That is thanks to the fact that I overhear all of their private conversations every single night. I have horrible sleeping patterns, and people always assume that I’m asleep when I’m not. This is because when I lay down for too long, my mouth opens and, when I close my eyes, it looks like I’m sleeping.
Because of this, I know that my dad is cheating on my mom. I’ve been hearing him calling another woman every single night while he thought I was asleep and unable to hear. I also happen to know that my mom steals money from my dad on the regular, as well as from me and my brother. She also badmouths my dad a lot of the time and complains about the fact that I'm not good at dealing with conflict.
She also thinks I'm too sensitive. Many nights, I can hear them arguing behind closed doors, and then, in the morning, they just act like everything is great and like nothing ever happened. But I know that that’s not true. I’ve also secretly heard them badmouth me and my brothers, and talk about wanting a divorce. And it still gets so much worse...
I’ve heard them express the fact that they both don’t want me or my brother. They also both don’t want our pet cats. They openly admit that they hate each other, and they love pointing out sensitive things that will anger each other. They also hit one another from time to time. Night after night, I learn more and more secrets about how awful they really are. And I never let on that I know any of it.
It all started messing with my head a lot for the past couple of years. Slowly, it affected my personality and had even changed my reputation in school a lot. My friends told me that I wasn’t the same anymore. Apparently, I used to be totally carefree, let them borrow all my things whenever they asked, followed them around, wanted to be near them all the time, and would hug them a lot.
After my personality change, they told me they noticed that I was no longer hugging them at all. They said it felt like I was distancing myself from them. My grades got horrible and I always asked them to leave me alone whenever they tried to spend time with me. I’ve lost a lot of friends and teachers who used to talk to me and care about me.
I would open up to them, but in my community, we have a policy of not bringing our problems at home into school. It upsets me a lot and the only thing that I ever have to distract me from all of this is when I get to spend time with my older brother. We usually watch a little bit of football together, which I consider to be my favorite sport.
My older brother loves football and rabbles all the latest news to me whenever we hang out. I love it. I feel like I can trust him with my secrets, more than I could ever trust my best friend, mom, dad, or teachers. We share a lot in common. But even he doesn’t know about the mom and dad situation. I don’t have the heart to tell him about it.
But at the same time, he’s the only one who listens to me. Whether I’m angry, sad, upset, disappointed, happy, or any other emotion, he will always be happy to listen. Any topic goes, from video games, to sports, to movies, to books, to some new fact I heard about some obscure topics of science, to some random fun fact I learned about history. Anything you can imagine.
Needless to say, you can add the true state of my emotions to the long list of secrets that I now have from my parents, thanks to my late night accidental spying habit.
We Hope They Get Well Soon
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I really want to become a dental surgeon. This might not sound like anything controversial, but to my parents, it would be the end of the world. That is because they really want me to go into some crackpot, unscientific, antivax "holistic" naturopathic medicine business that fits with what they believe in.
Don’t ask me why, but they are convinced that modern medicine and science are a hoax and, as a result, they don’t trust regular doctors at all. I'm completely afraid that if I tell them about my true career intentions, they will refuse to pay for my college and dental school expenses. If my worst fears come true, they might even disown me over this.
A Tragic Experience
From the age of ten until I was 14, I was “best friends” with a man who had said he was also 14. In reality, he had been saying that for three years on the internet. It was very far from true. He emotionally manipulated me to stay at home, talk to him online all day, and to falsely tell my parents that I was writing. I actually do write in my free time, so my parents never doubted the excuse.
My parents completely drank up the lies and I was never free from this person’s manipulation. When holidays came around, I wouldn’t go out with my friends. I would stay at home and talk to him all day. Eventually, he began to pressure me to send him naughty pictures of myself. I finally broke down and gave in when he threatened to find me and beat me up.
He knew where I went to school and where I lived. After that, he stopped talking to me for a few months because I was “too fat and needed to lose some weight". I was a tubby child, but I felt disgusting and started to hate myself after he said that. I fell into an eating disorder and almost lost my life. I was sent into therapy a year or so later to help recover from the disorder.
I’m recovered from anorexia now, but my therapist was trying to figure out the root cause for it back in May. My mum was in the room with me, and I finally broke down and told them everything. I had kept it a secret from her for my entire adult life, but I couldn’t hold back anymore. We immediately went to the authorities, but I’ve never heard from the guy since and we were unable to track him down.
It still scares me to think about him. Even all these years later, it still feels like a fresh wound every time I think about it. Thankfully, though, I can honestly say that I’m doing better than ever now. I can balance my writing with my social life and everything is going great for me! I regret having kept this secret from my parents for so long. They probably could have saved me a lot of pain if they had known what I was dealing with.
Story Time
I would never be able to live it down if they knew. The secret that I keep from my parents is that I’ve been writing explicit fan fiction since I was 16 years old. I have no idea what they think I have been giggling about for the last 10 years whenever I’m on my laptop, but I’m glad they don’t know the truth. Some of it is pretty darn explicit and embarrassing.
She’s A Real Pain In The Teeth
I have a secret that I keep from my parents. My mom has no idea that she is the reason why my dental health is terrible. My teeth are a disaster due to stress-induced teeth grinding. She knows nothing about this, and cannot do anything about it either. She is also a major part of the reason as to why I have notable social anxiety and other psychological problems.
She's bound to find out sooner or later I am sure. I do not live with her anymore for these reasons, among others.
Pen Pals
person holding black android smartphonePhoto by Jonas Leupe on UnsplashWhen I was 12 years old, I secretly saw some emails on my mom's iPod touch. The emails were very suggestive and were between my mother and another man. I never told my dad that I saw those emails. I wish I did, because it turned out that she was cheating on him. This is the first time I've ever mentioned it to anyone. It feels good to get it off my chest.
Wanted On The Telephone
The secret that I kept from my parents is that I was working as an operator for an adult phone line back in university. I told everyone I know that I was working the phones for our local department store. One day, my dad innocently asked me whether they were hiring, as he thought he might want to give my alleged job a try. Nope. We were not...
Mind Over Matter
The secret that I keep hidden from my parents is that I was heavily addicted to painkillers and other mind-altering substances for the entire time that I was away at university. I think that this information would devastate them if they ever found out, and I can’t imagine ever telling them about it. As far as they know, my time away from home was nothing more than a perfect, storybook college experience.
Video Games
Back when I was in the seventh grade, I started to get into watching adult videos and my favorite kind, for some reason, was guy-on-guy stuff even though I’m a girl. Anyways, I didn’t know how anything but YouTube worked back then, so I ended up downloading and saving something like three explicit gay videos on my phone.
Needless to say, I did not tell my mom about this secret interest of mine. But I had an Android phone so when I deleted the videos, the titles were still in my phone and could be viewed in my download history. For some reason, my mom took my phone from me one day and went through it. She then sat me down and asked me about the video titles she had found on it.
Now, I’m not necessarily proud of what happened next. I’m a very good liar. But in this particular situation, I didn’t have to do much lying. That was because as soon as I started crying and saying that I didn’t do it, she immediately believed me and blamed the whole thing on my stepdad. She said that she’d had a suspicion that he was gay throughout their whole relationship and all that.
After that, she never confronted him and just continued to stay with him even though she thought he was gay. Unintended side effect? That was when I realized that my mom was a golddigger. But regardless, my secret remained intact.
I’m Not Who You Think I Am
Sneaking out, bad grades…my secret is a bit different. I routinely pay random escorts to show up to family events as my “girlfriend” so that my parents will stop telling their friends to try and hook me up with their daughters. Every time we have a gathering, a paid date shows up with me to meet everyone, and then they always claim to have to leave early. I pay by the hour. It gets the job done, and my parents have no idea that I’m happily single all the while.
