Men are confusing creatures, even to other men. We do weird things, act tough for no reason, and often fear emotion. Why? Who knows.
Rancerle asked men of Reddit: What about men confuses you?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
10. We don't get it either.
Everything. I don't know how I got this far.
Same. I was raised by a single mother. I don't understand just about everything guys do as a group and I get super uncomfortable around more than one or two of them anyway
Ten percent luck
Twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure
Fifty percent bluffing my a-- off and having no one call me on it
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name.
9. Because men aren't supposed to feel.
Why is so hard to make friends as adults? It was so easy when I was a kid, even as a teenager, but now everybody want to either sell me something or making me work for free, like, everyone I meet just want to talk business, usually bad business.
I can make female friends, but not male friends, WTF?
This speaks to me. I have lots of female friends and can regularly get them to hang out but making commitments with guy friends is impossible. Then I'll meet a cool guy and try to find a time to hang out and... nothing.
Women generally tend to be interested in people. It amazes me how little dudes generally talk about each other's lives. You're conditioned to shun emotion.
8. Toxic masculinity is ruining the world.
I'm always confused by men who want to start fights and are constantly aggressive. I'm a Marine, so I know what it feels like to be amped up on adrenaline and what it's like to fight. All that means the last thing I ever want to do when I'm out at a bar is get into a fight, let along start one over something stupid. There have certainly been a couple times when I've had to calm myself down, but everyone has those experiences. I just hate hothead macho men with nothing better to do than look for opportunities to be outraged by something. It's like dogs who think they see someone they don't know in front of their house.
7. "Whoa.=, I wish I was that cool." - Nobody
Loud mufflers. They don't make your Honda sound like a Ferrari. They make it sound like a broken Honda.
One of my friends the other day was super confused as to why people don't like loud mufflers.
I can't imagine any situation where I'd have my conversation interrupted by loud rumbling and not be pissed off
You mean people don't like being woken up in the morning or dead of night by some twats belting up and down the motorway in their sh!tmobiles?
I wish it were legal to jam the exhausts up.
6. F*ck off, the mood.
Why do they always want to fight after any sort of conflict—I yelled "nice" at this guy who cut in front of traffic and he rolled down his window and yelled "let's f*ckin fight bro come on."
Last year I was letting my dog out, my neighbors have a bonfire going. I ask over the fence "making smores?" And the guy just looks at me and yells "GO F*CK YOURSELF" and stares me down. Seems a reasonable reaction.
Probably just didn't want to share his smores the greedy bastard
5. "cAuSe It'S gAy..."
The men that are scared to hang out 1 on 1 because someone might think we're on a date. It's real, look it up.
Funny you say that. A good friend of mine and I grab food every few months. We went to a restaurant (ok, it was Olive Garden) and the hostess tried seating us next to one another, side by side.
She blushed when I elected to sit across the table. Can't two dudes enjoy a night at Olive Garden when they want without everyone thinking it's a date??
Homophobia runs so f*cking deep it's not even funny. I'll never understand why people are afraid of people they have never met thinking they're gay. Or just people in general thinking that, literally who cares.
4. Mind the gap.
When I'm standing at a urinal peeing and a guy comes up to use the one right next to me and there are clearly open urinals further down the row. Why do this? Don't you know you're breaking men's restroom etiquette?
A guy at my work not only does this, but will start talking. F*ck off bud, some of us are pee shy!
As for people who try to talk while they're sat on the toilet, there is nobody on the planet I want to talk to while something is halfway out of their butthole.
3. Narrator: it isn't.
You really think the way to a girls heart is by sending her a picture of your penis?
Oddly, quite effective on Grindr though.
2. Lift the seat.
Why do you pee all over the seat and not clean it? I get when you have to go badly and no time to lift the seat. But you have to know you made a mess and I'm sure when you walk into a piss covered stall you also get pissed.
Especially when they do it in their own house. Over at a friend's house and there's piss splattered on the floor or wall around the toilet. Dude, if you can't get it all in the pot, just sit down. It's your own house. You're pissing all over your own house. I don't get it.
1. Guys, chill.
I'm not hitting on your damn gf I'm just trying to see if our answers for the homework are the same.
I was talking to a girl about a project we had to do For a graduate class and I was asking her for help with one specific part of it. While I was messaging her through Facebook, I got another message from her boyfriend that said, "Stop messaging my girlfriend and worry about yourself."
He was a cop who had graduated from college like a year before. I said to her, "uh I think your boyfriend just messaged me." I sent her the screen cap of his message and she apologized for him, and I'm assuming she talked to him. Every time I saw him he'd give me the stink eye or something. They eventually got married. I hope that's going well.
People Explain Which Things From Their Childhood No Longer Exist Today
Reddit user lil-gatorwrangler asked: 'What is something from your childhood that no longer exists now?'
When I was a little girl, I adored the American Girl books. These were books about girls in different historical periods of time in America. They weren't just books, however. There was a lot of American Girl merchandise, including dolls.
I adored the doll I had of Felicity Merriman, my favorite American Girl. A few years ago, I started reading the American Girl books to my cousin. She had her own favorite character, Samantha, and I decided it would be nice to get her a Samantha doll for her birthday. I went to order one only to find out they had archived the dolls of the four original American Girls, including Felicity and Samantha.
Eventually, new versions of the dolls were re-released, but they looked completely different from the characters from the books, which the original dolls captured. These dolls are just one thing that existed in my childhood that no longer exists.
I'm not the only one who has experienced these. Redditors have identified plenty of things from their childhood that no longer exist and are eager to share.
It all started when Redditor lil-gatorwrangler asked:
"What is something from your childhood that no longer exists now?"
Breakfast Gifts
"Cool spoons from cereal boxes!!! i miss the color changing and straw ones."
– pompomcinnamon
"Nothing like only buying a box of cereal because of the cool lil gift inside. 🥹"
– lil-gatorwrangler
"This reminds me I haven't seen my Taz spoon in a while. It makes Taz noises when you dip it in milk."
– TransformerTanooki
Family Phones
"Yelling “SOMEBODY GET THE PHONE.”
– Jfonzy
"Adjacent: “Get off the internet! I have to make a phone call!”"
– cold_dry_hands
"The ring tone was......the phone."
– DEADFLY6
Slime!
"Nickelodeon game shows. I miss Legends of the Hidden Temple and Guts."
– ShawshankException
"Every time I have to take a headrest out and put it back in my car seat, I pretend I am completing a mission from LotHT."
– ReineDePlatine
Ah, The Book Fairs
"Do you remember filling out book orders when it was time for your school's book fair? :'("
– sn0wballa
"Omg yes!!! And just say dreaming about all the books I could have, if I could afford it lol."
– FlannelPajamas123
"Oh my god the happiest days of my school year."
– clover219
Cell Phone Plans
"I remember when cell phones were newish and scheduling your calls to after 7 on weekdays and anytime on weekends because nights and weekends were free and didn't count toward your monthly allotment of minutes. You also only had a limited amount of texts per month included in your plan."
–cartertucker
The Old Food Options
"Wendy's salad bar."
– SirBlack_
"Wendy’s 4 for $4. Rip 🥲"
– lil-gatorwrangler
Toy Stores
"KB toys."
– AcademicSavings634
"It always felt so cramped and jam packed full of stuff that every time you went you felt like an explorer."
– MrMojoFomo
"I worked at KB Toys throughout college. Can confirm that cramming stuff in there was a corporate policy, maybe for exactly this reason."
"Had to be careful going exploring though— more than once I found a dirty diaper someone had hidden behind a bunch of Barbies. I feel like everyone should work retail for at least a little while, so they can get a taste for what monsters people really are."
– Engelbettie
"Toys-R-Us. I miss that place. I remember my dad taking me and I’d just wonder through the aisles amazed at all the toys. I got one of my childhood favorite Barbie dream houses there."
– FrostQueen05
A Thousand Words
"Photo Albums. My mother has been cataloging some of the old photos she never got around to putting in albums recently. It is a different experience than looking through someone's phone at curated pictures. You would get the pictures back and 90% of them would go in the album. No editing, no my hair looks like crap. You would find photos of yourself years later that you never knew existed. When your grandparents die and you start looking through albums for their memorial and can reminisce. It is so nice."
– HighFiveYourFace
Christmas Was Never The Same
"I recall hearing about a concept mentioned in movies known as a 'Christmas bonus.'"
– mockhouse
"I actually worked at a place where I got to see the idea of a Christmas bonus die."
"They had, for years, given out a Christmas bonus the 2nd week of December that was a cash bonus equivalent to about 1 week's pay. It wasn't huge but it was just that little extra for people already living paycheck to paycheck to have something to buy the wife and kids some Christmas presents."
"Then one year some dude in management came up with this really awesome idea: Instead of giving each employee a couple hundred dollars in cash we should totally give them a frozen turkey."
"It will be great! everyone needs a frozen turkey for Christmas dinner and we can order a whole semi truck trailer full of of them for a great bulk discount so they only cost like $20 each... employees win and we save money!"
"So that is what the company did."
"Only they did't tell anyone that was what was going to happen until the truck backed into the loading dock and happy managers started handing out frozen chunks of discount birds to people who had been budgeting their entire Christmas shopping on getting the cash instead."
"Christmas morning the owner of the company woke up to find hundreds of rotting turkeys on their front lawn."
"We never got a Christmas bonus again at that company - cash or cold turkey."
– varthalon
MY Personal Info
"Privacy. Mostly in the sense that we didn’t have big Meta mining our data/location/listening."
– ilike2makemoney
Weekend Mornings
"Saturday morning cartoons. Nothing beat the joy of waking up early in Saturday morning to watch five hours of your favorite cartoons, most of which were only on at that time on that day."
– nijaxi4567
"I know what you mean. There are cartoons on Saturday morning but with cable and YouTube and streaming and because those run 24-7, it isn’t an event."
"Few things beat running downstairs, pouring yourself a huge bowl of sugary cereal, and flipping on a full hour of Ninja Turtles, Garfield, Ghostbusters, and topping it off with Saved By the Bell all while your parents slept in."
– vmikey
Movie Night
"Blockbuster movie rental."
– lordharliquin
"Oh. My favorite thing we used to do is we would go to the video store and blindfold one of us and pick out a movie and just watch something random. It was so fun fun!"
– darforce
"I WAS LOOKING FOR THIS!! Those are some of the best memories from my childhood! So much better than Netflix!"
– betaflc
No Streaming
"Yelling "IT'S OOOOOOOON" as your siblings hurtled themselves back into the living room and across the couch after the ad break. That 'will I make it' few minutes of just not knowing if you had time to both pee and ALSO get kitchen snacks, were andrenaline-inducing."
– wildgoats2345
That was me and my brother as we watched Avatar: The Last Airbender. Sometimes, I really miss those days!
Humans are inquisitive creatures. We love a good mystery whether it's pure fiction or true crime.
Just check book sale statistics and TV and streaming ratings.
But humans also crave closure which can be why unsolved mysteries capture our attention.
Reddit user BubblegumCrocodile asked:
"What’s the creepiest unsolved mystery?"
Teteteke Gqontsi
"There was a man named Teteteke Gqontsi who was at the Stellenbosch Hospital in the town of Stellenbosch, South Africa for abdominal surgery, so he could barely move."
"One day a nurse came in to change the linens and when she came back inside from being right outside his room he had disappeared."
"He wasn't anywhere in the room. The hospital searched for a week until some men had to perform maintenance on the ceiling, when they opened the ceiling up, there found Teteteke inside the ceiling in the fetal position and he was deceased."
"The autopsy showed that his death wasn't of natural causes and someone put him in the ceiling."
"A few months later, a man named Sandile Sibaya was admitted to a different hospital to have his broken femur treated."
"After a few days there he was about to be transferred to a different hospital to see an orthopedist, but when they went to get him, he was gone."
"They looked for him and only found him when a bad smell permeated the hospital, so the staff opened up the ceiling and found Sandile dead in the exact same position as Teteteke, and they said Sandile also didn't die a natural death and was placed in the ceiling by something."
"I think that's creepy."
~ ResponsibleTaro1759
Baby Crystal
"On Thursday, December 12, 1985, a toddler was spotted wandering unaccompanied around a Kmart department store in Spanaway, Washington with no parent or guardian in sight."
"When authorities tried to coax information out of her to help locate her parents, the only piece of information she was able to give was, 'Mommy is in the trees'."
"A photo was placed in the local newspaper, and the toddler was soon recognised as Crystal by her maternal grandmother Louise Conrad, who took her into her care, later saying that Crystal appeared shaken and disturbed, perhaps by something she had seen."
"So where was mommy?"
"About two months later, the body of Diana Robertson, Crystal's mommy, was discovered deep in the forest around Elbe, Washington with 17 stab wounds and a tube sock tied around her neck."
"Nearby an abandoned 1982 Plymouth pickup truck was discovered covered in blood stains, and with a handwritten note on the dashboard simply saying 'I love you, Diana'."
"This truck belonged to her partner, Mike Riemer, a outdoorsman and trapper, who often spent time in these woods. Mike, however, was nowhere to be found."
"Initially, the police believed him to be responsible for Diana's murder; just two months prior, on October 19, 1985, Mike had been arrested and cited for domestic assault and malicious damage after allegedly kicking in a door at her apartment, throwing her to the floor, and rubbing her face in the carpet."
"They also connected her murder to a double murder that had occurred in the same woods four months earlier."
"A man named Stephen Harkins was found shot to death in his sleeping bag, while his companion, Ruth Cooper, was found strangled two months later."
"Both had a tube sock tied around their neck."
"So was Mike a serial killer? He had apparently been in the woods at the very time that Harkins and Cooper were murdered, and certainly knew how to navigate the tricky terrain."
"But with no trace of him, there was no way to tell for certain."
"Over 20 years later, on March 26, 2011, a hiker discovered a partial human skull in the woods off of State Route 7 in Lewis County near Mineral, Washington, about a mile from where Diana's body had been found. Subsequent analysis revealed that it was indeed Mike, and that he was a likely homicide victim himself."
"So four murders in the same woods by an unknown assailant."
"The question remains: how did Crystal find herself wandering around the Kmart over 30 miles away? She must have been driven there and dropped off, presumably by the serial killer. Crystal must have spent a silent 45-minute drive in the car with the very person who killed her mother, with no memory of the event."
~ UppruniTegundanna
Turn the Page
"Went to a good-sized college party with several friends. The location for the party was out in the woods in the middle of nowhere."
"The road leading to the party was fairly straight with one major feature. The road was flat for the entire length, but it had a hill that was 30ish feet tall halfway down it. A pretty good bump in the road, you might say."
"I was driving, and when I slowly topped the hill, I met a car heading in the opposite direction. That car slowed down to a stop. It was several of my friends temporarily leaving the party to make a beer run to the store."
"They knew who I was by my vehicle and flagged me down to ask if I needed anything from town, and we proceeded to chat for a minute about how the party was unfolding they left."
"When we both backed up to talk, we just happened to stop on top of the hill. Mind you, this was not a busy road and located, as we say, out in the sticks."
"As we were parked talking for a brief minute, we all noticed there was a song coming from the surrounding woods. We figured it was someone having a private party in a parked car nearby in the woods if you get my drift."
"The odd thing was it was 'Turn the Page' by Bob Seagar, but it was on repeat."
"We all went on to meet back up and attend the party and thought nothing more of our chat on the hill."
"A few days later, I got a visit from several police officers about an investigation. They learned there was a party that night down the road with the hill in question."
"They were tracking down all attendees. That is how they found me. A hunter the day after the party found something at the base of the hill off the road."
"Someone driving another car that night heading in the same direction down the road I was on had wrecked their vehicle. The driver took the hill at insane speed and killed themselves in a wreck that had ran way way off the road."
"Unsolved mystery that is still ongoing. The police said that they believed the driver they found was not the driver. There were 2 people in the car who wrecked."
"They found 1 set of bloody foot prints that led to the top of the hill. It looked like someone moved the body behind the steering wheel and fled on foot. They found extra sets of bloody hand prints in the car."
"The wild thing was that they found a cd with Bob Segar 'Turn the Page' in the cd player."
"Everyone that was on top of the hill that night volunteered to give fingerprints."
"Every so often, every few years, one of us gets a phone call to ask us to recount what we saw that night on top of that hill."
~ ApprehensiveVirus125
Kyron Horman
"Kyron Horman."
"Stepmom took him to school, walked around the 'Science Fair' in the gym then he went to class... has not been seen since."
"He was IN the school. C'mon now. It's been over a decade now. I have a 'Google Alert' on his name for updates."
~ sluggernate
Alonzo Brooks
"Alonzo Brooks."
"Not necessarily creepy in the traditional sense, though it has a long history and is literally close to home."
"The reboot of ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ featured an episode about his disappearance. Because of it—after his death initially being ruled undetermined—he was exhumed and changed cause of death to murder."
"Which was always pretty obvious."
"He went to a party in a small Kansas town, LaCygne, with a few friends. Alonzo had some words with partygoers. His friends bailed. Alonzo doesn’t come home."
"The next day, his shoes are found down the road, separately. Police search the area, including along a creek near the party house—nothing."
"A few weeks later, the police let the family do a search—after not letting them be involved earlier. His body is almost immediately found along that same creek."
"Of note, though, is that his body didn’t show any signs of deterioration or decomposition that would be expected of having been there for weeks."
"It’s presumed he was in a fight at the party, dragged down the road, and possibly inadvertently killed in a shed near the party house (that was torn down shortly after)."
"The (other) f**ked up part is that it’s suggested his body was kept in a meat locker and covered up by the cops, and when the family tried to get more involved in the search, his body was dumped along the creek, thereby explaining the lack of decomposition."
"The party had some 100 people there. Someone knows something and no one is saying anything."
~ TommyRockbottom
Frauke Liebs
"Frauke Liebs."
"Was last seen leaving a bar to go home, then at some point during her walk home, went missing."
"She was able to make several texts and calls to loved ones over the next few days, but was very vague and refused to give information on her whereabouts."
"The details of her last phone call, to her sister, are pretty chilling. During this conversation, she is said to have answered the question of whether she was being held captive with a faint 'yes', immediately followed by a loud 'no'. Contact broke off after this phone call."
"Her body was found several months later in a wooded area, most likely dumped from somewhere else. No further details were found about the killer, motive for her death or disappearance."
~ Anxiouslytotingababy
Austin Froyo Murders
"Maybe not the all-time creepiest but certainly in the top 20 and also one of the saddest is the one of who murdered those four girls in that frozen yogurt shop in Austin, Texas back in November of 1991."
"Several teen guys were arrested, tried and convicted then later had the convictions overturned."
"Also, the DNA on one of the victims didn't match up with any of these guys."
"In addition, a married couple who left the shop shortly before closing time noted a pair of older and rather sinister looking guys sitting in a booth next to the counter as they left."
~ NoodlesrTuff1256
Andrew Gosden
"What happened to 14-year-old Andrew Gosden."
"He got a train to King’s Cross, London by himself and hasn’t been seen since."
~ bluebellfob
"Disappearance of Andrew Gosden is another super weird UK one."
A 14-year-old leaves his home in Doncaster in 2007, withdraws £200 out of his bank account, buys a one-way ticket to London even though a return ticket was only £1 more, is seen on CCTV leaving King's Cross station and then is never seen again."
"There have been a few weird potential leads in the case in the 17 years since but not a single solid or confirmed lead or sighting."
~ -JensonButton-
Ursula and Sabina Eriksson
"The Eriksson twin sisters that ran across a motorway in England, were hit several times by lorries and cars, and just kept moving somehow."
"Even the backstory and aftermath get weirder the more you find out, the stranger it gets."
~ section20sniper84
"What fascinates me about this one is the leadup to it."
"Like, one day one of them is a family woman living in Ireland and the other one is going for a nice visit to her sister, and the next day they're acting weird on a bus in England and from there it all goes batsh*t nuts."
"What happened between A and B?!"
~ zaffiro_in_giro
Skye Budnick
"The Skye Budnick case. Shy, socially awkward 21-year-old college student buys a one-way ticket to Japan without telling anybody."
"She takes no phone. Just 800 dollars, a laptop and a Nintendo DS. She leaves an unfinished, unsent, unclear, note in her email drafts on a home computer."
"She was studying Japanese but failing out of school and couldn't get into her exchange program, she was not fluent. She flew to Tokyo and then to Sapporo."
"She's reported to have gotten off the plane in Sapporo and maybe checking into her hotel (?) but after that she vanished without a trace."
"This happened over a decade ago and still not one shred of evidence or leads as to what could have happened, who she could have met, what her motives were. She left her car at the airport in the United states."
"No keys were ever recovered. The laptop was never recovered, nor the DS or the cash. Her family are left wondering forever."
"Her sister has a really good podcast called 'Surviving Skye'."
~ Igotyourexcominnext
Larry Bader/John "Fritz" Johnson
"Larry Bader. Not necessarily creepy, but bizarre for sure."
"Larry Bader was married with three kids. In March 1957, he went fishing on Lake Erie by himself, even though he knew a storm was coming. The next day, they found his crashed boat, but Larry himself was nowhere to be seen."
"Almost 10 years later, in 1965, he was found by his niece doing an archery demonstration in Nebraska, when he was originally from Ohio."
When confronted, he swore he didn’t know anyone named Larry Bader, as he identified as John 'Fritz' Johnson. He claimed to have lived in Nebraska all his life, having memories as a child named Fritz."
"He also got married and had another kid."
"His niece, convinced Fritz was her uncle, requested that he go to the police and be identified. He was, in fact, Larry Bader, but he had no recollection whatsoever of his previous life."
"Bader/Johnson died in 1966, not long after being found by his niece."
~ whereisthefrog
Bryce Laspisa
"Missing person Bryce Laspisa. While away in college, he started exhibiting some troubling behavior and his parents were worried about him."
"He said he would drive home from college and that he had a lot he needed to talk about. On the way home he pulled over like 3 separate times and just sat there for hours."
"At some point about halfway home he ran out of gas and a roadside assistance employee delivered gas to him at 9 am. By noon when he still hadn't arrived home, his mom called the insurance company and was able to contact the roadside assistance employee and have him check on Bryce."
"He found Bryce in the exact same spot where he had delivered gas to him, hours earlier. He had Bryce call his mom, and Bryce said he would be home by 3pm."
"At 6pm, he is still not home and his parents report him missing. The police find Bryce just 8 miles away from where he was previously sitting. He seems fine....they leave...he still just sits there."
"Again the roadside assistance employee checks on Bryce and finds him in the same spot the cops left him hours earlier."
"Anyway, after a lot of that, when he does finally start heading home, he crashes the car off a cliff. It was found he accelerated while descending the hill, so they think he crashed on purpose."
"Police find the damaged vehicle, no Bryce, and he is never seen again."
~ sallyjosieholly
Alistair Wilson
"The murder of Alistair Wilson in Nairn, Scotland in 2004."
"A 30-year-old banker living in a quiet neighbourhood has the doorbell of his home rang. His wife answers the door and a man in a baseball cap asks for Alistair by name and so he went to speak to him."
"He returned after a few minutes to his wife with an empty blue envelope that had 'Paul' written on it. Confused about this, he went back to his front door, at which point his wife heard three gunshots and then found him executed."
"The murder investigation was one of the biggest in the history of Scotland and to this day remains unsolved."
"In 2022 the Scottish Police announced they believe a planning dispute with a local hotel may have been a motive and then earlier this year that they believe the shooting was carried out by two people, one of them a local suspect whom was arrested on drug charges."
"However, while they now finally have a potential motive and suspect nearly 20 years later, it still has not been solved."
~ -JensonButton-
Sukumara Kurup
"Sukumara Kurup. Time period: mid 80s. This guy visits his hometown, a sleepy village in Kerala, India with wife and son, from Dubai."
"He goes out drinking with some buddies and on the way back picks up a random stranger and kills him. Burns the car they drove in with the body in it.
"Making it look like an accident. People think it’s Kurup’s body in the car until police investigated and find that it’s not Kurup. His buddies are caught but he’s missing."
"Police suspect he tried to fake his death to get insurance money of about 10,000 USD which is a pretty big amount back then. The man they murdered was supposed to be the body to fool the insurance agents to make the claim."
"Been decades now and he’s still missing. He’s currently one of the most wanted criminals in India who still hasn’t been caught."
"Growing up we heard stories of him being spotted all over the country. Recently they made a movie on him as well."
~ astro_not_yet
There are a lot of interesting cases here.
What unsolved mystery would you add to the list?
People Confess The Scariest Thing Their Spouse Ever Said To Them
Content Warning: Mental Health, Suicide, Suicidal Ideation, Violence
It's so hard to know what someone else is thinking or going through.
Even when they tell us, it can be difficult to fathom the feeling without living it ourselves.
Because of this, sometimes a person can really surprise us by saying something we never expected, even the people we love the most in the world.
Redditor i_like_purple clouds asked:
"What is the scariest thing your spouse ever said to you?"
Absolute Nightmares
"'Look at all those snakes on the ceiling!'"
"It was the middle of the night. He was actually fast asleep. There were no snakes."
- morganafiolett
"My ex was an arachnophobe, and my son had a fever dream/nightmare and was very distressed, screaming that he had woken up and seen 'tarantulas' scuttling into the corners of the underside of the upper bunk of his bunk bed."
"I was doing that, 'Honey, you're very sick, and you've been asleep, and I know it feels very real, but I promise you that there are no spiders...' speech when my ex just ran in, scooped up the boy, and hollered, 'F**k that noise, woman! Call me when you've flipped the mattresses!!' and legit ran out of the apartment with kiddo, lol (laughing out loud)."
"This annoyed me to no end at the time, but my son later told me that my ex made him feel very heard."
- kifferella
Their Reason for Living
"'There are times when I only wake up because I know you're here.'"
- Foreveridosyncratic
"Very sweet, but it would break my heart to hear, which is exactly why I don't say it to my husband, even when it feels true."
- Silhouette_Edge
That Familiar Heart Stitch
"'I think I'm having a heart attack.'"
"It was her first panic attack. I broke every law driving her to the hospital. Thankfully she's doing better now."
- HyliaSerket
"I said this to my fiancé last winter after (being in the process of) getting diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia. I woke him up SOBBING in the middle of the night when he was dead asleep and said, 'I think I’m having a heart attack.'"
"Poor guy. It’s insane how a panic attack can mimic a heart attack. My arm even went numb/tingly!"
- SummerSunset8
Truth Mid-Session
"During our first marriage counseling session, we were asked about our goals for this session. She said, 'I don’t want this to work.'"
"And it did not work. That was the end of our marriage. At the time, it was the scariest moment of my life. Today, three years later, I can honestly say neither of us was happy and needed some help."
"Therapy works. Sometimes honesty hurts and revelations are hard."
- ATENFOOTTURD
Always, Always Ask For Help
"'I thought about hanging myself in the garage last night.' That was my husband when he finally told me how bad he was struggling with his mental health."
"I had no idea he was in such a dark place. Hearing that come out of his mouth both scared the s**t out of me and ripped my heart out."
- heyypeach
The Ultimatum
"'If this is what being with you for the rest of my life is going to be like, I want out right now.'"
"This was said six months into my second marriage."
"I finally heard it: that I was damaged and that I needed help."
"I immediately found a therapist and went steadily for 10 years. It was hard as f**k. Lots of uncomfortable times."
"But it changed me. We are together now pretty f**king happily, 23 years with now two amazing kids. S**t doesn’t have to last forever."
- um8medoit
What's with the Lights?
"'All the lights downstairs just went on. There is someone in our house...'"
"I was on a business trip and my wife called me at 3:00 AM. Never felt so helpless in my life."
"She called the police and they searched our home from top to bottom but we never found out who switched on every single light on the ground floor!"
- GnOeLLLmPF
"Our basement was like this. My husband kept blaming me for leaving the light on, but I had stopped going down there because I was pregnant and didn't want to do unnecessary stairs."
"When he, quite upset at me for continuing to do what irked him so much, told me, 'Can you stop leaving lights on, I'm the one who has to pay the power bill,' and I was like, 'Actually, I haven't been down there in weeks.'"
"I assumed the basement was haunted or we had someone secretly living down there (unlikely because we have security set up... And dogs). But it turns out one of the light switches (the type with a dimmer) was just broken. You'd turn it off and leave the room... But then a few minutes later it would short and turn back on."
- evange
Undervaluing Themselves
"At her lowest point of depression, whilst out shopping, with no apparent trigger, she deadpanned, 'You'd be better off if I didn't come home.'
"Fortunately, she got out of that rut, but doesn't remember saying it and how much it terrified me."
- takesbribes
A Secret Life
"I discovered he was addicted to cocaine. It was completely out of the blue. I would have never found out if I hadn’t stained my shirt and had to go home to change and walked in on him snorting a fat rail at 1:39 PM on a random Tuesday."
"I gave him an ultimatum: my support during rehab unconditionally, or we completely part ways if you want to continue snorting coke all day."
"He said, 'The coke, I don’t want to talk to you.'"
"He chose coke and we divorced, and I have no idea whether he is alive or dead. Frankly, the man I married never actually existed. I have such a bad picker I’ve decided to just give up."
- Glldinkiering
"Honestly, bless him for being straightforward and allowing you to get out quickly. He could have taken you through multiple years of hell of trying to get clean and relapsing over and over. Staying home to do lines alone on a random Tuesday is pretty deep in it, so it's a blessing you caught him that day and got out."
- anoidciv
"He also did me a solid by insisting we have a prenuptial agreement which protected me when his @ss was sued into oblivion by his business partners for embezzling money for coke."
- Glldinkiering
Terrible News
"'I've been in an accident...'"
- Ok-Detective-1721
"I’ve been that guy, she happened to call me as I was being lifted into the ambulance with my head smashed after being hit by a car. I had regained consciousness only seconds earlier."
"Somehow I had the presence of mind to phrase it, 'I’m okay, but I have to go to hospital because I’ve had an accident.'"
- lilgreenrosetta
Bad Dreams Love Company
"'Who’s that standing in the corner?' she said at 2:00 AM while sitting up in bed and pointing towards the corner."
"I was still half asleep but freaking out and then she just laid back down and continued sleeping like nothing happened. No one was in the corner."
- futbo2
"One time I got out of bed to use the bathroom, and as I crossed in front of the bed my wife sat up and started screaming like nothing I’ve ever heard."
"I had an injury that has had me sleeping with extra pillows to position my body comfortably since I was early twenties. The pillows made it look in the dark like I was still asleep next to her. So when she saw me crossing in front of the bed, she thought someone had broken in and was in our room."
- PerfectionPending
Unwelcome Houseguests
"She was filling our water bottles before coming to bed and I was just on my phone in bed. I heard her come up the stairs almost like she tripped on the last step because she usually misses that last one."
"Just as I’m getting up to go see if she’s alright, she comes flying through the bedroom door closing it behind her. I never saw her scared like this and I was confused until she said, 'Something just followed me up the stairs.'"
"I nearly s**t myself, that type of fear where tears spring to your eyes and your stomach knots."
"I’m not sure what I would have done if it was just the two of us alone in the house. (There were others, but they were in their room and asleep.)"
"At first, I thought it was the dog, but she confirmed it was very much not. There was nothing there. She claims it was a large black mass behind her that she could hear. We both had a bit of trouble going to sleep that night."
- MonsterMontvalo
"My best friend was at a friend's house and had a dark mass behind him, over his shoulder, and looking down on him."
"In the middle of the night on the way to the restroom, he felt it. He paused for he didn’t know how long, 10 seconds or 10 minutes, he couldn’t say. Then he looked up and saw it in a mirror at the end of the hall. He sprinted to the restroom and stayed there until the sun came up."
"His friend said he looked terrible in the morning and he responded by saying he saw something last night."
"His friend said, 'Oh man, talk to Mom about it.'"
"He told the Mom about the experience, and she asked, 'Was it the light one or the dark one?'
"Dark one. 'Ok good, the light one is mean.' And that’s all that was said."
- M_n_Ms
F**k Cancer
"'I’m tired and want to go home.'"
"He died six hours later, after only fighting cancer for six weeks."
- Bulky-Tomatillo-1705
"She told me, 'I want to die at home.'"
"She had been battling cancer for five weeks and wanted to be home. She had a few weeks with me and died eight weeks after the inital diagnosis. F**k cancer."
- kazz-wizz
Talk... About What?!
"We need to talk when you get home."
"Folks, I spent the next six hours going over every possible thing I could have done wrong to warrant that response. We were in the middle of buying a house and planning our wedding and I thought everything could possibly be crumbling."
"Turns out my darling wife, the love of my life, and my best friend missed the f**king memo of what 'we need to talk' means in a relationship and wanted to talk to me about CARPETING FOR THE HOUSE."
"That conversation happened over a dozen years ago at this point and I still remind her from time to time about how she almost gave me a heart attack."
"To this day, she thinks it's hilarious."
- Trendsa
Brutal, To Be Honest
"Good god, I have to stop reading these. So much heartbreak here."
"It’s good to be reminded to not take things for granted in good times."
- slaphappypap
This conversation was a great example of how little we might know of what's going on in someone's head, even if it's the person we love the most in the world.
But at least in these Redditors' cases, their partners were willing to share this information with them, which gave them an opportunity to make the situation better.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
CW: addiction, death, abuse.
Everyone has secrets they'll take with them to their graves.
But some clandestine info is so hard to contain, that it can cause stress and anxiety until some of the pressure is alleviated.
You might be the person who was sworn to secrecy to share some of that burden.
But are you to be trusted to aid your secret-sharer in keeping their secrets?
Curious to hear from strangers online who have a tough time keeping some of the most jaw-dropping intel to themselves, Redditor HardDeep69420 asked:
"What's the most shocking secret someone has revealed to you?"
Knowing that a friend or family has suffered has haunted these Redditors.
A Painful Truth
"In the 70’s, my cousin died in a car crash that caught fire. I was very afraid that he was awake and felt the fire. My parents said he died immediately and didn’t suffer. My mother was on hospice at home in 2011. She told me the firemen were trying to open the doors and My cousin and the other teens were screaming for help when the cars caught fire. There were no survivors and my Aunt was never the same. It wasn’t until after his death that the jaws of life were distributed to our rural departments."
– Tkay906363
A Tough Call
"When I was 11 I had a friend reveal that her stepmother was abusing her... she made me promise not to say anything to my mom or any other adult. I agreed, we had weekly therapy sessions with a guidance counselor if you wanted it so it was my day to go and I just felt like I needed to tell… so I did. The counselor ended up reporting it and CPS got involved and my friend was made to live with her mother. She was so angry at me for telling but I felt it in my soul that I should. We are still friends to this day.. both of us 29 years old."
– SubstantialLove8330
"Sometimes you have to decide between your friend and your friendship. It sounds like you made the right choice."
– ALawful_Chaos
The Evil Of Addiction
"That he watched his son die of an overdose and didn’t do anything to help. He told me that his son had battled addictions for many years and that he had called an ambulance in the past when his son had overdosed, but that he thought it was better this time to 'just let him go since he made his choice.'"
– Ok-Associate-7894
The Ex And Her Health Issue
"I had an old girlfriend who was coming to Florida and wanted to hang out with me and my wife, she brought her mom, who I knew pretty well. A great dinner, drinks, fun stories, then when my ex went to the bathroom, the mom told me she (the ex) was dying of cancer. (I had No idea). It was sad, but yet felt so good she wanted to hang out. She died within a year. We were probably 35 years old at the time."
– waistingtoomuchtime
"You know..people will read this and grasp the sadness of the end but, on the other hand, your ex reached out and wanted to share some of her remaining time with you ..and your wife...clearly, your time together was special to her regardless of how it ended. You still had a warm place in her heart for you. That's actually quite awesome. I know you know that. Your wife is very lucky."
– Impressive-Doughnut7
Life will never be the same after Redditors found out about these long-hidden family secrets.
What The Fork?!
"When I was 16, my Mom announced at dinner that her sister was coming for a visit next week. I dropped my fork and said 'YOU HAVE A SISTER?'”
–Initial_lampwick115
"I had this: age 11 driving up to Scotland with my parents and we stopped off at a tiny town, walked into the big hotel, then got introduced to my uncle. My mum's brother. Hadn't existed before then and only came out of the woodwork because my grandpa died shortly before (they didn't get on). It was a weird shock but also an 'OK cool, life goes on' moment."
– slinkychameleon
Extended Family
"I'm 56 now but at some point in my early 40s while driving with my dad he says 'you have a half brother somewhere.'"
– ridobe
"My dad pulled this sh*t on me when I went to my grandfather's celebration of life. Picked me up from the train station, asked me if I knew about his new wife (I did) and their daughter, born six years before my mom died of cancer (they never divorced). Then had the guts to follow it up with a request to FaceTime them that night because they wanted to meet me, because "[he] never kept his family a secret... from them." It took a while for me to get over that."
– toujourspret
Invisible Husband
"I found out my mother and father were not divorced. He never existed. She had a one-night stand, found out she was pregnant, bought a wedding ring, changed her name, and told the family that she had gotten married. She made up excuses every time she went to my grandparent's house as to why her husband couldn’t also be there to meet them. On the 3rd visit, my grandfather told her never to wear that ring in his house again and when is the baby due? I’m 53."
– Traditional_Jicama72
Why The Nun Made Weekly Visits
"I found out my parents weren't married when I was 14, and my parents had a massive row after my dad was caught by the police with a sex worker. My mum blurted it out to me along with the reason why they were arguing. I'm 50. Up til then, they pretended.. when my Catholic secondary school asked for a marriage certificate as part of my screening for the school, they sent a letter to the priest confidentially... I still got in. Explains why from birth until 11, a Catholic nun would visit my parents every weekend, probably to ensure my soul was intact, lol."
– PidginPigeonHole
Things get sinister.
A Murder Confession
"Casually dropped they’d killed someone then got really quiet about it. Like, sad quiet. Sounds like there was a case surrounding the ordeal but could never get them to talk about it more and I didn’t want to push."
– lil-kingtrashm0uth
Dodging A Bullet
"My ex casual dropped he killed someone also. He was a lot more loud about it when he was upset with me though. 'I’ve killed for less'. I know the whole story, or both of them. The one he tells people, and the one he told me. Either way. He’s a scary man, and I would never wish to be near him again."
– Skyecatcher
One of the hardest positions to be in is when a friend tells you that they've cheated on their significant other, whom you also know.
This happened to me.
Keeping the privileged information was agonizing as I feigned ignorance whenever I hung out with the couple or with the person who had been cheated on.
Eventually, the pair broke up as the affair came to light through no involvement by me.
The truth always has a way of surfacing, after all.
Would you rely on that to happen, or would you intervene?
When is it okay to betray the person who entrusted you with their secret?
People's Wildest 'WTF Is Wrong With You?' Experiences