What embarrassing family secrets do you hide from your mate?

THE fear of not being accepted or being stereotyped is often the main motivation for keeping something secret. And a need to protect the parties involved, especially when they are family, could mean burying these secrets deeper, and for longer. This will even extend to significant others, even when they become part of the family through marriage.

What family secrets do All Woman readers consider so embarrassing that significant others, as close as they may be, will never hear escape their lips?

Kelly:

I had a family member who was living with us and she has an illness that could cause people to look down on my family and I. It never got out of my immediate family, and even if it ever does, it won’t be from me because sometimes people will be so insensitive as to use the sickness of your family member to speak badly about you and them.

Lacy:

My uncle dismembered my aunt one early morning. Many people see my family as violent. He isn’t from the community where I live or even lives close, and I make sure he has limited contact with people I know, and when he does, I find myself monitoring conversations.

Jamie:

My father abandoned us at one point and went and had a child with another woman. But regardless of this, he is my hero, my idol. My mother and other sisters and brothers do not consider this child a part of the family. Also, while my father takes care of him financially, he isn’t included in family events nor has he benefited from anything family related.

Abby:

Successive generations of family members, including my mother, have up to three mental illnesses. My mother takes her medication and is in a good job but there are times when she reaches a low point. This kind of control is unfortunately not the story of all ill family members. I have walked past my sick uncle before with my spouse while doing everything to ensure he doesn’t see me because what a man love call name and come hug up.

Jorey:

My father has been in and out of jail for petty theft. He lives in another parish which is good for us because it saves us dealing with the embarrassing incidents when he is caught. I have tried to help him; my family has tried, but he is a kleptomaniac. I’m in a good job, my sisters abroad too, and they send a lot of barrels, but he just goes back to stealing. According to him, it’s his “thing”.

Tricia:

My cousin is known in my community for messing around with animals. Now that is something I just don’t want my partner, who by the way is very passionate about animal care, to know. Though he denies it, many people have seen him and have had to put down their animals because of it.

Paula:

My boyfriend will never know that my father went to prison for theft, or that he’s an alcoholic who walks the streets and harasses people. He’ll never know that my sister was dancing at clubs to make money, and who knows what else. And I won’t tell him that my stepbrother was a gunman who got killed by his cronies, or that my senior citizen mother is living with a man half her age and doesn’t care about anyone but herself. I’m the only normal one in the family, and I’ve made up lie after lie for why he will never meet my extended family right now, and if we get to the stage of marriage, it will be done with just us at the RGD.

Leigh-Ann:

I’m ashamed to tell him that I come from poverty — dirt poor conditions in the country. I’ve achieved so much that it would be hard to explain to him that we ate scraps from other people’s table, that my mother was a domestic helper who had tonnes of kids, and that even now, decades later, the rest of my family is in the same poverty-stricken position with no hope of getting out. When I have to visit them, I have them meet us at my aunt’s house, as she at least isn’t so destitute.