So funny story, that literally is how we discovered my father had an affair lasting over a decade and like had a whole second house in another state and paid for this womanās law school level of affair when he passed during the height of Covid restrictions (not from Covid)
Thank you, itās been almost four years now so Iām at the ācan laugh at the absurdity that is my dead dadās secret affairā point of the grief process but I legit was chuckling at your post bc *points to self* It Happened!
lol no, your garden variety heart attack but yeah, he had nothing in order and so we, to this day, still have to unfuck a lot of stuff legally! (Also the woman in question married another man less than nine months later and is a terrible person)
My friend found out about her spouse cheating on her their entire 15+ year relationship with his coworkers on his research trips and with another parent in town. So, yes.
the bar for dads is extremely low so throw out enough "im working late" and "im traveling" excuses and people will assume you're a typical absentee parent
I love for her that before women could even get bank accounts and before men bothered to change diapers she had two partners so supportive that they'd watch the kids/run the household for weeks/months at a time while she was gone. Incredible stuff
I choose to believe that she gave birth to the children of the secret second family while part of the first family. She concealed her pregnancies with elaborate costumes and clever uses of props ("Oh, I can't get out of the car now, I'll just talk out the window.").
Grandma lived with another family, sheās listed in the census as a border. Her brother lived with their mom. Grandma talked about her mother who wasnāt her mother. As kids we thought she was losing it. When we started looking into it it was so convoluted, and she was just telling it like it was.
Was this "thank God for my Ancestry sub"? We had similar experiences. Ggma's mother also had boarders. One of which was the guy ggma ran off with eventually!
It was one crazy Christmas vacation with my son here and my brother on the internet trying to make sense of what we were seeing. Some Ancestry, I think, and finding some census stuff I donāt know where. Boarders seemed like a big thing then.
When g-grandma died, and her daughters showed up to the funeral, my grandad was horrified. The family never spoke of it again until he died. I was 17 when I learned this shitš¤£
So, a prior family, kept secret? like, she left a first spouse/partner, then started a new family?
I think this is surprisingly common up through mid-20th C-ish. I've heard of probably a half dozen cases in families of women I've known. Women were shamed into silence about that kind of thing.
I've always heard them second-hand, from friends or women I was seeing, & often the story of the 'secret' marriage was a closed book to them - their mom/grandma would never discuss it, it was just known to have happened.
Mr. Singer made millions with Singer sewing machines. He has 2 mansions & 2 secret wives. He made sure his 2 daughters were both named āMaryā, so that heād never say the wrong name. Eventually caught.
