People Who Kept Secret Children From Their Partners Are Sharing How They Got Caught, And Oh My God

We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us how they learned their partner had a child behind their back, and their stories were more dramatic than I anticipated. Here are the wildest ones:

1.

“We were driving to the supermarket and passed his ‘obsessive’ ex walking in the opposite direction. She was wearing a form-fitting dress that clearly showed she was pregnant (more than six months), and I said, ‘Oh, thank goodness! That means she’s FINALLY over you now and can stop calling and harassing us.’ When we parked in the lot, we saw that she had turned around and was fast approaching, so he said, ‘Let’s leave because I don’t want her to cause her usual drama and upset you.’ So we left and went to another store.”

“Later that night, I guess his conscience got the better of him, and he broke down and confessed that he had actually had a one-night stand with her, and she was pregnant with his child. He had turned off his phone after we drove off because she had immediately started calling him and sending messages saying how dare he pass her walking and not offer his baby-mother a ride.” 

—nikkijamaica

2.

“My daughter got a message from her half-brother saying that he was born a year before her and just a year into our marriage.”

—Anonymous 

3.

“Three years after my husband died, I was finally sorting through his closets and private papers. I found a birthday card and a Valentine’s Day card tucked inside a metal tin, along with some men’s jewelry I had never seen. I also found women’s jewelry wrapped with a lovely card. It was not my name on the card. I dug out his old cell phone, charged it up, and started searching through texts. I found thousands of live messages between him and an old coworker. They broke up when I was diagnosed with cancer because he wanted to support me through it. This was November 2018. In February 2019, she sent him a message with an ultrasound picture. ‘It’s a boy,’ she said.”

“‘Are you gonna come to support us now?’ He did not respond. Her next message later that same day said, ‘I figured. My ex thinks it’s his anyway, FU hope your happy with your old fat wife.’ After days of horror, I reached out to the secretary where he used to work. She was honest. They all knew. That woman even came to our COVID outdoor celebration of life with the child; her coworkers made her leave before she said anything to me or our grown children. I don’t remember her even being there. The secretary told me the woman had lied to him. The woman was white, and her now ex-husband was black. The child was half black, so it was not my husband’s kid.” 

—Anonymous 

4.

“We had been broken up for four years when I found out. He pissed his mom off, and she told me. Come to find out, this child is the same age as the kid we have together.”

—Anonymous 

5.

“I (22F) have been dating my high school sweetheart (23M) since my sophomore year of high school. I have never been pregnant, but I found maternity wear and baby bottles in his keepsake box from middle school. I also found a photo of a much younger him and a girl who looks around 14. Apparently, he got her pregnant in 8th grade, she gave birth in 9th, and he initially dated me as a rebound. I don’t know what I should do.”

—Anonymous 

6.

“Two years after his bachelor party, my ex was served with papers for child support. The entertainment had gotten pregnant.”

—Anonymous 

7.

“My mom found out that my father had a secret child when they had been married for a year and a half. I was a few months old. My dad was at work. The cops come knocking to pick up my dad for back child support. Turned out my dad allegedly didn’t know this child even existed. My mom was livid. She stayed with him, though.”

—madalynw

8.

“This happened to my twin sister. We had known this guy since 4th grade. He was always so sweet and nice. We moved away, so we lost touch, but one day, he found my sister on Facebook and messaged her. They texted every day for months. He taught her how to play his favorite video game, and they played together for hours every day. He would tell her how he wanted to have her baby, and they would plan a future together. Anyway, one day, she was scrolling through his Facebook and saw a comment he made on one of his mom’s pictures. It was a picture of his family from Mother’s Day, and a girl was sitting on his lap. So, like any sane person, she started scrolling, trying to find out who the girl was. She found the girl’s profile, and it turned out she’s pregnant.”

“My sister was obviously devastated, and she felt dirty. She was the side chick that had broken up this family. She waited a couple of days to confront him. She asked him if he had another girlfriend, and he said no, but he was having a baby. He said he was scared to tell her cause he didn’t want her to leave him. She told him she loved him, but she didn’t want to get between his growing family, she told him that if it were meant to be, they’d find each other again.”

—Anonymous 

9.

“My ex worked very close to the garage we used for auto maintenance. One morning, I was supposed to take his truck to work when he dropped my car off for an inspection on his way to his job. As I backed out of our sloped driveway that morning, the sun suddenly hit my eyes, so I pulled the sun visor down. A ‘Happy Father’s Day Daddy’ card landed right on my lap. He forever denied it was his card, but he moved this child’s mother into our home just weeks after we agreed to a ‘trial’ separation. This little boy was two when we ended our marriage just before the five-year mark. I had suspected I was being cheated on for a while but was never able to get concrete evidence. Several years later, I saw a photo of the two of them in an ad booklet for local services for hire. His jawline was VERY distinct, and this child had the exact same distinct and un-common-shaped jaw. I don’t regret starting my life over without him in it.”

—Anonymous 

10.

“We owned a home, we both worked, and everything seemed fine. During the start of the pandemic, he grew distant and irritable, but I thought it was stress from COVID’s impact on our lives. Turned out he was having an affair with his administrative assistant. She had gotten pregnant, and a few months later, he told me he wanted a divorce. I asked him if there was someone else (he had had an affair a few years earlier with our child’s dance coach), and he said no. Fast-forward nine months later. We’re separated and working towards a divorce with a mediator. We’re co-parenting and talking regularly. I have no idea about the other woman and child, but suspect something is going on. One day I go to pick up our child from her dad’s house and she tells me she has a sister. She told me that her dad had shown her a baby the day before, and she had met the baby’s mother. She also tells me they’re all going on a family vacation that weekend. I immediately signed us both up for therapy.”

—Anonymous 

11.

“We were together for two months before I found out. Up to this point, he flat-out denied he had children and put ‘no children’ on his dating app bio. He and I met up with my friend (whom he was meeting for the first time), and she asked him about all his tattoos. When she got to the initials on his knuckles, he started to get agitated and yell, ‘Fine, well, I guess it’s time you found out.’ He aggressively confessed he had a son several states away who he didn’t see or pay child support for. Apparently, he was ‘saving up the payments’ until his kid was 18. He didn’t care that it was illegal. He then shared that he lost custody after a lengthy battle and refused to take a marijuana test mandated by the court. I drove him home. The next day, he texted me like nothing was wrong.”

—Anonymous 

12.

“My dad hid a child from my mom. He was cheating on my mom for years with his other woman. He and my mom had trouble conceiving, and I was their ‘miracle baby’ after several years of heartbreak. I had some health issues when I was younger, and my dad (who wasn’t working) had to take me to a specialist once a week. The specialist called my mum to ask why I’d missed so many appointments, so she asked my dad, who said the clinic had made a mistake. My mum decided to ask me (I was 4) where I went each week with daddy, and I told her we went to see our special friends, but I wasn’t meant to tell her because it was a secret.”

“It turned out that instead of taking me to the specialist each week, he was taking me to visit his other family, including a daughter that he fathered who was 10 months younger than me. Sadly, even after this, my mum stayed with him for another six months until he walked out on Christmas Eve. He wasn’t heard from again for 10 years until his other wife and daughter kicked him out for cheating and fathering twins with another woman.”  

—Anonymous 

13.

“I was using my laptop, and he was still signed into his email. I saw all these Zelle payments to a number that I wasn’t familiar with. When I confronted him about it, he said it was sent to his mom, and she just used that name for Zelle. First red flag. The second red flag was that I copied the number down and called it a female’s voicemail. She called back later that night at 2 a.m. I answered, and she went on to tell me that I was the other woman and he had a 9-month-old daughter by her. Interesting because we had been living together for two years and had been together off and on for more than 10 years and had a 3-year-old son.”

“I confronted him, and he said it was a one-time thing, and he had been paying her because she said it was his; he never got a DNA test (still don’t know if he has). Mind you, I was currently seven months pregnant with our daughter. I asked him what he wanted to do because the first thing he would need to do was get a DNA test. He said he wanted to stay with his family, meaning me and his son, only to pick a fight with me over nothing on the day of my baby shower and leave and ghost me. He has never met his daughter.” 

—Anonymous 

14.

“I’m a home loan processor. One of my most uncomfortable moments ever was telling a newly married couple they would not be getting their home loan because the husband owed $7000 in child support. The wife was gobsmacked that he had children. Not sure what happened to them after that.”

—Anonymous 

15.

“I found out through Facebook when the baby momma commented on a picture of my ex-spouse. She basically said she sees he’s happy and that the girls and her don’t need him. Yep, ‘girls’ plural, as in twin girls. I found out, and we had already been married for almost two years. That was the beginning of the end for us.”

—Anonymous 

16.

And lastly, “We had been best friends for 15 years and danced around dating for several years. Eventually, I moved to another country. During a trip home to visit family, we decided to give things a try, and I planned to move back a few months later. He had just come out of a relationship a month earlier or so (at least he said). A few weeks later, I made a comment about his ex constantly texting, and he told me she wasn’t important and that I should just delete her messages and number. To my surprise, I saw a bit of an older message saying she was pregnant. He said he had already spoken to her and demanded a test. She then admitted there was no baby she was just trying to get him back.”

“Fast forward two years, we are engaged and living together, and I have also had to put up with this ex constantly being rude when I see her in public, although she never called him anymore. I was cleaning the apartment and found the birth certificate of the daughter he had with his ex, who he claimed had not been pregnant. She was born the day before my birthday, which explained why we had to change our plans; he was MIA. It also explained why our finances did not add up. I was all packed up before he got home from his boy’s trip that weekend. He said he knew I would have ended the relationship and not moved back if he had told me the truth when I found the message. I left him, but the joke was on me because two weeks later, I found out I was just short of three months pregnant.”

—Anonymous