Well alrighty then...stepdad was married and mom didn't know

[lurknomore]

My stepdad passed away suddenly in January.  My mom and sister are going through the last of his boxes that are in the house and discovered he was married before his ex-wife.  So instead of being divorced once, he was divorced (at least) twice.  My sister says it seems my mom didn't know about the first wife.  It doesn't really change anything, since it was 40 years ago, and 20 years before he met my mom and he's gone.  But for some reason I'm having odd feelings I can't really articulate.  Just a chill up my spine type feeling, probably wondering what else she's going to find....

[crazygame]

Wow. That would make me feel strange too. I wonder if he felt like being twice divorced would be a turn off and once he hadn't told her for a while, he couldn't really bring it up.

[Deleted]

DH didn't find out his dad was married an extra time until DH was in his 30s. Both FIL's current wife and MIL knew though. Still weird. And funnier, wife #1 and #3 have the same first name.

[Willis Jackson]

That would weird me out too.

[orval]

My cousins (now about 30) do not know their dad was married three times. They know about his first wife and their mom, not the middle wife. Could be why he had never had them around the rest of the family...

[Deleted]

Sometimes people deal with mistakes from their past by pretending it didn't happen. I'm not saying this is the right thing to do but it doesn't necessarily make him a bad person. He may have just wanted to sweep that one experience under the rug and could otherwise be a good, upstanding person.

[awick14]

I would find that weird too.

I have a friend who's grandparents think his dad is dead. But they don't know that their daughter (friends mom) was in a relationship prior to being with her H, (broke up with friends dad before she knew she was pregnant.) and the kid is his not her Hs. Now that friend has a 3 year old it's getting harder to keep the secret, as the child has met her real grandpa. It's all kinds of awkward.

[adlove]

My husband didn't find out his dad was married once before his mom until he was in college. Such a strange secret to keep.

[loira]

Oct 12, 2015 10:56:25 GMT -5 @kcpokergal said:

DH didn't find out his dad was married an extra time until DH was in his 30s. Both FIL's current wife and MIL knew though. Still weird. And funnier, wife #1 and #3 have the same first name.

This happened to my H, too (minus the wives with the same name). FIL was visiting shortly after we got married, and mentioned something about 'my marriage before your mum', and H was like, 'wait, WHAT?' So instead of being married twice, we found out it had actually been 3 times for FIL.

[redheadbaker]

Oct 12, 2015 11:15:14 GMT -5 adlove said:

My husband didn't find out his dad was married once before his mom until he was in college. Such a strange secret to keep.

Why is it a strange secret to keep? Both FI and I were married to other people. We don't necessarily plan to tell DS (though we wouldn't lie if he found out).

[DarcyLongfellow]

Why are secret hidden marriages so common? My grandfather was married briefly (during WW2) before he married my grandmother. None of their four kids knew until they were adults. And the first wife had even lived with her in laws (my great grandparents) during the war!

[adlove]

Oct 12, 2015 11:27:58 GMT -5 redheadbaker said:

Oct 12, 2015 11:15:14 GMT -5 adlove said:

My husband didn't find out his dad was married once before his mom until he was in college. Such a strange secret to keep.

Why is it a strange secret to keep? Both FI and I were married to other people. We don't necessarily plan to tell DS (though we wouldn't lie if he found out).

Sorry I didn't mean to be insensitive. In FIL's case I think he was embarrassed about it, and I didn't think it was something that he should be ashamed of. Obviously, everyone has the right to decide whether or not they want to disclose something like that since it is very personal.

[lurknomore]

Oct 12, 2015 11:31:54 GMT -5 adlove said:

Oct 12, 2015 11:27:58 GMT -5 redheadbaker said:

Why is it a strange secret to keep? Both FI and I were married to other people. We don't necessarily plan to tell DS (though we wouldn't lie if he found out).

Sorry I didn't mean to be insensitive. In FIL's case I think he was embarrassed about it, and I didn't think it was something that he should be ashamed of. Obviously, everyone has the right to decide whether or not they want to disclose something like that since it is very personal.

I think it is very different when you are talking about keeping it from a young child as opposed to keeping it from a spouse of nearly 20 years.  Do you have a right to decide whether to disclose it to a spouse/future spouse?  I just feel like that is an integral part of you and shapes you.  How does one decide not to tell someone who they plan on marrying (seeing as how it is something I would want to know before getting married) that they have been married twice, not once. 

How would you feel (you as in everyone...not singling out any of the pp's) if you found out your DH had been, unbeknowst to you, married before 15 years into your relationship with him?  (And now I'm just curious...I'm still processing this, mostly as to how it will affect my mom who is already/still having a hard time with his death).

[hermione]

When my grandmother passed my mom found out my grandfather (her dad who has been dead since before I was born) had a previous wife. Now she wonders if she has half-siblings she doesn't know about.

[Deleted]

This happened to me too. My dad didn't tell me he was married and had other kids until I was 14 and it was more like, "Hey you have a brother and sister in another country and they are moving in." :-o

It was not a good experience. He didn't have any other secrets or anything and I guess he did it because divorce was really looked down upon in our culture at that time.

[tootsie]

We recently found out my FIL had married his first wife twice. It doesn't impact me at all, but it shook my SIL up a bit. I think it's a feeling that history has been rewritten, and it's weird to not have known the full story. I would feel very strange if I found out my parents had been previously married.

[Deleted]

Oct 12, 2015 11:27:58 GMT -5 redheadbaker said:

Oct 12, 2015 11:15:14 GMT -5 adlove said:

My husband didn't find out his dad was married once before his mom until he was in college. Such a strange secret to keep.

Why is it a strange secret to keep? Both FI and I were married to other people. We don't necessarily plan to tell DS (though we wouldn't lie if he found out).

Oh yeah that's interesting, I never even thought about my hypothetical future kids knowing about my first marriage. For people who didn't know me then I never bring it up. So I doubt it'd come up much with a kid either. But maybe when they're teenagers and giving out dating advice or something? I don't know.

[cilantro]

Oct 12, 2015 10:56:25 GMT -5 @kcpokergal said:

DH didn't find out his dad was married an extra time until DH was in his 30s. Both FIL's current wife and MIL knew though. Still weird. And funnier, wife #1 and #3 have the same first name.

This happened to me though I found out in my 20s. Right down to same names (and gd name is not common).

[madringal]

Wow, I am not sure how I would feel about that either. But my dad is his wife's 4th husband. Not sure finding out there was a #5 would be much of a shocker! But, does that mean that he left off a wife when they applied for a marriage license? Don't you have to disclose all previous marriages when you apply? That seems intentionally dishonest and a teeny bit suspicious.

[Deleted]

Oct 12, 2015 11:57:13 GMT -5 madringal said:

Wow, I am not sure how I would feel about that either. But my dad is his wife's 4th husband. Not sure finding out there was a #5 would be much of a shocker! But, does that mean that he left off a wife when they applied for a marriage license? Don't you have to disclose all previous marriages when you apply? That seems intentionally dishonest and a teeny bit suspicious.

I wondered that too. It might depend on the state. In MO I had to tell the clerk, with DH there, I had never been married.

[v]

I understand how you would be weirded out about this.

My mother found out that her mother had been married before only after my grandmother's death -- when googling family members' names, she found her mother's first wedding announcement. It really devastated her that her mother -- who she was very close to -- hid that from her for 50-something years. I think it was far more of a betrayal than it would be if my grandmother had at some point fessed up to the mistake she made when she was young. But in that generation, hiding unpleasant things was how you made them go away.

In the same Google investigation, she found out that her mother's father was MIA and never talked about because he spent many years in prison for embezzlement and then was never accepted back into the family. Another secret that devastated my mother, in part because she was never told the truth.

[niq]

I understand being weirded out. Was it a short first marriage with no children? Maybe that's why it never came up.

I would guess the chill would be coming from "so if he 'hid' this for all these years, what else was he hiding?"

[ringstrue]

I see hiding it from kids vs a potential spouse as different.

I also wonder how long the first marriage was. Any 2 people can get married for $50 and a short trip to the courthouse.

[biogirl21]

In 2008 MH found out he has a half sister from his dad that no one ever told him about. He was 22. His dad was never married to the mom. H's mom and grandparents both knew. I guess they never figured they'd meet, but that's the power of Facebook. Haha

[Deleted]

Im so fascinated by family secrets like these.

[lurknomore]

Oct 12, 2015 12:41:51 GMT -5 ringstrue said:

I see hiding it from kids vs a potential spouse as different.

I also wonder how long the first marriage was. Any 2 people can get married for $50 and a short trip to the courthouse.

IDK but this was a full blown wedding.  Google searching their names brings up the newspaper announcement, complete with picture, description of her dress, etc.  Among his things, my mom found love letters he kept (he wrote a lot of them to my mom over the years, so not a surprise they existed for this other woman), her blood test receipt and a wedding album full of pictures.  So freaking weird.

[babyrn]

Oct 12, 2015 11:27:58 GMT -5 redheadbaker said:

Oct 12, 2015 11:15:14 GMT -5 adlove said:

My husband didn't find out his dad was married once before his mom until he was in college. Such a strange secret to keep.

Why is it a strange secret to keep? Both FI and I were married to other people. We don't necessarily plan to tell DS (though we wouldn't lie if he found out).

Ditto. Same here with DH and I as well. I don't know if/when we will tell DD. Neither of us had kids in those previous relationships and have zero involvement with those people anymore. I don't see why she would need to know. We wouldn't lie about it if she asked.

[bowies]

My mom was married for a brief period of time after high school. I found out in middle school I think. I don't plan on telling DS about my previous marriage until he's around the same age.

My dad found a half brother a few years ago. His dad joined the Navy and abandoned his first wife and son, then changed his name. It's really sad. He wasn't a great dad to my dad either but there's a lot of bitterness there on the part of my dad's half-brother.

[auntie]

I can more easily understand the secrecy around divorce in the WWII era as it still carried considerable stigma. It was an era when pre-marital sex wasn't tolerated, so hastily performed marriages became a means to allow young men to head off to war without the risk of them "living a little" aka not dying virgins. In retrospect, many of these relationships were rather like the first guy you lived with right out of college who wasn't husband material.

Today, not so much. DH's dad was married prior to his marriage to DH's mom. They split, he played the clubs in Chicago for a few years before meeting my MIL. No one ever shared this information with DH until his grandmother was dying and told him; he was already out of grad school and struggling in his own first marriage and livid that his mom was denigrating her son's for the breakup of their own marriages.

I was married previously. No kids. I did share the story about being married before with DS when he was about 6 when he told me about the parents of a friend splitting up. I didn't want DS to find out from someone else (like my nieces, parents, etc) and I didn't want to let it go unsaid so long that it became a bigger deal than it actually is. But I had a hard time figuring out how to bring it up. IME, when you don't talk about something, it can assume bigger stature or shame that isn't appropriate to the situation.

[felicity]

I think it's interesting when this kind of thing is hidden or the person never mentions it.

One time DH mentioned he thinks his dad was married before his mom. I was like, how can you stand not knowing for sure!?! I don't think it's a secret, exactly, but his dad is just awkward about stuff and DH feels weird bringing it up. His dad is a lot older than his mom. DH is also uncertain about if his grandfather was his mother's biological father, also not a secret, just doesn't feel comfortable asking.