“It’s made me realize that you don’t really know ANYONE.”

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"The box was full of court documents talking about an affair my mother had with a married colleague. She allegedly got so upset when he ended the affair that she started to stalk and harass him. He filed criminal charges against her and brought them to HR at her former job. The things he said my mother did in those documents, I can't imagine in a hundred years. Yet, I also couldn't imagine her having an affair with this guy at all. But in the paperwork, she has an admission-of-guilt statement. I found out that's why she left her state job, and we moved. Basically, there was some kind of deal made where if she left and moved away, they'd drop the charges. The criminal case was pretty much dropped with the expectation and deal that she would never contact him or bother him again. Like WTF? It's made me realize that you don't really know ANYONE."

"My mom and dad used to go to the bar together to pick up guys." 

"1. My dad actively took me to see his mistress (my now stepmom) while he was still with my mom. I was really young, but I remember being around her while my parents were still married. It didn’t click for me until I got older, and the rest of the family was really mad to find out when I told them. 

2. The thing I know that my dad and the rest of my family don’t know themselves is that my paternal grandpa continued to give my mom $1000/month on top of what my dad paid in child support because he was pissed at my dad for cheating. My mom actually told me a story about my dad trying to bail on a dinner where the divorce was going to be discussed, and my grandpa straight up said to him, 'You’re taking your f*cking b*tch ass to that dinner.' My dad started favouring the kids he had with my stepmom, and my grandpa wasn’t having it. Until the day he died, he would secretly give my brother and me extra money for Christmas and birthdays. My mom told me many times that my grandpa was the only member of my dad’s side she truly still loved after the divorce because of everything he did for us.

3. My grandparents paid for the house my dad and mom lived in, but my dad wanted to leave it when he got remarried. He didn’t want the memories from it. Note that this house was three years old and really expensive. My dad threw a fit because he wanted to build a new house on family farmland. This pissed the rest of my family off because it was active farmland. This fit split the family in half, and it’s still not fixed. My aunts and uncles still don’t like my stepmom because of her role in it.

4. When my grandpa died, all the kids wrote and sealed letters to be buried with him. The gist of mine was thanking him for being the father figure my dad wasn’t." 

Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.