'Take It to the Grave': Man Urged to Keep Late Father-in-Law's Dark Secret

A man is being sworn to secrecy after discovering a potentially devastating secret about his late father-in-law.

Reddit user u/SearchHistorian27 said in a post on the site's channel for the Two Hot Takes podcast that his wife's dad recently died following a long battle with cancer. He had been asked to look through his computer for any pictures or notes that could be included in the funeral.

In the process of doing so, he discovered that the much-loved father of four was harboring a dark secret—one that would shatter his wife's perception of him as the person she "trusted most in the world."

When it comes to dishonesty, the painful truth is that men lie more than women. In a 2023 study published in the journal Judgement and Decision Making, researchers conducted a meta-analysis on the gender differences when it comes to lying.

As part of the research, they identified that lies can often fall into one of two categories: black lies, which benefit the liar at a cost for another person and altruistic white lies, which benefit another person at a cost for the liar.

In both cases, men were shown to be significantly more likely than women to not only tell white lies but also black ones as well. Just how black those lies can be was demonstrated in the Reddit post shared by u/SearchHistorian27.

While searching through his late father-in-law's computer for "sentimental" images of him with his family, he came across something that left him in shock.

"First I found a photo of him kissing a woman," the Redditor wrote. "I thought it was my mother-in-law, but upon close inspection it was not. The file was also uploaded within the last year. The next thing I found was an open messaging forum where he had been messaging the woman."

He quickly discovered that his father-in-law and this mystery woman had been seeing each other for over a year.

"The messages also made it clear that his wife and daughters were not aware and he planned on taking this to his grave," the shocked son-in-law wrote. He noted that his wife has always been a "daddy's girl" and would be crushed if she learned the truth.

"If I told the family it would forever change their memory of him," he said. "I've been considering erasing it myself and just never addressing it but I don't know the correct answer here."

Commenting on the dilemma, Nakeisha McGee, a Licensed Professional Counselor with Thriveworks, a nationwide provider of online and in-person therapy services, told Newsweek: "Death in one's family of origin is so hard and can prove most catastrophic and have a significant impact."

"Let's say that my goal as a spouse is to provide emotional safety for my spouse. With that as my guidepost, when I encounter situations that affect the emotional disposition of my partner, I apply a bit more care and detail to those decisions," she said.

"The loss of a well-respected and loved parent is difficult, to say the least. One might conclude that stacking potential betrayal on top of very recent and significantly impactful grief may be a heavy emotional load. In my experience, if a partner can align action with intention, then the decisions you make are less likely to create further distress in the relationship. The couple now has a system they can customize specifically to their relationship."

While McGee felt there were circumstances in which the man could potentially tell his partner what her dad had been doing, many shared in the comments on the Reddit post, which currently has over 8,000 upvotes and 3,000 responses, that it was better to keep it a secret.

"I would personally take it to the grave," one Redditor wrote.

"At this point. Nothing good comes of sharing it," another person commented, with a third writing: "Just let it be, and don't let it be a burden to you."

"You go to your death bed with that info. They will not be better off knowing it," a commenter urged.

Responding to the comments, the man said: "So I'm not gonna tell my wife, her sisters, or the mom. I'm going to save some of the conversations with the woman he was cheating with on a flash drive and delete the rest. I'll keep it secret until it becomes bad for their family to not have this information."

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