“Love And Betrayal Can Coexist”: Grappling With The Second Family My Father Hid From Me

When my father revealed he had a rare form of terminal cancer with about 18 months to live, I thought this would be the most world-shattering news I’d receive this year. Fast-forward two weeks, and he dropped an even bigger bombshell: for over 20 years, he’s lived a double life. While juggling his marriage to my mother, running a business, and parenting myself and my two siblings, he also had time to hide a secret family. Suddenly, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact I have a 12-year-old half-sister, a 27-year-old step-brother, and I guess, a pseudo step-mother? 

To be honest, the signs have always been there. My parents had a rocky marriage filled with door-slamming and fierce arguments, and my father was unfaithful. They never quite repaired their relationship, but it appeared to be on-again-off-again for decades, with my father moving out when I was 12 and only living at the family house for about half the week. He essentially carried on his affair with the other woman for decades while still being legally married to my mother, eventually fathering a daughter with his affair partner. I grew up believing my parents were approaching their relationship in a way that worked for them, and for me, it became kind of a new normal to only have a part-time father. Still, nothing can truly prepare you for uncovering years of secrets and an entire new family.

My half-sister and stepbrother seem pleasant, and they are interested in forging a relationship with me and my siblings. My half-sister is the apple of my father’s eye, and I haven’t stopped hearing about her achievements. She’s smarter than I was as a kid, more talented when it comes to extra-curricular activities, and while I didn’t follow a prestigious career path into medicine or law, she’s poised to go down that route. Naturally, there are so many questions running through my mind. Was he with his second family for the other half of the week? When he came on a family holiday with us to America for Christmas, how did he explain his absence to his five-year-old daughter? And the biggest one of all: why has this made me feel second best?

After talking to my therapist about feeling like I was a “disappointment”, and that my father had to look elsewhere to create his perfect family, she helped me to view it in a different light. “Rather than framing it about you being a disappointment, you should think about how he disappointed you as well,” she told me. It’s a hard concept to grasp, given my tendency to overthink and catastrophise — but the truth is, I’m not the first person to deal with this situation, and I won’t be the last. Clinical and Counselling Psychologist and Psychwest owner Kerstin Anderson-Ridge has had over 20 years of experience working with clients facing complex relationship dynamics, including the emotional fallout of discovering hidden second families. “It can trigger profound feelings of betrayal, confusion, and rejection. Many grapple with questioning their parent’s love and the authenticity of past relationships. It may also reopen unresolved childhood wounds and disrupt a previously stable sense of identity,” she tells Refinery29 Australia. “It can feel like a deep personal rejection, especially if the new family appears to embody the qualities the parent seemed to prefer. The message — even if unspoken — becomes ‘I wasn’t enough’, which cuts right to the core of self-worth.”

Anderson-Ridge also explains that my initial instinct to compare myself to my half-sibling is natural, and stems from my need to figure out why I was treated differently. “Often it stems from a desire to understand what was missing or ‘wrong’ in you, when the issue lies with the parent, not the child. Recognising this can help with comparison,” she says. “It can feel like a piece of your life story has been rewritten without your consent. The foundation of ‘who I am in my family’ is shaken, and people often question whether memories were real or meaningful. This loss of narrative is profoundly destabilising.” With her vast experience of dealing with this particular issue, she notices similar themes come through. “Secrecy, shattered loyalty, and grief are common. Many clients express guilt for being angry, especially if the parent is unwell, while also feeling deep sadness about the relationship they thought they had,” she says. “There’s often a long journey toward accepting two truths: love and betrayal can coexist.”

Carly Dober, principal psychologist at Enriching Lives Psychology, also notes that a betrayal from a parental figure can hit harder than a betrayal from another person in your life. “Our parents are ideally the ones who are wiser, stronger and calmer than us. We expect them to tell us the truth, to model behaviour they expect from us, to be there for us no matter what, and to be dependable. The pain of family betrayal often feels personal and devastating due to the behaviour violating these assumptions,” Dober tells R29. “Our familial ties and identity are central to our well-being, and our relationship with our parents is a foundational one. The discovery of a secret second family will rock the foundations of all we knew about these assumed truths, and people will find themselves poring over their shared histories, wondering if it was all a lie, if the love was there, and wondering how their parent could keep this from them.”

While I found myself bursting into tears sporadically after finding out my father’s health diagnosis, since I heard about the second family, I’ve become numb and haven’t shed a tear. According to Anderson-Ridge, this is a common trauma response. “Emotional numbing, intrusive thoughts, anger outbursts, people-pleasing, or even dissociation [are common]. Many find themselves reliving past wounds or reacting disproportionately to unrelated stress. It’s the body’s way of saying, ‘this feels like something I’ve been through before and last time, it wasn’t safe’.”

Although my father’s secret has kept him feeling safe for the past two decades, it’s left a path of destruction in its wake. I’m lucky to have my regular therapist walk me through this unexpected situation, but I can’t help but grieve for all the years of secrets that didn’t need to exist. I’ve lost 12 years of time with my half-sister, who is now, essentially, a stranger. I could have built memories with my step-sibling and spent time in a blended family, with more stability and less shame. “Secrets may protect the person who keeps them, but they leave the others to carry the emotional fallout. Healing starts validating the full range of feelings, even the ones that feel ‘selfish’ or ‘petty’,” Anderson-Ridge adds. “There’s no correct way to feel when trust is broken.”

For now, I’ll paste a smile on my face and continue forward while I support my father through treatment and try to forge relationships with my new siblings. But for years after his death, his legacy of hurt will be the one thing that lives on.