Guy Accidentally Learns That His Wife’s Sister’s Husband Is Abusive, Creates Fake Reddit Account To Support Her

You think you know a person, especially the one you’re involved with. Recently, however, someone on reddit asked others to reveal the secrets they’re keeping from their significant others, and the number of responses is a perfect reminder that people tend to keep some things for themselves.

But one answer stood out from the rest. Amassing over 18,5K upvotes in just a few days, it tells a story about an anonymous act of kindness.

Image credits: istockphoto/visionchina (Not the actual photo)

“About eight years ago I discovered my wife’s sister’s reddit account accidentally. It was a variation of a username she’d used for AIM before, but with different numbers and no underscore (the numbers were a significant date to her though). There were too many coincidences in her posts for it not to be her.”

“She was posting on the relationship advice subreddit. Her (now ex-) husband was abusive. We’d known something was off about him, but couldn’t really put our finger on it. I created another account that I only accessed from incognito mode to send her encouragement to leave, and to ask her family or friends (but kinda steered her towards us) for help.”

“She didn’t want to impose or be a burden on any of them (we’d just had a kid, and I make a bunch of money but we live well within our means so you wouldn’t think this based on appearances, so it was an understandable concern). I slowly, over several weeks and several different posts she made, convinced her that it’s possible her family realizes something isn’t quite right and would not consider it a burden to help her out.”

“After their divorce, I deleted that account. Nobody will ever know that the random internet stranger who was weirdly persistent in encouraging my SIL to reach out to her family for help and leave her abusive marriage was actually me.”