All of us, no matter how kind and open we are, keep secrets from even our nearest and dearest. These are things that we’d feel uncomfortable opening up about even to our closest family members and most trustworthy friends. However, anonymity can help. If you’re feeling guilty or ashamed of something you’ve done in your past, opening up to strangers can help free you of that burden. At least, in part.
That’s where the r/confession subreddit comes in. A massively popular online community with nearly 5.3 million members, it is a safe place for everyone to “admit your wrongdoings, acknowledge your guilt, and alleviate your conscience.” Here, everyone’s encouraged to be kind and courteous to one another. We’ve collected some of the darkest secrets from the sub and other similar communities around the net about the things that people deeply regret doing. You’ll find their stories as you scroll down.
We wanted to figure out why people feel better when they confess their secrets and wrongdoings, so we asked Andrea Bonior, Ph.D., to shed some light on this. Read on for Bored Panda's interview with Dr. Bonior, the host of the mental health advice podcast ‘Baggage Check’ and the bestselling author of ‘Detox Your Thoughts.’
#21 I Pavlov'd My Girlfriend
My ex used to use a specific shampoo and over time i noticed that every time i smell this shampoo on other people i automatically think of her and this got me planning..
For my current girlfriend, every time we got down to business i put on a cologne that i saved specifically for those times. No matter how spontaneous the action was, i found the time to put on a puff or two of this perfume secretly and then continue.
After weve been going on for couple months, i began to do tests - i put this perfume on when casually walking in the kitchen past her, and just sat down in the living room. Soon enough, after couple minutes she got here and initiated sexy times!
Now i use it ocassionally (im very careful not to overuse it so it doesnt spoil the effect) when i want to get hee going, and it works well enough :)
My favorite is putting it on before going out to a public place, and watching her get super worked up and unload at home
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96points
#22 My Boss Pissed Me Off So I'm Catfishing His Wife

My boss is generally a d*ck.
I noticed his wife (who also works at the company) came up as a recommended friend on Snapchat, I copied the user name and added her on my burner Snapchat.
After a few messages and a few fake selfies she has told me she is single and sent some damn good reveling pictures.
I feel a bit guilty now but damn she is hot.
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93points
#23 I Added Tabasco To Wendy’s Chili And Used It To Get Second Place In A Chili Cook Off

Title basically says it all. This wasn’t a professional organized competition. There was some bmx event with a couple hundred people and they always have a chili cook off. I’m not much for cooking so I thought it would be funny to throw a bunch of Wendy’s chili in a crock pot and see if anyone noticed - they didn’t.
I’ve been a vegetarian for roughly twelve years so this was a long time ago.
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93points
#24 I Stole A Pregnancy Test Bc I Couldn’t Afford One Today
Hi. I feel awful. Anyways long story short I only have $7.49 in my bank account I am a full time working student and test these days are 45.99!!!!!! And then cheapest one was 11.49. I just took one and I feel so bad I want to cry. But I really need to know- as I sit here on the toilet and type this waiting for the results.
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93points
#25 I Stole A Girls Ipod Touch And Then Sold It Back To Her A Month Later

It’s 2011, I’m in Year 7, it’s my first year in high school and I got sent somewhere where I literally only knew one person, and we never spoke.
A few months into the year and I’m sitting in Math class and this one girl who I just could not stand (and who also bullied me on and off) kept just interrupting for the stupidest of things, and just generally kept getting on my nerves the whole lesson.
Part way through the lesson the teacher tells us to leave our things in the classroom so we could go to the computer lab, and I was the last to leave the classroom. Note that most kids hid their iPods under their pencil cases during class so they could get away with using it, and I knew for a fact she’d left it there.
I don’t know what possessed me to steal her iPod, but I did. She never found out.
But now, I leave school, the iPod is still in my shorts pocket. Nobody knows what I’ve done. The girl thinks one of the guys was screwing with her and doesn’t suspect me at all.
Now the one defining feature of her iPod was that the back was completely covered in small circle stickers. Ones that had gotten so worn down they’d almost fused with the device. So I did what I could and I scrubbed those f*ckers off until it looked brand new.
I didn’t use it at all, in fear of my mum seeing it and screaming at me for being a thief. So it just sat in my room gathering dust, until about a month later I overhear her asking some people if they know anyone selling an iPod.
One week later and I’d made $150 by selling a girl her own iPod that’d just been factory reset and scrubbed down.
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86points
#26 I Messed Up My Local Eco System By Setting Hundreds Of Californian Ladybugs Free And Never Told Anyone Even After I Started Noticing The Changes
I just recently was reminded of this story by the man on TikTok who let millions of frogs go in his backyard. Someone in the comments mentioned the story of a man who let out ladybugs and a wave of regret hit me.
When I was about 13, my science teacher let us choose our own final projects. My friend and I wanted to do research on [m]etabolism, and after searching around the internet we discovered that ladybugs would be the best test subjects for our experiment. We somehow got approved by our school to order 100 ladybugs from California for the sake of science. However, when they finally arrived, it turned out that my teacher had ordered wrong and there were 500 lovely little creatures waiting for us in a box. We got a bigger container to hold them all and ran the experiment as planned. Spring break finally rolled around and my teacher assured us that he would take care of the ladybugs while we were gone.
However, when we returned, the box sat unmoved on the table. Our teacher had forgotten to feed them and they all lay on the bottom, dead from starvation. You would think that having done an experiment on the metabolism of these organisms that can withstand crazy temperatures and prolonged starvation we would have realized they could still be alive, but no. I cried and felt terrible for leaving all of them to die. My teacher reluctantly gave me permission to go "bury" them to respect their loss.
I opened the container and a swarm of ladybugs took flight, dissipating into the air. Some were actually dead, but the majority had left the container. My teacher watched this happen, and although a lot of the details are fuzzy, I'm 99% sure that my teacher told me to keep it quiet.
The next years to come came some of the worst ladybug-related disasters my small town had ever witnessed. They CRUSTED the windows of every home and ate foliage like crazy. People who were unfortunate enough to have poor insulation (including me) would find them in every nook and cranny in the house. In such a tightknit community full of farmers and gardeners, word spread fast. And I just watched it all happen, knowing full well who was responsible. Years went by until the population of ladybugs seemed to go back down, but they still run rampant. I'm not sure what help could have resulted from my confession, but it certainly would have cleared up what had happened for the dozens of townspeople who didn't understand why this was happening to them.
I feel absolutely terrible and wish I had confessed sooner. I know it seems like an unfortunate mistake, but in hindsight it was reckless and I should have told someone sooner. I have told a few friends since the story re-entered my mind, but I just thought I needed to apologize to the public.
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82points
#27 I Have Been Sleeping With Both Partners Of A Married Couple. Neither Of Them Are Aware The Other Is Cheating. The Wife Doesn't Know The Husband Likes Men

The wife came onto me first but I didn't sleep with her out of respect for her husband, til he messaged me on grindr and I realized they're as bad as each other and I may as well have some fun with it. I even popped the husband's bootyhole cherry. I might tell them one day but ehhh the sex is fun.
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67points
#28 I Overcharged Over 5,000 People

Back in high school I used to work the concession stand. In my school the booth was a little folding table where I would sell water, pop and chips.
To anyone that was a visiting team I would charge $.25-.50 more on the items they wanted to buy, and I would keep it.
I ended up making somewhere around $3,000 doing this for my high school career, and no one ever found out because I didn’t charge anyone from the home team the same amount.
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62points
#29 I Sh*t On My Neighbors Door Step

So back when I was ten my dad asked me if I wanted to make 20$. I accepted. The catch I had to sh*t on our neighbors door step. It was clear my dad had beef with this woman. She woke in the morning and tried to blame our Chihuahua. My dad yelled at her saying that the sh*t was bigger then our dog. Impossible. The point is I don’t feel bad. Forever daddy’s girl.
58points
#30 I Stole Money In Junior High School With A Fake Fundraiser

When I was in junior high and it was perfectly fine to go door to door and ask for donations for sporting events and stuff, my sister had a typewriter and I would make up a fake sign-up form and ask for donations to a team going somewhere with my school. Easily [made] [one] hundred bucks in one day. Never forgave myself lol
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46points


