'My family are furious that I kept my successful romance books a secret from them'

A 27-year-old woman was praised for her writing talents from an early age, but her parents always dissuaded her from pursuing this as a career path.

She claims her family even went as far as to pull her from writer's workshops and creative writing clubs during her school days, warning her that she'd end up "destitute" and "living on the streets" if she was to follow her dreams of becoming a writer.

In accordance with their wishes, the budding wordsmith ended up graduating from university with the sort of STEM degree they wanted her to get and landed herself a good job.

However, for the last five and a half years, she's also been making a bit of a name for herself as a romance novelist on the side, keeping her passion for writing alive in spite of her family's longstanding discouragement.

Although she hasn't become rich through her work, she has won herself a couple of awards and enjoys what she describes as "some small success" in her field.

She has been writing for over five years now, with some success (Stock Photo) (Getty Images/EyeEm)

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Understandably, she decided to keep her creative side career from her family, confiding only in her current partner of three years, Jack.

Given that they'd been decidedly less than supportive of her literary ambitions in the past, she wasn't all too keen on opening up about this side of her life with her family. Also, she felt a tad awkward given the saucy contents of some of her books.

Taking to Reddit, the secretive author explained: "I write in the romance category and there's some sexual smut in my books. I guess I feel weird and uncomfortable about sharing that with them too.

"Anyways, my partner, Jack, told them about it when we visited my mum and my aunt last month. And now, they have been sending me all kinds of messages about how I'm a bad daughter and that I should have told them and shared my success.

"They basically complained that I robbed them of the opportunity to share info with family and friends about my 'success'".

After this altercation, the frustrated writer told Jack that they needed to spend some time apart, feeling as though he had "violated" her boundaries by revealing her long-held secret against her wishes.

The poster - who goes by the username u/Delicious-Swimmer-62 - continued: "[Jack] got upset, but he's staying in a hotel at the moment. I'm thinking about breaking up with him, which I've been told by my mum sounds crazy?

"My mum also didn't call me on my birthday this year (it was a few days ago) and instead sent me a text that said, "if you don't want to talk with us that's fine, this is what that'd be like'".

Although she admits keeping her writing under wraps was "a pretty big thing to hide for more than half a decade", she's torn on the situation, and also wonders whether or not she reacted too harshly to Jack exposing her in this way.

One fellow Reddit user advised: "You are an adult who is under no obligation to share information with anyone when it does not involve them. Especially those who have discouraged you in that exact area of practice.

"As for the situation with your boyfriend, assuming he knew you did not want to share this information with them and that this wasn't a mistake of him thinking they already knew, that is absolutely a violation of trust and completely unacceptable, regardless of if you break up or not, you need to have a conversation about that".

Another wrote: "Had my kids ever shown an interest in writing, I would have encouraged it while also pushing them to build a backup career, which sounds like what you ended up doing.

"Sounds like you are an all-around intelligent and creative person. The only flaw seems to be that you suck at picking boyfriends".

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