I have a problem. My good friend (let’s call her Sarah) remembers things that she shouldn’t. She remembers things that happened to me before we met as if she was there. I try to tell her a story about something and she’ll butt in and say she was there. She remembers me buying my watch, but I bought my watch three years before I met her.
Our friend (we’ll call him Roger) has noticed the same thing about her. He, Sarah, a third friend and I were sitting around this weekend, and he started telling stories about “The Good Old Days”. She was laughing and reminising with him, and the third friend and I just laughed along, because all these stories pre-date us. So Roger starts telling this story about how one guy at their party got so drunk, and then disappeared for over an hour. No one knew where he was. Next thing the guy shows up, carrying a bottle of something. They asked him where he’d been, and the guy said he didn’t know. So they asked him where he got the drink, and the guy said he didn’t know. Sarah laughed, and said “I remember that! I don’t know what the drink was, or where he got it, but it sure tasted good!!”.
Roger told me this morning that he made it up. There had been a party, and there was a drunk guy who vanished for a while, but it turned out that he’d staggered off into another room and passed out on the couch (partly because he had sunstroke). There had never been an incident where a drunk guy showed up with a bottle of alcohol that he couldn’t remember getting. Sarah didn’t just play along like you would if you didn’t remember something but thought you should - she added bits to the story, and made the comment about how nice the drink was.
Does she really think she was there, or is she just putting it on for some reason? It’s embarrassing when she butts in to your story part way through to say “I was there” when you were just about to say “Sarah rang to say she coudn’t make it” because that’s happened to me before. Sometimes the very fact that she wasn’t there affected the outcome of a situation, and to have her interrupt your telling of the tale to remark she recalls you were wearing a shirt she liked is hard to deal with because you can’t tell the rest of the story without pointing out that she wasn’t there. I never know if I should argue and say she is wrong, or if I should just let her go.
This past week, we were talking over an event that happened three years ago. Sarah called to warn me that a mutual acquaintance was on her way up to see me, and thanks to her call I was able to hide before she arrived and pretend I wasn’t home (long story). Yet she says that she remembers the girl arriving at the house - she can’t remember that, she wasn’t there and if she had been there she couldn’t have called me to warn me the girl was coming. I told her so, and she argued that “clear as day” she remembered the other girl getting out of the car and coming to the door while I was hiding. She said it must have been later the same day when the girl came back, but the girl never came back. Sarah wasn’t there to see it, and I argued with her for a good 15 minutes about it (this is a long story, but basically I had to make a statement to the police about the girl that I didn’t answer the door to, and that’s why I’m so certain that Sarah wasn’t there, and that the girl never came back. Things like that tend to stand out in my mind).
The point is that I find this all very strange, and I hoped people could advise me as to why she does this.
Dude, she’s trouble. I don’t know jack about this girl, but if what you say is any indication, she’s got issues. I think she knows she’s bullshitting; I mean, how could someone not? Hopefully you’re not too involved with her.
I’d be curious to know how she scores on a suggestability test - she sounds like a stage hypnotist’s dream subject.
Actually, upon re-reading your post (welcome to the boards, btw! 
), my opinion is that she’s doing it because she’s got esteem issues, and she may have her own little fantasy life that she confuses with reality. People that do this are not OK. What makes her do this? It could be a million different things. With a lot of therapy, maybe she could figure it out.
Thanks Flyboy and Reprise.
I’ve wondered if perhaps she’s trying to show off to other people. Like on the weekend when “Roger” was telling his made-up story, he did so in front of someone who Sarah has known for a matter of months. I considered the possibility that she was trying to make the newcomer feel excluded while making out that the “Good Old Days” were so much more fun than now could ever be. But that doesn’t seem right because Sarah does this when she and I are alone together.
I chose the examples I did for a couple of reasons. One is a story she is familiar with. One was made-up on the spot, so she’d never heard it before. One really happened but was never discussed with her. I saw three possible interpretations of her actions, and that’s why I chose these stories.
In the first case, the story about the girl I hid from, she’s heard the story so many times that it is possible she’s confusing her memories of hearing about it with actually being there. I don’t see that as being impossible - a few years have passed since it happened, and she’s heard about the day and its outcome over and over.
In the second case, the made-up story about Roger’s friend showing up drunk, it’s possible that she was too embarrassed to admit she didn’t know what Roger was talking about and so she played along.
In the third instance, my brief mention in the first paragraph about my watch, we’re talking about an insignificant purchase that I made three years before I met her. This came up only because I finally had my watch repaired and I wore it for the first time in ages the day I saw her. I said “Look!” and she said “Oh my God! You finally fixed it! You’ve had that thing for years”. I said “Yup! Got it when I was 16.” She said “I remember that. You got it for your birthday.” I paused.
Point 1 - I didn’t know her then. She was 13, and lived in a different STATE when I was 16. Point 2 - She was wrong about how I got it. Point 3 - I don’t recall ever telling her about how, when or where I got my watch.
I told her that I bought it myself, and she quickly added that it was around the time of my birthday because she recalled me using my birthday money to get it. I tactfully said that it wasn’t, that I’d saved up for it and paid for it out of my earnings from my part time job. She said oh, and named the place I worked at when I was 16 and left it at that.
These are three different circumstances. In one, she remembers something she knew about, but didn’t attend. In another, she reminises about something that never happened. In the third, she recalls specific details that are wrong. If my guess is right, the three possibilities likely to be raised are that she is confusing what she remembers with what she’s heard - but in two of these stories, that doesn’t apply - or that she doesn’t like to admit that she can’t remember something we expect her to - again, this does apply to one story, but not to the others - or that she’s confusing the details with something else - but I don’t see how this can cover these particular stories.
I love her dearly. She’s a great friend - fun, crazy, loyal and supportive. I just don’t get why she sets herself up to look like a fool by butting in and claiming she took part in things that she didn’t. If she waited until the conclusion of our stories, she would have a better chance of working herself into them but because she doesn’t wait to hear the how’s and when’s, she tries to put herself in the whole wrong timeframe and locality and then its obvious to others that she’s making the whole thing up. This doesn’t earn her respect, and if its self esteem she’s trying to build - surely being shot down all the time makes that worse and would discourage her from doing it again?