You are truly the model of restraint and modesty. I applaud you.
I have two. One was an ex-girlfriend who lied about anything and everything. Most of which I found out after the fact, like proposing to her with a 2ct. diamond ring, news to me (appearently she said ‘no’) and sleeping with anything that moved. After the breakup I woud lsit around with our mutual friends and swap different versions of stories that she had told each of us.
The other was aguy in my theater department in college. He was the type of person who was trying to reinvent himself for a new group of people, I guess. The shit he made up was so outrageous and impossible that he quickly became a joke and the butt of much abuse. It was kind of sad really, because when he would drop the BS, he was actually a pretty good guy to hang with.
Remember the TV show “Mad About You” with Helen Hunt as Jamie? I always thought it was amazing how easily her character would just slip in to a lie and keep going with it and never really seem nonplussed by it.
I have one friend that will do that. She and I used to be really close because she always seemed so much braver and more confident than me. And she would just convince you she was right. Then over time I realized that she would do that thing some others have already mentioned - where she keeps changing the story just a little bit then just a little bit more and she’s managed to draw you in to the charade and you just end up agreeing with her until one day you realize that it’s not at all the way she says was and by that time you just try to get out of the conversation as quickly as you can.
The sad thing is I realize she’s told these fictional versions so much and so passionately, she really, truly believes that’s how it happened.
I love telling stories and this realization used to scare me to death and worry that I was doing the same thing. Now I tend to either err on the side of self-deprecation or comedic effect, or overly cautious in my attempt to stay honest.
Yeah, same thing. Sometimes people believe something totally incredible, and obviously not true, instead of understanding that is for entertainment purposes only. I use to worry about that, but then I realized they are idiots. If someone asks me ‘is that true’ when I’m telling a story, I’ll say ‘no’ if it’s not. Sometimes I’ll say ‘no’ if it is true, and I was bragging.
I see where you’re coming from. I tend not to deal with people like this. I have coworkers who are liars. They always say “Why does everyone call me a liar?” Um, because you are!
It seems every time I go somewhere were there’s a lot of women there’s always one woman who lies about every thing in her life. The last time I got a manicure, this woman was swearing to me she used to be a VS angel. She looked like a shaved monkey. I just yeahed her to death, but I guess because I wasn’t impressed her lies became grander and grander.
In middle school, despite it being a k-8 school, I knew a girl who I think was mildly insane. She would make up stories about celebrities being her friends or flying off to exotic locations. It was hilarious because she’d bring things she clearly wrote in her own hand writing. I’ll never forgot the letter she brought in from “NSYNC” that said “If you be nice to Mary, we’ll play a concert at your school”. Looking back, I feel bad for her. Also, despite being caught many times, she never stopped. Not to long after the boyband letter, she told everyone her boots were 500 dollars (This was well before UGGS and when 500 dollar boots meant moolah). Her mom told everyone she got them from Payless.
There was this guy I used to hang out when I was a teenager. He made up the most ridiculous stories about his life. I mean, something so stupid as seeing a pizza magically fly through his window and land on his plate. That stupid.
I barely put up with him and regularly mocked him but he stuck around anyway.
Also, me. This has nothing to do with THIS board, but I created an entire online persona and carried on the story for almost seven years. A few years ago I came out and told everyone and oddly, most everyone forgave me and I still talk to them. They’re actually interested in ME, not the persona. That still blows my mind.
I don’t really lie in my real life, offline. The way I live my life kind of makes it unnecessary.
I’ve known two pathological liars. One was my brother, and the other a guy in the military.
My brother would lie about anything. He never held a long term job and had drug and alcohol problems. He spent long times homeless. But, he would always tell bizarre tales of having cars and such. He’s never owned a car in his life. He wouldn’t just lie about having a normal car, it would always be something stupidly unique. Like lime green paint with purple interior or something. They were always in the “shop” or at a friend’s house or something. The granddaddy of all his lies happened in the 80s. He got married and seemed to be starting a normal life. His wife was from Canada and they had a young child (my mother’s first grandchild). I think they were married like 2 years and the baby was about a year old and they were living about 50 miles from my mom and I. They were living in a pretty crappy little apartment, but seemed to be ok and just getting started in life. All of a sudden his wife up and left him and moved back to Canada. My mom got a letter a short time later from the lady and apparently my brother had convinced her that he was a doctor that had his medical license revoked because he saved the life of some foreign secret agent or something stupid. He convinced her that he would get his medical license re-instated soon and would be able to provide for her. He kept this lie up for two years. He never graduated HS but convinced her that he was a surgeon.
This other guy in the military used to tell lies constantly. If you casually mentioned that you had a 1975 Camaro, then he had one as well. Plus a 1974, 1973, 1971, 1979, basically every year between 1969 and 1978. He seriously told me this once. He claimed he was a Texas millionaire and was only in the service for the adventure. He claimed to have multiple cars, airplanes, boats, etc. One time our ship was headed for a port in Alaska and he was all excited because his wife was coming to visit. She was flying his Lear Jet. He was going to take a few of us for a ride. We kept ribbing him about when she was getting there and when we would see the jet. He kept up the story for over a week, always delaying her arrival. Finally, he said she wasn’t able to land because she forgot her pilots license and they made her go back to Texas. He was pissed at the airport for treating her so rudely. He would waffle between being married and not being married depending on how a story was going.
I alternate days. One day I tell nothing but the truth, the next I tell nothing but lies. I take no pleasure from the lying, I just need to keep people off balance.
I’ve known three pathalogical liars, one might be described as borderline. One was a girl in high school. One was a man who finagled his way into being the head of an IT dept. It didn’t take long for me to get wise to him. It took management a bit longer and he was canned.
The borderline one is highly intelligent academically but totally clueless about the real world and doesn’t “read” people well. He lies to get himself out of trouble even though it would be easier to just face the trouble. His son is going to be very disappointed when he realizes the truth of his dad. Right now, his wife is trying to extract herself from the marriage.
If I ask you tomorrow whether I should walk through the door on the left, what will your answer be?
I knew one guy like this when I was in my late teens. He was a genial enough sort, a pudgy gamer who held down some low-paying job. But that was just his day job. He was also an international mercenary who got packages delivered to him in the dead of night telling him where to go on his next mission. He was also the youngest airforce pilot ever, having flown a plane when he was just 14 (or maybe it was 12, I forget). It drove me crazy.
My mother-in-law is a compulsive liar. Some of the things she lies about are just to make herself sound more interesting or ‘better’, eg she was a teacher’s aide but told everyone she was an English/History teacher. She lied about her age, which isn’t all that uncommon (or it wasn’t, in women of her generation) but she used to say she was four years older than she really was. Given that her second husband was 20 years younger than she was, I could never figure this out. I finally decided that it was so people would exclaim, “But T*****, you don’t look anywhere near that old!!”
She also lied about stuff in her past to make herself sound more interesting and exotic (a gypsy grandparent for instance). I’ve seen her marriage certificate, so I know she was married in a particular church in Bedfordshire but she tells everyone who’ll listen and many who won’t, that she was married in (?sp) Petititfa in Palestine. Oh and she claims to be Jewish, which doesn’t really gel with the Palestine thing. Besides, if you want to be Jewish, surely it’s not impossible to study under a Rabbi and convert?
I could go on and on (I’ve known her for over 30 years and wouldn’t believe her if she said it was raining) but what has always amazed me that no one has ever called her out on her lies. She spouts the most ridiculous BS and everyone just sits there quietly nodding, hoping to be able change the subject pretty quickly but no one ever pulls her up.
In 9th grade I had a crush on a guy who I eventually realized lied about everything for no discernible reason.
The story that convinced me was when he told me he had something like 10 pairs of prescription eyeglass, all a different prescription, because he had this weird eye problem where he always needed corrective lenses, but the exact prescription could change from day to day, so he had to have all these different pairs of glasses available in order to choose the ones that would allow him to see properly at that particular moment.
That has to be the worst lie of all time. It’s completely unbelievable and completely pointless. It did serve one good purpose, however, which was to make me realize he was an irredeemable pathological liar and my adolescent-hormone-fueled lust would be better directed elsewhere.
I’ve known people like this, and invariably they’re the people with the lowest self-esteem and confidence in the group of people.
I have a friend who’s a legal secretary (in-house counsel), and she was saying she made 70k per year… as a 28 year old… about 5 years ago. Right. I suppose it’s possible, but only a few of the architects or IT guys in our group of friends made that much, and some of the lawyers didn’t make much more than that.
A guy I knew in college got more and more out there with his stories–saying things like he’d rescued a girl from gang rape and gotten stabbed and had to crawl 4 miles to the hospital, that sort of thing, as well as more everyday things like “of course I took the trash out.” But it was becoming clear that he really believed the stuff he said–it was really scary and none of us knew what to do (being 19yo and clueless). Now it seems obvious to me that he was developing schizophrenia or something.
Oh yeah, my FIL. He doesn’t exactly mean to lie, I don’t think, but he likes to embroider. And he’s got some brain damage. He’ll do anything to save face–claim he understands whatever highly technical thing someone is doing, say he really meant to do something, whatever. He’s not a bad guy, but you shouldn’t listen to about 90% of anything he says and you’ll be a lot happier.
My brother lies to pretend everything is fine when really he has serious problems. He will sometimes tell me about them way after the fact when it’s too late to do anything helpful, like post bail. It’s annoying and causes me a lot of worry.
There’s the ex-friend who lied *and *exaggerated. To this day, I’ll remember something she told me that I believed at the time and I’ll realize that, too, was a lie. :smack:
Then there’s someone I knew who lied about mundane things. If you asked her what she’d had for lunch, she’d tell you chicken even if she had a burger. It was perplexing.
I think the second person did become more honest as she matured and got her life together. As far as I know, the first person did not, although I haven’t spoken to her in about 5 years.
It’s interesting that almost everyone has met someone like this, yet no one seems to be a former compulsive liar. Is there some sort of psychological explanation for compulsive lying? Or is it simply a feature of other pathologies, like schizophrenia and sociopathy?
