With one acquaintance every conversation turns into a lecture from him about how smart he is and how stupid everyone else is.
He was in the armed forces which led him to go to other countries. That’s the only traveling he’s done but he acts like he is so special because he’s traveled. I called him on it once and said that he can’t take credit for the travel because it was work related. He’s not just saying he’s had more experiences he’s saying he’s actually superior to other people because of it. Superior in every way as a basic part of his being.
He has complete disdain for just about everyone else. I can’t even describe how ridiculous some of these conversations are or how he can twist anything into a rant about his superiority. I start a conversation about someone I knew in college and he turns the conversation into a monologue about how he is the 6th most successful person in his HS class. Really he’s just a regular person with a job like everyone else. I start a conversation about how there are things I’ve always wanted to do and haven’t; he turned it into a speech about how he always does everything he wants to do and that makes him so much better than everyone else and he has this special vision of who he wants to be and blahblahblah.
He thinks he’s this great writer and is writing a book but he sucks as a writer. He’s got some good ideas but he doesn’t know how to write without sounding like a pretentious windbag. It’s not even good pretentious windbag writing because he doesn’t know how to convey meaning or facts in a written form so that people will know what he’s talking about. The only parts understandable are the ones about his special interpretation of something that we readers are all too stupid to understand without his pedantic, repetitive explanation.
He just thinks he’s so smart and I have no indication that he is. It’s fine if he thinks he’s smart but why is that all he talks about. He tries so hard to be special and he’s not. I don’t see how his wife can put up with it. In someone else I would think it’s insecurity but I really think he thinks he’s as smart as he thins he is.
That’s a generous view you have. I can’t speak for others, but the people I’m thinking about weren’t not the type who have one lapse of honesty (“There really WAS a kid named Lemonjello in my high school class!!”).
The first person I referenced definitely fits what you thought the OP was about. This woman was caught cheating on her girlfriend and, within a few weeks, had a diagnosis of breast and lung cancer from her doctor (so that the girlfriend wouldn’t leave her). She refused surgery and chemo, though, and instead went to see some alternative medicine practitioners. Miraculously, they cured her!
Another time, she was in some financial trouble, but she really didn’t want to curb her compulsive spending. She was in therapy and there was some aspect to it about how her therapist was seeing her on a sliding scale because of these financial issues. Anyhow, she decided that she had to have a new car. An SUV in fact. But she knew the therapist would see the new car, so she made up this story about how the engine of her old car had caught on fire and it was completely beyond repair, so she had to get a new car. And then her uncle generously gave her the money for a down payment on an SUV, so she really was only on the hook for the monthly payments…
It was sad, really. But also infuriating. Who makes up a cancer diagnosis and plays it out for months and months? A compulsive liar, that’s who.
I worked with a woman who was a compulsive liar - about everything. Let’s call her Anne. It seemed she just couldn’t help herself. One day we were going out to the pub after work and right before we left she called her baby sitter and said she was on her way straight home. We were at the pub for a good two hours. I would have been livid if I were the baby sitter.
Anne was unmarried and had a young daughter. She told everyone the father was killed during an oil rig explosion when, in fact, he was alive and well. When she got married, she told everyone that her father had made her dress. When I commented to the Maid of Honor that Anne’s father did a great job on the dress, she looked at me oddly and said the dress was purchased for Anne’s first wedding but the guy dumped her before the wedding. Yep, the guy who was supposedly killed on the oil rig. The woman was a complete loon.
No offense to anyone, but I know a lot of immigrants (from all over the world). They all sound like that to me. “In MY country it’s so great.” Then, depending on what country they’re from, they tell something about life there. It was all that great, you probably would have stayed. :rolleyes:
I’ve also known a lot of immigrants, from my former job, who demanded pay rise because they have higher education in their country but when pushed they can’t get the records. :dubious:
I had a patient once whose father was ranting about the fact that the Consultant wasn’t available to speak to him at any time of the day or night. Sorry Mr Patient’s Parent but you’ll have to speak to the Registrar or Fellow. He claimed that healthcare was far superior in his country. He came from Bangladesh. I wasn’t convinced.
I had a relative who, while recovering from a fairly serious head injury, was prone to confabulation. (This problem went away within a week or so.) She wasn’t deliberately lying, but she was also suffering from amnesia and when asked about something she couldn’t remember or didn’t know the answer to she’d give an answer that sounded somewhat plausible and that she seemed to genuinely believe.
For instance, I asked her who had sent the flower arrangement in her hospital room and she said it was from “Aunt May”. I pointed out that she didn’t have an Aunt May. AFAIK she didn’t even know anyone named May. She said “Yes, it’s from Aunt May who’s from Egypt.” No one in our family is from Egypt, and I’m not sure this relative had ever even met anyone from Egypt. The flowers were actually from her godmother. It’s my (limited) understanding that this sort of thing happens because an injury to the brain has interfered with the person’s ability to correctly access relevant memories. Some other thought (in this case possibly a memory of the Spider-Man movies) gets called up instead, and the person can’t tell the difference.
Anyway, I wonder if there are some people who are just born with a minor neurological problem that makes them do the same sort of thing. There are probably also people who’ve suffered head injuries and never fully recovered. This might explain the people who lie about mundane things that wouldn’t impress or even interest anyone else, like what they had for lunch.
A former brother in law of mine was able to lie about everything. His father maintained he lied just to keep in practice. And the lies were so easily demonstratably false. He was also perpetually broke and inventing stories so people would lend/ give him money.
What galls me is that his mother bought all this virtually right up to the day she passed away- what a nice person he was and how the world was not fair. It all caught up with him last year and he committed suicide.
I briefly dated a woman back in college who had different accents depending on who she was talking to. Either she was a princess from Sweden, or the UK or France or where ever. Although I wouldn’t find out about those later.
And she would tell the horrible stories about how her father had molested her, and her sister had shot him to save her.
About date No. 2, I had picked her up at her house and a middle age man was coming up the driveway as we were leaving. “See you, hon” Later, Daddy" Me: “Daddy” Her: “Ya, great guy.”
Obviously didn’t last long. I later asked some of out mutual friends and found out what the deal was.
Oh! That reminded me of something from high school–I’d forgotten. There was this girl (M) that I hung out with briefly, along with my best friend J and a guy friend of ours, A. M had a huge crush on A and I think she was trying to get his attention, but it was the strangest way to go about getting a boy’s attention that I’ve ever seen. Also, A was gay, but I don’t think she knew that.
We were out at a restaurant when M started telling us about how she’d been finding blood in her poo (OK, she said feces) and was worried about colon cancer or something. Then she launched straight into the tale of how her grandfather had been molesting her her whole life and she was scared to go home because he was staying with her family, but she had to. We believed all of this and offered to take her home, keep her, call the police, whatever.
It was only later that we found out from her sister that it was all lies. I have to say, claiming blood in your poo and that you’re a victim of sexual abuse is a different way to attract a boy than I have ever thought of.
I used to work with someone who was a pathological liar.
She was so good at it at first that she had everyone believing her. You’d say something about the time you went to a place in Puerto Rico, and she’d interrupt and say she’d not only been to that exact place, but that she’d shacked up with a local guy there for a whole year and lived out on the beach before deciding to go back to the States. You’d tell her that you know how to play a certain musical instrument, and she’d burst in to say she’d taught herself how to play that instrument, the piano, the saxophone, and had played in the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra before moving down to Florida.
She’d ask what your plans were for the weekend (hate those types of inquiries), and you’d say, “Eh, just hanging out, catching up on sleep, whatever.” And she’d say she was going scuba-diving in the Florida Bay and then go kayaking all the way up to the Ten Thousand Miles and then go camping with some naturalist guy who’s name just happened to be in that day’s newspaper. Wanna come with?
(Yes, I’m exaggerating. Fits nicely in with this thread, don’t it?)
Anyway, we all soon figured out she was a bag of shit. We started calling her “Moongirl” because everything you said ever you’d done, she’d done better and on the Moon, to boot! She’d lie about work stuff too…lied that her knee injury was work-related and tried to get workman’s comp, but then let it slip (perhaps it was another lie?) that she’d just completed a 100-mile bike ride over the weekend. Her ass was fired when she got caught lying to the boss about the reason why a bunch of samples got damaged. Everyone was glad. But she easily got hired again despite her jumpy resume, because she’s a very convincing liar when you first meet her.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a story about something South Florida related on NPR. Imagine my horror when they interviewed Moongirl. I wanted to throw the radio across the room as soon as I heard her lying voice.
Back in the mid 80’s I knew a guy who told some strange stories, one being that he’d been at a party and met a homosexual who wanted to sleep with him. He claimed he told the homosexual man "Cut off your (male organ) and I’ll @#& you in the @# and pretend you’re a woman,’ and that the gay man actually took him up on it. I’d discussed this with another friend and we agreed this guy, who appeared brain damaged, probably wasn’t outright lying but was unable to tell the difference between the truth and the fantasies resulting from his random neural firings.