I’m 38 years old and we pretend, she and I, that I have no sex-life. She is interested in my dating schedule but doesn’t want me “getting serious” about any man because I “don’t have time for all that”. (Mom, I’ll MAKE time because I LIKE all that!) She asks me what I’ve been doing all weekend (my boyfriend, I was doing my boyfriend) and I say “oh, this and that”. I wish it was don’t-ask-don’t-tell, but she will ask. She didn’t speak to me for months the one time she asked me if my then-fiance had spent the night and I said yes. My sister called up to call me an idiot–why hadn’t I lied!?
Do you lie to your mom? What about?
For a long time, I would lie to my mom every time she asked me if my apartment was neat. I live several states away, so it’s not like she’s going to be visiting terribly often to check.
We’ve kind of reached an unspoken truce. She doesn’t ask, because these days I’m inclined to tell her that it’s a complete mess and she should mind her own business.
I have sorta the opposite thing going on. I’m 20, and my mom and I pretend, she and I, that I have a sex life. 
Seriously. I’ll be heading out to a friend’s house, and she’ll ask where I’m going. I’ll say “Out”. And she’ll say, with a smile, “With who?”. I’ll say, “Nobody important.”
She takes this as meaning, “With a hot young number I picked up yesterday.”
Then she’ll say, “Well, remember, use protection.”
I let her believe this, because perhaps some day I’ll be able to believe it too.
OK, so it’s not a direct lie, but I know she’s assuming something that’s not true and I don’t correct her so it’s sorta like lying.
Whenever my sister, sister-in-law and I talk and we have someting that we don’t want mom to know about, we say, “Don’t tell mom.”
Mom asks, we don’t tell.
I had a small party in March and the next morning, mom said that she really like my friend’s husband, that he was a nice guy. I asked when she met him. Last night, she says. I said, that wasn’t her husband, it was an old friend of hers.
My sister-in-law groaned and after mom left asked why I didn’t lie to her. It avoids all those pesky questions afterwards.
Mostly we lie to her about how much we spent on stuff. It’s not really that she judges but she asks the goofiest questions and really, we just don’t want to go down that road with her.
Therapy over, I’m goin’ home.
I have to admit, I lie to both my parents, althought it’s not about anything major.
I’m not sure if it’s just my parents, but they seem to have very little grasp on what things really cost out there. So things I buy have a habit of being in half price sales, or actually costing a lot less than I paid for them
And of course everything is fine at work, I’m really happy all the time, and my bills are always incredibly low …
I think my mother realises sometimes that I’ve fibbed a bit, but there’s really no harm done.
It’s not so much lying to them, as reassuring them.
I suspect this will be common. I’m in my early twenties, but I know someone in his mid-thirties who does the same.
My parents must think I have a bladder infection as I keep smoking in the toilets. But then again, the things you lie about…they know, you know.
I do, I do!
I was married for two months before my parents found out.
I lie about my health. It’s a lot worse than they think it is. Dunno how much longer I can keep that up, though… my mom watched me lose control and fall down a flight of stairs during our recent trip to Orlando.
I lie (through omission) about my religion. We’ve reached the don’t-ask-don’t-tell stage, but it was touch and go for a while.
I lie about how busy I am. That gets me out of too many annoying phone calls.
I lie about financial matters, like how much hubby and I make and how much we spend on stuff. Just not worth getting into with her!
It’s good to live 1100 miles away!
-BK
I’ve gotten to the point where I have to call my brother to be sure we’ve got our stories straight before I call my mother. I’m 26, he’s 30.
We just seem to always be doing stuff that she’d hate.
Well, since I still live with my parents, it’s pretty much required that I continue lying to them to prevent constant fights. Even about stuff that couldn’t possibly matter anymore, like my highschool grades. This came up in conversation a little while ago, and led to a huge fight despite the fact that I graduated from highschool six years ago, have a college degree, and there is no possible way my HS grades could in any manner still be relevant. I’d like to get my own place, but I can’t afford to live in California if I’m not mooching off my folks, and if I move out of California, my dad goes out of buisness because I’m his only employee and he can’t run the shop alone anymore. And he can’t hire someone else, because they would most likely demand a living wage, which he can’t afford to pay. (I get paid a lot less than someone else with comparable skills, but living at home drastically reduces my expenses, so I actually have more money than I would if I had my own place and a better paying job.)
I can’t believe it: I thought my sister and I were the only ones who lied to our mom. I’ll admit my sister and I have expensive tastes, so we buy what we want. My mom is quite frugal and inquisitive and always asks us how much we paid for something. Inevitably she’ll say “That’s stupid! You could have bought it at Kmart for half of what you paid!” I do shop at Kmart, but it is not my store of choice for upscale designer items. My sister and I came up with our “pricing principle”. We tell my mom we bought something at Kmart for 10% of the real cost plus $10.00. Isn’t it silly that two grown women feel the need to lie to their mother in order not to be yelled at?
I’m 25 and I dont lie so much as not tell her about stuff. Seeing as how she is a 12-hour car drive away, I happen to forget to tell her about stuff that I think she would worry about. And as far as sex, I’ve told her not to ask because I’m not going to tell her. I guess that’s not really lying. . .
Sometimes I think I’m the only person on Earth with a healthy releationship with my mother. I’m honest with her all the time, and when the topic of conversation comes to say, my sex life, or my financial situation, I just tell here that’s my private business, and I’d rather not discuss it with her, and she accepts this and drops the subject.
I do the lies of omission thing with my mother. She’s extremely nervous and sometimes I don’t have the energy to hash things out with her, so it seems to help both of us to avoid certain subjects.
A warning: the worst lie I ever told to my father became a never-ending hydra-esque conspiracy. Dad is an absent-minded professor type, and one day my brother and I were with him at brunch, and he asked us if we were old enough to drink, which we weren’t. So we conveniently each tacked a few years on to our ages, and convinced him that we were both in fact over 21 ("geez Dad, little brother was born in '69, at the same time as the moon landing, dontcha remember?). I’m not sure why we bothered, the drinks were already being consumed, nor did Dad seem especially concerned, just conversational. Then, somehow, Dad decided to remember these ages, and it mucked up all sorts of other family conversations for years. I have no idea how or why he managed to hang on to this one piece of information, seeing as he still doesn’t know the names of either of our SOs, our mom’s birthday, or where I have worked for the past 12 years. At any rate, liitle brother and I then had to gradually readjust our ages periodically, to catch us up to our proper ages. We finally managed it last year, when we were both in our 30s. Looking back, that was one fib that was a lot more trouble that it was worth.
I don’t lie to my mother. But I do behave differently around her than around, say, my coworkers. I don’t cuss in front of my mom or tell dirty jokes for example.
I don’t lie to my mom. And we live in the same city. We see each other pretty often. We have a nice, relaxed, friendly relationship.
… both of them, in fact. (Mom and Step-Mom) I live in a different state from my step-mom and about 3 hours away from my mother. (Used to be the reverse… lived in the same state as my step-mom, and 1200 miles from my mother). What do I lie to them about? Almost everything. Why? Because if I tell them the truth on most things, I get lectured. I don’t need it. Example… my step-mother gave me a bunch of “stuff” after my grandparents passed away… ceramics that my grandmother made, things like that. Most of it is ugly stuff. I have a small apartment. Other than a few select pieces, it’s going to Goodwill/Consignment shop/whatever. If asked about some of this stuff, I’ll say that it broke during the move. This way I don’t have to hear what an ungrateful daughter/granddaughter/whatever I am. MUCH easier that way.
Of course, I have gotten a lot better about things… I used to lie about having sex. Now, if either of them ask, I tell them the truth. They wouldn’t believe me if I lied, anyway.
Though I will be 19 in a couple months, I almost never lie to my mother. We are very honest and friendly with one another, like friends.
If anything, I only omit things. I have never told her how far I have gone with my boyfriend. Though I tell her that I yell at my friend for smoking, I have never told her that I sometimes have an occasional puff as well. And I never tell her how much I paid for things because she thinks I spend my money too frivilously (which is the truth; my manic episodes can get me into a lot of trouble).
Is there a real future for you in that kind of set-up?
This weekend my mother told me a lovely story about a friend’s daughter who waited until she was 32 to marry because she waited for the right guy. My divorced sister and I just exchanged glances and I thought of this thread.
I regularly lie to my mom about stupid stuff. I’m 19, and just moved into my own apartment. She’ll call me at work to talk, since she doesn’t see me at home anymore. “I gotta go Mom, we’re getting our asses kicked!!”, and then I go back to staring into space.
She regulalrly asks me if I’m a virgin. For awhile I always said yes and humored her. She read through my emails one night, and found out that I wasn’t. So now I let her think I’ve only had sex once in my life.
I refuse to tell her how much I spend on anything. As far as she knows, everything I’ve ever bought was on clearance at Walmart.
Life’s just a whole lot easier when she doesn’t know the truth.