This is something I simply can’t understand. I’ve got a “friend” and it’s gotten to the point that I can’t bear to listen to her because of all the lies she tells. Stupid stuff, like when her child was concieved. It’s gone from her wedding night, then she says that she found out on her wedding day, then she found out two weeks before the wedding to she found out she was pregnant and had to get married. Well, which is it? And why lie about it? Especially to me, who was 7 1/2 months pregnant when she got married and not in any position to judge. It turns out her husband in a compulsive liar as well…what a screwed up child they are going to have.
Could anyone explain to me why people do this? I can see lying to get out of trouble or to gain something, but this pointless lying drives me nuts! I’ve started confronting her with her previous versions of stories, and surprise, she doesn’t talk to me anymore. Guess she decided to make friends with shorter memories.
Some people lie just to make a good story. Others are pathological liars, who lie about matters as trivial as where they left their car keys. If your friend is in the latter category, she probably needs to get psychological help. If she’s in the former, just nod politely and put up with her exaggerations.
Um, I never asked, it just came up in conversation. That’s what has me so confused, since I really don’t care when her child was concieved, and if she had never brought it up, I never would have thought about it.
And she lies about everything, like she’s told me about a brother, then she says she was an only child, and very spoiled. WHY!?! And if you are going to lie, can’t you pick one story and stick to it? Of course, I no longer consider her a friend, but it makes me ill to hear these stories on the playground where we all hang out.
I know what you mean, Tater. I have a friend who was too lazy to write me back. So she told me this INCREDIBLY far fetched story about her computer crashing. She even tried to blame me for not writing her and asking how she was doing!
Seriously, it could be any number of things, including the possiblities that Opus suggested. It’s really tough to tell without observing her firsthand, but compulsive liar would be my first guess, as it sure doesn’t sound like this person is trying to gain anything by her lies, or make her story sound better, or anything like that.
Fortunately, a compulsive liar is easily spotted. As you apparently already have.
DRY, your friend told me to tell you that you are full of shit. For one, she never said that her computer crashed, she said that her ISP went bankrupt and she had no internet service. Friend told me to tell you that she is really hurt that you didn’t take the time to read her letter thoroughly and to take notes to ensure that you understood it fully. Furthermore, she was extrememly disappointed that you didn’t send a search party out for her after not hearing from her or seeing her online for 4 days!
I just don’t get this lying! People even lie on this message board, and I’m not talking about this latest Pit thing (which I missed, because Friend’s ISP went dead). My curse is that I remember all these little details about people and certain details just don’t add up, or are constantly changing. It’s not that this makes me angry, it’s just totally perplexing.
I used to lie all the time about anything and everything…even when I “didn’t have to,” as I told myself, although in retrospect that would be “ever.” I got over it to such an extent that now lying royally pisses me off. Plus, I was so good at it that now I do the same as you, tatertot…I hear all of the weird little inconsistencies in things people tell me, and it pisses me off.
If it’s a good enough friend, I call him or her on it, personally. “Look…you said this and this and this, but they really don’t add up. I’m your friend…why did you feel like you had to lie to me?” So far, every time, the folks in question have owned up and given me some variation on “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” Letting them know that catching them lying to me hurt my feelings more than the truth would have has done wonders. You (or y’all) might want to give it a shot if it bothers you that much.
Actually, tatertot, I used to have a friend just like that. You could be talking about the same person. We were friends from the ages of 7-18, which is when I’d finally had enough.
This is the woman who “lost” her virginity 5 times. Yes, for some reason, she had to tell each new boyfriend he was her first. By boyfriend #6, she was up to telling an untrue rape story (which got her in big trouble, as her boyfriend was going to hunt this fictional guy down). I can’t even begin to tell you the stories that she told me as we were growing up. Everything from being scouted as a model to meeting Duran Duran. Big stuff, little stuff. It didn’t matter. You just couldn’t believe anything she said.
Why? I don’t know. Insecurity? A need for attention? Drama queen? Who knows. In the end, it killed whatever friendship we had.
There’s a former friend of mine that I strongly, strongly suspect to be a flat-out liar. She has had a pretty messed-up life, so it is difficult to know what is real, and what are (snicker) “embellishments.”
It’s all about “NOTICE ME!” Of course, there are those who lie who are simply sick, and others who just want to manipulate. But it sounds like in the case you’re describing, she is so caught up in the exciting story that she’s forgotten which one was the real thing.
Lose her, girl. (Sounds like she’s already lost you, anyway, you HEATHEN non-believer! …of her lies, that is )
My best friend in elementary school went to a private boarding high school for her freshman year. She was kicked out for not attending classes, and when she started at my high school, she was a different person. Lied about everything, but in a way that I couldn’t prove she was outright lying. Junior year, one of my two bestfriends was a closeted gay man, who had only told his closest friends that he was gay, though this wasn’t a shock to any of us. My childhood “friend,” didn’t know how close I was to this fellow, and began to make up long stories about how close they were to eachother, the culmination being that he asked her out, and she had to tell him that she wasn’t ready for a relationship. I was quietly seathing listening to her tell me this, all the while thinking “The only way he asked YOU out is if you suddenly developed a penis.” Eventually we had a huge fight, where she said that she had always felt inferior to me, and so she made this stuff up to impress me into thinking she was my equal. This is, of course, bullshit, as the only thing that made her inferior to me in anyway was her lying.
She’s gotten better, but still drives me nuts. At the moment, her weapon of choice is not returning phone calls and not showing up to my shows when she promised she would. I made the decision that I am not her shrink, and I am not enabling this pathological behavior. She wants to act like a shitty friend: she won’t end up with a lot of friends.
The thing is, I don’t see what possible motive she could have, esp. not sparing my feelings. This is truly pointless lying. I mean why lie about having or not having a brother? I could see denying a brother if he really did something terrible, but her story goes like this: She had an older brother and grew up a tomboy. OR- She had a younger brother at 10 years old and her mother was terribly concerned about having another child after she was an only for so long. Or - She was an only child and now she is worried about her daughter being an only. Let us not get into the question of whether or not she can concieve another child and if not, the many reasons why. Both her and her husband have given me and my husband countless stories on this subject. The thing is, we never freaking asked!
A question: Do y’all think that these compulsive liars think that they are really getting away with it? I’m sure they don’t get called on it very often, out of politeness or don’t care enough to make waves-ness, but come on, do they really think people are that stupid?
Opus, you hit the nail right on the head. My ex-husband was an actual pathalogical liar. He lied about the most trivial things, then believed his own lies. It was a very painful thing to watch, and he refused to get help. It got to the point that when a mutual friend would confront me with one of his lies, I would just say “He’s lying. No, I don’t know why”. It really was a sickness with him, and he believed himself 100%. Very frightening, frankly.
Pre-marriage lies he told that were proven to be lies:
He went to a local college and had a degree
He had a motorcycle license and used to own a bike
He was in the Empire State Games for volleyball (he didn’t play at all)
He was a “materials analyst” for a living (he was a shipper)
It gets very bizarre when people lie about everyday things. I would avoid this person based on my past experiences with liars.
My ex-husband was a pathological liar. I could ask him where he had lunch and he’d lie…he’d say Burger King if he ate at McD’s; I could ask him what the weather was supposed to be like and he would say it was gonna rain, even if the weatherman just said sunny.
Why? I have no idea. He lied about EVERYTHING. It wasn’t always for attention; he just could not tell the truth.
He sometimes said he’s been a Navy Seal, sometimes it was the Green Berets, other times he’d been at the Top Gun school. Truth was he’d been kicked out of the Army for insubordination.
And of course, he always forgot the most important thing about lying: always tell people the same lie or you will be found out! He would tell everyone different stories all the time.
He even told lies about me to friends and co-workers. He usually told people he worked with that I was from a very wealthy family and had gone to boarding school in England, that we really had lots of money from my trust fund, but just didn’t flaunt it. Yeah, that’s why I was driving a POS car that leaked oil and broke down at least once a week. My maiden name was Campbell, and he would tell people my family was the Campbell’s soup people (which we were not!!)
Totally bizarre. As Zette said, I think he believed his own lies after a while. It is definately a psycholigical problem.
My current husband’s sister also lies a lot. I think she does it to make herself more interesting. She gave my son a pencil box and said it had been hers in elementary school (I mentioned this in another thread), but it had a bar code on it and it was pristine and I suspected it was new. I still think it was new, but she lied just to make it seem more interesting.
I had a friend who lied about EVERYTHING. I think she started it because she was dating this guy who was emotionally abusive to her, and he’d always break up with her, and a few weeks or a month later he’d be making her crawl back, slowly worming himself back into her life. Finally, after… uh… a 18 months of this, I think, he broke it off and she was wise enough to tell him to go fuck himself when he tried to come back again. This was in high school, he was a dropout and former friend of me and my best friend (we were friends with him for the first year or so of this) and she started lying to us to cover up when she was dating him again, but it just spread into all aspects of her life, even after they broke up. She now lies about people she’s dating, I suppose it’s become a lifestyle…
He told a guy I dated in high school I was married.(I confronted him on this one. His reply, “Well, you know Jim. He just makes things up.”)
When he and my mom were getting their divorce, he would tell people things like, "My wife didn’t have dinner on the table again, if she doesn’t straighten up, I’m leaving. (he had already moved out, besides, mom worked full time, and more hours per week than he did.)
Told people that the reason they split was because mom was having an affair. (he was the one cheating. With a sixteen year old boy no less.)
About a year after the divorce, mom found a boyfriend, stepdad started saying mom and bf were engaged. BF’s mom was hurt. Stepdad also claimed BF was the reason for the divorce, but mom hadn’t even met him until after the divorce was final.
When mom and I moved to Vegas, he was claiming that he was selling her condo back in Indiana for her (like she’d trust him)
I’m with tatertot. I’m mystified. Sometimes I think he told lies just to make conversation.
I thought reading this would help me get a line on WHY do people lie for what seems to be ‘no reason’ [to the sane, it certainly seems to be for no reason]
Six years ago when my husband and I were still trying to work out our marriage through counseling, his lying became worse. We each had a manual we were supposed to work on once a week with each other. He would tell me he was really seeing ‘progress’ with the things he was writing, we would go into the therapist’s office, and guess what…he hadn’t written a thing.
Those of you who are still involved with the liars, I can’t imagine how you cope. Duane could tell me the sun was shining, and I would STILL look out the window to check!
So, while I still don’t have a clue as to why people who have only ONE life to live, choose to live it in a way that keeps them behind a wall of their own making. To me, it’s a wasted life.
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