Compulsive lying questions

March 10, 2006 3:40 AM

Some questions about infrequent compulsive lying - how common is this? What is your reaction to it? More questions inside.

A person close to me has a problem where, once or twice a year she seriously embellishes a personal story. This almost inevitably leads to more questions and the lie gets bigger. Afterwards she feels horrible, and more than once she has had to get in touch with the person she was talking to and explain that the story wasn't true in order to feel better.

It's quite clear why she feels motivated to tell these lies: in another time and place (before moving and changing careers) she used to be a big shot, and she really misses that feeling. It is less clear why the compulsion is too strong to resist. When this happens, she feels like she must be crazy.

Does anyone have any information on this problem? Do you do this or know someone who does? If someone you know were to admit that they made up a story to impress you, would you lose all respect for them or would you laugh it off? Any other advice appreciated. You can also email [e-mail] if you don't want to post here.

posted by anonymous to human relations (17 comments total)

If someone you know were to admit that they made up a story to impress you, would you lose all respect for them or would you laugh it off?

Laugh it off. I have a friend who was a compulsive liar. He's an alcoholic, and as soon as he got sober he stopped. It's a deep seated insecurity in his case.
posted by fixedgear at 3:58 AM on March 10, 2006

Have you seen this recent thread?
posted by misozaki at 4:20 AM on March 10, 2006

"It's quite clear why she feels motivated to tell these lies: in another time and place (before moving and changing careers) she used to be a big shot, and she really misses that feeling."

"It's a deep seated insecurity in his case."

That's usually where compulsive lying comes from. Self-consciousnes about one's role or position can lead to trying to compensate by fiction. It's pretty common. That she admits what she's doing is a good sign. If she started believing this fake life, or that she wasn't lying, that would mean there are much more serious problems going on, like a break from reality. She can come to terms with who she is now on her own, but it wouldn't hurt to see a counselor or something.
posted by raaka at 4:28 AM on March 10, 2006

I know a guy who just lies constantly, a lot more than once or twice a year. Whenever you tell a story, he'll always have one to go "one up" on you. Depending on my mood, I either find it amusing or try and negotiate the conversation so that he tells two conflicting stories.
posted by Orange Goblin at 6:04 AM on March 10, 2006

I have a friend to constantly embellishes the truth when relating stories. I have come to accept it and rarely call him on the things he makes up. It can be enjoyed like fiction--a willing suspension of disbelief for the sake of enjoying the story.

His situation is different from your friend's, though. He has highly developed creative qualities and he interprets reality rather loosely. His mind skews or embellishes the facts and the new interpretation becomes his real for him.
posted by zonkout at 6:59 AM on March 10, 2006

a friend who constantly embellishes
posted by zonkout at 7:00 AM on March 10, 2006

Heck, as compulsive lying goes, a little embarrassing-in-retrospect story embellishing is minor. She should 'fess up when she does it. A few embarassing confessions may just cure her of the habit. At least she knows that she's lying. I think this type of thing is pretty common.

True story:
I had a friend years ago that was a student at a nearby university. He was the boyfriend of a good friend of mine and I knew him well. We talked extensively about music and books and many other topics. Except he wasn't a student. His college ID, while authetic-looking, was fake. Turns out that pretty much every word out of his mouth had been made up. The concerts he described in detail, the places he'd been, where and how he grew up, people he knew...most of it was fabricated. He got too bold, we ran into people that he supposedly "knew", and his lies unravelled. He never acknowledged this, even when faced with evidence.
posted by desuetude at 7:02 AM on March 10, 2006

I second/third people who say that this compulsive lying is no big deal. I know compulsive liars who might make up something like that -- or something more harmful -- and end up convincing themselves that it's true, and far more than twice a year.
posted by dagnyscott at 7:37 AM on March 10, 2006

A guy I dated for 8 months disappeared at the end of January after telling me that he was starting a job at a new restaurant in an adjacent city; they'd be keeping everyone in the area overnight, he'd talk to me later. A week later after not hearing from him, I go and do some detective work. Turns out that the restaurant he told me about doesn't exist, and a whole lot of other things were lies too.

I laugh about it and get over him, but a month and a half later (that is, this past Monday), I get an email from his mother asking if I'd talk to him. The entirety of that story is here, but in short, he was an alcoholic and a compulsive liar. Oh, and he moved to Las Vegas when he told me he was leaving for work.

My reaction has been a mix of being utterly and completely shellshocked, and finding the entire situation hilarious because of how absurd it is. But I do wish him a slow and painful death.
posted by hopeless romantique at 9:08 AM on March 10, 2006

But more to your point, if she feels horrible when she lies and does eventually come clean, and doesn't lie all that often, don't worry about it.
posted by hopeless romantique at 9:09 AM on March 10, 2006

In my experience this sort of behavior is very common. Hell, Arthur Miller wrote a whole play about it.

If done one or twice a year I consider it to be a personal quirk. I would be utterly charmed if someone actually 'fessed up after the fact -- normally these things are tacitly forgotten and we all move along to something more interesting.

YMMV though. I'm extremely forgiving of people being people.
posted by tkolar at 9:52 AM on March 10, 2006

I used to add in small lies pretty much every time I told stories about myself. These weren't attempts at self-aggrandizement; they were narrative shortcuts.

Let's say that I met a guy in a coffee shop, and he told me that his brother knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a woman, who created a 40-foot replica of the Sears Tower out of pretzels.

In my early 20s, I probably would have brought this up by saying, "I know a woman who created a 40-foot replica of the Sears Tower out of pretzels."

I justified this to myself because the longer version contains boring, unimportant details. Surely the point of the story is that a woman made a huge model out of pretzels.

But I still felt vaguely guilty about lying. Also, these "innocent" lies tended to compound themselves when people started questioning me:

"How do you know this woman?"

"Uh.... Well, I met her at the gym."

"Oh yeah? What does she look like?"

"Um. Sort of like your sister, I guess..."

When this happened, it was easy for me to "blame the victim." I would think, "God dammit! Why does he keep asking me all these stupid QUESTIONS?"

When I got older, I realized I was creating needless social tension. So I stopped doing this. I still have a powerful urge to simplify -- going into every detail is exhausting. But I deal with this honestly:

"I heard about this woman who..."

or

"Through a complicated set of circumstances that aren't worth going into, I heard..."

But for whatever reason, this honest strategy wasn't the first strategy that occurred to me. Why was lying more natural?
posted by grumblebee at 10:47 AM on March 10, 2006

grumblebee asked....
...this honest strategy wasn't the first strategy that occurred to me. Why was lying more natural?

Because humans are all about good stories, and not absolute accuracy.

When we experience things (including stories) we do not store them away word for word. Our brains interpret them and they are stored in a way that they will hopefully be useful to us later. This is why ten different witnesses will describe the same incident ten different ways -- our memories are about usefulness, not about accuracy.

Similarly, when we go to tell stories to other people, we focus on what we believe will be useful rather than on strict accuracy. "I know a person..." has more impact than "I heard about a guy who knew a guy..", and so we are naturally pulled to use it.

Evolutionarily speaking, the ability to convey semi-accurate information effectively is far more useful than conveying absolutely accurate information that won't be remembered.
posted by tkolar at 11:27 AM on March 10, 2006

Yeah, that makes total sense. Maybe what I was doing wasn't so much lying (well, it WAS lying, of course, but...) as it was processing out loud. In other words, I was speaking the process of my mind converting the story to the form it will take in permanent storage.

Not that I'm going to stop being honest, but I wonder if I'm actually hurting myself (in some small way) by being completely truthful. Am I stopping my brain from doing the sort of compression that it needs to do? (I'm not seriously worried, but it's interesting to think about.)

My guess is that most pathological liars are opportunists (or worse), but I wonder if some of them are just trying -- maybe subconsciously -- to organize their memories in a specific, compressed way.
posted by grumblebee at 12:39 PM on March 10, 2006

I have a friend exactly like zonkout's, except female. It's strange - in general I'm bothered when people are dishonest with me, but with her, I consider it just a personality quirk, sometimes annoying, but more often just amusing.

More on the point, I'm usually compulsively honest about the details that grumblebee mentions, but have gotten less so as I get older (relatively speaking) and those details seem less important. On the other hand, sometimes I get the random urge to spin stories to strangers, but haven't acted on it (yet). I think it absolutely arises from a strange sort of insecurity and self-consciousness. I don't think I'd feel bad unless they became friends - I would only lie to people I didn't know and didn't particularly care about. I feel like if I were to lie about something even a little bit significant to a potential friend, that friendship couldn't get beyond a certain point. Anyway, I think maybe there should be a distinction between the *compulsion* aspect and the specifics of the compulsion (i.e., in this case, to lie). Why do each exist? I think if anyone can answer that question, it would be her - but maybe she can't. I would guess insecurity and self-consciousness for the latter, though.

Um, I do unabashedly lie to guys who hit on me when I'm not interested, and I don't feel the least bit bad about it. Except when this guy approached me a couple months ago and informed me, "hey, I talked to you last summer, and you told me you was a double major in history and fine arts" and I was like...shit, did I really say that, or is this guy just crazy? It's good to keep track of your lies.
posted by granted at 6:45 PM on March 10, 2006

Surely the difference between this question and everyone's "I knew a compulsive liar" and "I was a compulsive liar" stories is that the person the question's about doesn't know why she does it, feels bad, and wants to stop but can't.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 7:43 PM on March 10, 2006

I guess I'm just having trouble connecting the "compulsive liar" tag with this.

Example: Gambling in casinos is really pointless for me. In fact, I find casinos highly depressing. Nonetheless, about once a year as I'm passing by some town with a casino I get all excited and go in to play some video poker. I emerge a half hour later, depressed, and asking "What the heck was I thinking?"

Does this make me a compulsive gambler? I think not. I think it just makes me a silly bugger who once a year forgets how much he hates casinos. I have the same problem with ordering Eggs Benedict.

As a lot of people on this thread have said, spinning yarns about yourself twice a year sounds like a pretty minor social handicap. If your friend is concerned that it's something more than a mental hiccup, or a temporary regression to childish behaviour[*] then she should probably see a therapist about that concern, but from what you've described it just doesn't seem like that big a deal.


* My 7 year old nephew has informed me that he is half alien and half dinosaur, but that I shouldn't tell his parents because he's also half human and doesn't want to confuse them.
posted by tkolar at 10:49 PM on March 10, 2006