"friend" constantly lying

LegacyUser

chances are this will be a long one so please bear with me.

alright, in college theres a big group of us but there are 4 of us that are really close, lets call them Jo, Lisa, Ann and myself.
now we're all pretty different and even within the group of 4 i would be closer to jo, and anne and lisa would be closer. this is all well and good.

now the problem started during the summer. basically lisa lies constantly and about the stupidest things. we all staretd noticing individually during the summer that she would tell us all stories but details would change as she went from person to person. this started happening really regularly and i mentioned it to Jo who basically said "oh thank fúck i thought i was going mad", so we started kinda calling her on stuff when she contradicted herself, nothing too bad just like "oh, i thought you asid it happened here/then" etc.
anyway it kept happening so we mentioned it to ann who basically gave the same reaction as Jo. we all had a big chat about it and decided to leave it for another bit but to still call her out on stuff when we know she's lying.
so anyway, a perfect example of the stuff she lies about would be when we were all in the pub during the summer. we headed into town and had never been in this pub before. so during the night lisa went to the bar and when she came back she said "oh my god that fella at the bar is so sweet. he recognised me from work and told me i look gorgeous and that its great to see me having such a good time because i work so hard"...so we all thought "ah thats nice" and went on with our conversations. later it was my round and the guy was still at the bar, he started chatting away and i said "oh you're the fella that knows Lisa?" and he said "who the blond girl? no i've never seen her before, just got chatting to her here" now i kept my mouth shut about that one because i felt bad for her and i didnt want to make a show of her.
so anyway theres been loads of little incidents like that but over the past few months they've gotten more and more elaborate. she has started going on about how many millions her dad has and how shes getting a car for her birthday (which is cool) and then she moved into an apartment that her dad got for her. she didnt have to pay any rent because her job was only for during the summer. anyway she then decided that she was going to apply for a disability benefit. apparently she has epilepsy....again the stories about this one differ greatly but from what we can gather she has had one seizure and has since been declared seizure free by the doctors. anyway with all her dads millions she was soon made to realise that she was not only not entitled to it, but she didnt need it.
her parents are separated and she was living with her mother before getting the apartment. one day she rang me crying saying that her mother accused her of "having an affair with" some guy she knows who is married. and she said her mam also accused her of stealing from her. so this drama went on for a while and then she started changing her story. first she told us that her mother called her a "slút" "prícktease" and every other name under the sun.....a few weeks later she told us that she never said that her mam called her those names.
so anyway, we decided to all have a chat with her one night and get it all out because it was getting to the stage where myself and jo couldnt stand being around her....and even Anne (the diplomatic one of the group) was losing her patience. so we said it to her and she said "i dont even realise im doing it. i lie because i feel boring otherwise" and that was it!! nothing more was said. we thought ok, maybe she'll stop now because she knows that we can tell that shes doing it. but no! things have gotten worse.
she has become the most spoilt, self, self-absorbed person i've ever come across.if we introduce her to new people she always manages to get the conversation round to how much money her dad is worth!! she makes up all these family illnesses to get sympathy from lecturers. she tries to get extensions on every single essay and despite living 10 minutes from college she never comes in. yet she heads off for the weekend down the country and then comes looking for one of us to give her the notes. when she rings us she'll waffle about herself for 20 mins without once saying "how are you?" then when we start talking we can hear her texting on her phone or we can tell that shes watchin telly and not listening. then she just says "have to go bye"
now my problem is, this is not someone i want as a friend and either does Jo, Ann on the otherhand is afraid to drop her completely because she has told her some very personal stuff about herself and shes afraid lisa will use it against her. lisa already screwed her over by blabbing some personal stuff and when ann told her how hurt she was over it lisa pulled a guilt trip on her.
ann wants to give her another chance but i really dont want to.....but i dont want to have to put ann in the middle.

should i give her another chance for ann's sake or just say buh-bye!?

Kobie

I'd just let the relationship slide away gradually. I knew a guy like that & there was no curing him. We always felt sorry for him (it must all come from low self-esteem) but it's hard to feel sorry for somebody who continuously lies to your face, so we gradually just stopped phoning, meeting up, etc. It wasn't a concerted effort to get rid of him, we just didn't bother with him as much.

Reminds me of the line: If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about chopping them down? We would if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

K.

nesf

There's a subtle but huge difference between someone who will "exaggerate" a story to make it more entertaining for the listeners, and someone who makes up a story to tell.

It definitely seems to be the latter, which isn't a good thing at all. It's really not healthy to be like that. Whether you decide to stay friends with her is really a matter of choice, ie whether you can put up with the lies or not. People like her rarely realise they are making stuff up, they get totally caught up with it and don't realise whats happening. They are very hard to cure of it. If you are willing to make the effort to stop it cool, good on you. If you feel you can't/don't want to, then fair enough. The decision must be based on your feelings.

iguana

I used to have a very similar problem, in my teens and early twenties i had 2 best friends, J and L. j had been my friend since i was 7 and L moved near us when we were 15. at that time it was becoming more and more obvious to me that L had a huge habit of lying to us. from a make-believe boyfriend to an uncle who owned sky tv and an aunt who's friend worked for her favourite band and she got to go back stage at their concerts and bring back "autographed" merchandise.
There were others in the group who had also grown up with her, and every so often we would confide in each other that we didnt believe her stories which was usually a great relief. L having met her the latest took 3 years to realise how much she lied.
As we got older the lies got worse, from the ridiculous stories about the famous people she met she moved on to wearing large bandages on her wrists and letting on that she cut herself with knives and tried to kill herself. We were worried and tried to treat her sensitively but most research we did told us that people with that problem usually tend to hide it, that and the fact that only days later she would be completely healed. She told us she'd had a miscarraige, that she'd been assualted and she always told me that the guys L fancied used to come on to her, while she told L that all the guys I liked or dated used to ask her out.
Obviously this used to upset us a lot and we often debated what to do about it. Looking back it became obvious that her lying had started when we were 12 and her mother was diagnosed with cancer. and from then on her life wasn't so good, she went from being the centre of attention at home to watching her mother slowly die while the rest of her family couldnt cope and stayed away as much as they could. after her mother died it seemed to us that she was treated badly by her family who piled responsibility on her. Her fantasies were obviously an escape route, something we all do from time to time, but she was unable to stop them spilling into her real life. She was insecure and hurting inside, once we realised that we knew that she wasn't being malicious or intentionally trying to hurt us. So we would just ignore her lies, nod and change the subject and show her that we cared about her in other ways and encouraged her to get on with her life. When the things she said occasionally became too much for us we would vent with each other as we felt that confronting her was not the way we would deal with it at that would reward her for the lies she told to get attention.
And it worked, she's now happily married. And the more she felt secure in her relationships, the less she needed to lie to gain attention. we don't see each other as much as we used to, i've moved away and she has married life to deal with. but when i do meet her she is a much happier person who doesn't need to be centre of attention anymore.
Reading your story i wasn't surprised when i got to the part about her parents seperation. It sounds like your friends lies may be a reaction to problems at home. If you want to cut her out of your life that's up to you but if your other friend is going to stay friends with her it will be difficult. I have friends who have friends i don't like and as much as i wish i never had to see them the fact is sometimes you have to put up with things you would never choose to have other people in your life.
I'd advise you to maybe minimise your contact with lisa, until you feel like you can deal with her more (if ever). You will still have to see her at group events such as ann's b'day, etc. So don't confront her, i don't think that would help anybody. Ignore her lies, change the subject and maybe compliment her dress? As much as she drives you crazy she sounds like a very unhappy, directionless person. I feel sorry for her because if she doesn't learn to cope she will be like this forever.

LegacyUser

Help her through it. She seems to have a lot of issues. Just honestly help her out...

LegacyUser

ok well i can see your points about helping her through it but to be honest we have tried. we all sat her down and told her how much we cared about her and that we didnt want to lose her as a friend but she needed to stop the lying. ann even got her the names of counsellors in the area.

the difference between lisa and iguana's friend is that lisa has done some very malicious things. and an example of this is something which i only found out about last night. myself and Jo went into town and met some other mates. Ann and another girl from college, sarah, were at a gig and came and met us afterwards in the pub. we were all chatting away and sarah asked why elaine had been missing so much college. now the thing is, myself and sarah never really got on at all last year. we were friendly at first and then i was told that she had said all these horrible things about me. after that i just kept my distance and never even thought twice about the fact that it was lisa that told me this. when i realised that lisa was lying so much i decided to make the effort with sarah and actually get to know her. so we were chatting last night and sarah asked me if last year when we stopped talking, did lisa ring me and ask why i wouldnt talk to sarah and did i say "she did something really horrible to me but im not going to tell you because its between me and her" ??? now that never happened. lisa actually waited 10 mins and then rang sarah back and made that crap up. that to me is very calculated and very spiteful. and its that type of thing that i want to get away from. i dont want to be friend with someone who intentionally tries to hurt people. or the type of person who let ann believe that her mother has cancer when she doesnt.

i understand that her parents splitting up would be tough for her but it happened over 10 years ago. she sees both parents all the time, they get along well and as she says herself, she wants for nothing financially.
she clearly has major issues and i reckon she needs to go and see a professional.

its just all a mess.

iguana

Her parents may have split 10 years ago but you can never be sure how much that is affecting her. If it is a fact that the children of a broken marriage are statistically less likely to have a successful marriage than those whose parents have a healthy relationship then it stands to reason that the insecurities brought on by a parents split may last forever. Her parents may both still have problems which each other which she may find herself in the middle of. It isnt possible to judge how this may still affect her from the outside, sometimes these problems never go away, or even if they have a great relationship now the unsettling she experienced as a child may still trouble her.
Some of the stuff my friend did to me felt malicious at the time. Telling all my friends that my boyfriends tried to cheat on me with her? Having some of my friends trying to tell me what my boyfriend was doing behind my back because they still hadn't realised she lied all the time. The doubts that I would have that maybe this time she was telling the truth and maybe I was being cheated on. There was a time when she nearly slept with my cousin who was in a 3 year relationship with a girl we worked with, then told us she did it because someone spiked her drink and tried to assualt her and he took advantage of her upset state. When his girlfriend decided to forgive them both my friend spent the next two months hassling her, but told us all that it was the other way around and tried to get the sympathy for her. It caused a lot of problems and almost drove a lot of people apart.
Writing this makes me wonder why we forgave her, but the two of us who had been hurt most by her, had also seen the worst that she went through.
Look, if you really don't want to make an effort for this person don't, if it is too much for you to handle then that is your choice (taking a break for your own sanity would be perfectly understandable), I only wish to point out that in my situation we dealt with it in a way that worked for us. But if some of your friends are still going to be friends with her and you will be friends with them, then she will continue to be in your life. There will be nothing to stop her telling whatever lies she pleases, whether about you or not. Try and ensure that everyone in your group knows about her problem, don't bring it up with her anymore and if she tells you something check it out but someone else. Solicitors have a saying, Trust, but verify. and I would suggest that that is something for all your friends to keep in mind when dealing with lisa, whether you stay friends with her or not.

Davey Devil

Have you people got no space bars?

WhiteWashMan

or enter keys either by the looks of it

anyway, i can understand where you are coming from.

i used to have a good mate. now i have known him for years, and even since school, hes been known to tell porky pies. no one really minded as such, because that was just the way he is.

it got the stage when he told a story, you just nodded and smiles and apprecaited it as a story, but really had no idea as to whether or not the content of the story was true or not. and in the end, i dont think anyone cared. it was just thios person being this person.

the funny thing was, he used to add bits to stories, not as part of entertainment, but , i dont know, to make himself seem more exciting, better, whatever.

it actually go the stasge where he was making up girlfriends, making up names for them, and even occupations, and as he got older, he would make up stories about this girl being in love with him. the only thing was, that every single one of these girls had a boyfriend, and he would never do anything to jeprodise their relationship.

in fact, when i met one of these girls once, and mentioned it to her, she got so upset that she caused a scene. naturally, this chap being 'outed' didnt take too kindly to the fact that he had been caught by accident in a big lie, turned it back on me saying i couldnt be trusted and i was a lier yadda yadda yadda. the usual defense mechanism stuff.

another time, i heard back from someone about something this chap did, and realised that it sounded really familiar. in fact, it was so familiar, because it was something i did. i found out he was taking things that me, and other people did, and was passing our experiences off as his own. living vicariously through us so to speak.

he even claimed my ex girlfriend came on to him when we broke. when we got back together, she nearly exploded with laughter at the idea. she had never liked him in the first place. it was just getting sadder and sadder.

and to be honest, things got worse after that, but you know, after that i think a lot of people saw exactly what he was. someone who has to work hard at appearing popular.
and most people just dont like people like that. i just gave up speaking to him to be honest, becuase everything you said bcame twisted, and every action became him having sex with someone. it was truely unbelivable.
i just feel sorry for him. its a shame, he was one of my best friends, for all his foilbles,i still admired him for the things he did do.

you just got to let them go, and hope that some day, they will come back to planet earth.