UPDATED FOR 2024: When we finally figure out that just about everything a sociopath told us is a lie, we are shocked. How can anyone lie so fluently? And why did we fall for it?
Here are 10 reasons why the sociopath’s lies seem so believable:
- Sociopaths tell you how honest they are
Early on, sociopaths may tell you how much they value honesty, and that truthfulness is the foundation of all relationships. Their objective is to convince you of their trustworthiness, so that when you encounter their lies, you don’t see them.
- Sociopaths lie while they look directly into your eyes
Some experts say that if people look up and to their right while speaking, it’s a sign that they are lying. Other experts dispute this. Regardless, we all tend to believe that if someone can look us in the eye while talking, then they are telling the truth. Sociopaths know this, so they look us in the eye as they lie.
- Sociopaths mix truth with lies
This is a key sociopathic strategy — mixing truth with lies. You know for a fact that some of what the sociopath says is true (and the sociopath knows that you know), so you infer that the rest is true. Unfortunately, you’re wrong.
- Everything is a lie
One way that we spot lies is by noticing change. At first, the story was this, now it’s that. With a sociopath, however, there is no change to notice, because the lying starts from the very beginning and just keeps going.
- Sociopaths lie with no physical reaction
Lying makes most of us feel anxious, which causes physical symptoms. These symptoms are what polygraph machines measure — changes in heart rates/blood pressure, respiration and skin conductivity. Because sociopaths are comfortable lying, they feel no anxiety, so there are no physical changes to observe.
- Sociopaths cover their lies with more lies
When we confront sociopaths about their lies, they tell more lies to cover up the original lies. Most of us would never be able to keep all the lies straight, but sociopaths are frequently gifted in this — they can remember exactly what they told to whom, and they keep the story going.
- “I would never lie!”
When questioned about something they said, sociopaths often proclaim, with righteous indignation, that they would never lie. They are so emphatic about this, and so obviously crestfallen that you could possibly think that they lied, that you end up apologizing — even though they are, in fact, lying.
- Sociopaths lie with complete confidence
It’s hard to imagine that someone who is so charismatic, charming and confident, is also a complete liar. They exhibit no doubt whatsoever. They seem to command you to believe them — so you do.
- The claims are so outrageous that they must be true
Sociopaths claim to be special forces soldiers, foreign royalty, Ph.D. scientists, born-again Christians, spiritual leaders and more. They may forge or buy certificates, medals and other documentation to prove their stories. You can’t imagine anyone would have the nerve to make such claims without them being true — so you believe them.
- Practice makes perfect, and sociopaths practice a lot
The more sociopaths lie, the better they get at it — and typically, sociopaths have been lying all their lives. So they are very, very good at it. Unfortunately, most humans are lousy lie detectors, so the rest of us simply haven’t got a chance. Sociopaths lie, and we don’t spot the lies until it’s too late.
Learn more: Tools for navigating narcissists and other manipulative people.
Lovefraud originally posted this story on Nov. 28, 2016.
Should I warn the next victim?
Hello,
I haven’t been on here in a little while. I am still struggling to believe that i wasn’t the cause of our troubles and not him being a sopath. I don’t understand why I would not walk away from this horrible person or beg him to stay with me. Why would l let him keep coming back knowing he really didn’t love me. I have never had my heart broken like this before. In the end it he stil didn’t love me.
I did figure out that he was like my sister. We never got along our entire lives. I would take anything she would do to me in hopes that she would love me. It didn’t work and she died not loving me.
The most horrible part of it all is in my is i still just want him to still love me. This is so sick and disgusting that I would still want his validation when he is worth nothing. Everyday I want this pain to lessen but it doesn’t seem to. I pray, I keep busy, I give back to social causes. Nothing seems to Work.
Thank you for listening
mzpris15, your longing is not sick at all – it is very normal. As humans, it is a core desire for us to bond. If there is an absence of healthy people in our lives to bond with, we will bond with an unhealthy person, a substance like alcohol, a stuffed animal, a phone, or pretty much anything. Remember the Tom Hanks character in that movie where he was lost on a deserted island for 4 years? He survived by talking to a soccer ball named Wilson. It is human nature and doesn’t say anything bad about you. I remember how very painful it was to find out I was duped and all the love and attachment I felt in my heart had nowhere to go, so it was still directed toward him. I wanted to die. A big turning point came for me when I was driving home from work one day with my normal depression. I happened to be listening to a very sad love song and it made me cry. Instead of turning it off, I turned it up and let the pain come out. After that I listened to as many sad songs as I could to try and bring up the pain. I assure you that there was one cry that turned out to be the last one. It does end but before you can get over it, you first have to go through it. Slowly, you can begin to build more solid relationships with other people and even with yourself. Those relationships will fill the void of the longing and isolation. The trick is – what we all had to learn – is how to identify healthy people from unhealthy ones and seek them out.
I want to add to my last post that if you really feel that deep down there is something wrong with you, you are also not alone. I feel that sometimes and so do a lot of people. This is called “shame” and many people have a dose of this from time to time – especially if you had a challenging upbringing. Many people feel deep down that they are not good enough, and that often sabotages healthy life choices. It is very painful to be in this condition. The only way I know to work with it is to recognize it, feel it, and try to identify where it “lives” in your body. Give it some attention and maybe even a voice. Try to just feel it. If you are feeling it, you are not identifying with it. This is a good time to call on God or whatever your spiritual sources are and ask them to help with it. Shame can be very difficult because it lies at the core of who we think we are. But it is not the truth about us. The truth is that there is nothing wrong with us; we are so much more capable and lovable than we imagine.
Hi mzpris15, sending you huge hugs!! I’m so sorry that you are emotionally suffering. It’s hard hon…trust me when I say everyone here has sobbed & cried their eyes out during the healing process especially in the beginning.
One of the things most victims of a sociopath do not realize is during & after they leave this abuser they suffer from PTSD.
If you can find a good endocrinologist doctor and get tested for cortisol levels, vitamin & mineral deficiency and hormonal imbalance plus what ever the doctor recommends.
The biggest issue with PTSD is adrenal fatigue. So do some research on this health issue.
The stress you have been enduring with the sociopath and now that you have escaped him will fatigue your adrenal glands. This will also wreak havoc on your emotions.
Some symptoms of adrenal fatigue:
anxiety
depression
mood swings
sleep issues
memory loss
etc etc its a very long list.
Here are a few sites to start your research….DrLam. com & Adrenal fatigue.org. Both have videos & look at both sites symptoms list.
People think that it’s all in your “head” but it is not the biggest issues is the adrenal glands not working correctly after continual stress. Once you have your adrenal glands functioning correctly you will move back towards your old self.
Keep posting here to let us know how you are doing & to vent.
Hugs to you.
Take care.
mxpris15,
Oh sweetie…it really hurts is why it’s so hard, and it is equally as hard for our hearts to heal after they have been manipulated and betrayed.
The truth is we all (or most of us anyway) did some things, in the context of these abusive situations, that we are not proud of, and that we would not do in the course of a normal relationship. For instance I was willing to entertain the idea of an ‘open relationship’, and even went to some silly meetings. Even though I knew he was full of BS, and that he was just using this ‘poly amorous’ angle as a cover for his abuse and lies. When I changed my mind and said no to this, it became the entire focus of our split. I also, in my hurt, felt if I could ONLY have been more ‘something’ that he would have loved me.
But the truth is whenever we give in to these types, they just change the goal posts, and we never really achieve any lasting love, peace, harmony with them; no matter what we do. It never happens.
The guy I knew has gone on to have multiple other ‘girlfriends’, and each of them have disappeared after a time as well. I imagine they suffered the same fate, and total betrayal, that I did.
Keep breathing through all the feelings, they will pass with time and distance. I never found anything that sped the process…to make me stop hurting. But I do know that ANY contact only made the hurt worse.
((((HUgs)))) Slim
mzpris15,
If you are reading but not posting, I hope that today is a little better. Or, if it isn’t, that you are maintaining no contact, and riding the waves of your healing.
More hugs….Slim
Thank you for caring. Somedays I think I am ok am I can just move on. I don’t think about it at all.the next day it will consume my every free thought i have. I don’t know how to stop keep thinking about how our relationship started and when it changed or if it was this from the day we met. Over and ovrr i cant help from reading all of our old texts to see all of the things that i did wrong and see the mistakes i made. I look at everything thing and beat myself up knowing how horrible everything was and i stayed or let him come back everytime he left. I knew he didn’t love me. I questioned him over and over and he would tell me he did and hownmuch he did and want to spend our life together. Round and around it went. Now i know he didn’t not love me he didn’t even like me. And now he is with someone and he is doing all the the things he said he wanted to do with me that he lied about. Why am i so crushed. My previous boyfriend didnt end this way. Our relationship wasnt this way. We are actually friends. I look at his pictures and think the only good thing about him was he is good looking and that is where his good stops.
I still think it was me that he didn’t want. That i am just trying to find a reason to blame all of this on him and that is why i am so unhappy. He moved on to be with someone that he actually loves because he just didn’t love me.
Time does heal. I know. It is getting better. God does remove your misery. I just i knew how to turn off my brain
I hope you ladies are having a happy new year
The way you’re feeling and thinking is natural. You’re grieving a real loss to you. Grieving is hard work; and when one has been victimized by a disordered person, betrayed, and treated badly, it is painful and recovery takes work. It sounds like you are moving forward and coming to understand that you’re not to blame for his lying to you and betraying you. He likely lied to you about his feelings for you and his promise of staying with you to manipulate you into giving him what he wanted. He didn’t lie to you because of who you are; he lied to you because of who he is.
It is unlikely he is treating anyone else better. He treats people according to whatever works to get what he wants. He lies if it works. He’s likely lying to whomever he is with because he thinks it’s working to get him whatever he wants. People treat others from the same motivation – if he cared about whomever he’s exploiting at the moment’s feelings, he would care about everyone’s feelings.
Consider balancing your grieving and reflection time with time spent doing something you enjoy, talking and visiting with friends and family, watching a documentary or movie you enjoy, etc. You’re right that with time, you will recover fully and you’ll have a good life interacting with good people who appreciate you and care about your well being.
mzpris15,
I used to get frustrated that I went round and round with my healing. Like you say, good one day and not so good the next. Then someone said healing was like a spring (like a slinky, stretched out). I liked to visualize things so this kind of helped me know I was still on my path, even though I was ‘rehashing’ something I thought I had already let go of.
The visual is that we go round that slinky spring, and though we are moving forward, toward the end of the spring, we still spiral around to the same places. HOWEVER, with time, when we spiral around to the same place (same memory) we might see it and experience it just a little bit different. It is less painful, we understand it with more clarity, we feel less burdened by the memory. And so, we are making progress, but it isn’t and ‘all or nothing’ experience.
I also understand what you say about the boyfriend that you are still friends with. Prior to meeting the bad man, I had a 13 year relationship with a really lovely man. We decided to go our own way, and though it was difficult to do, we both supported each other, and we parted with good feelings toward one another; and went on our way to find ourselves, and forge a new life without one another. We have zero animosity.
Nothing like being completely lied to by a predator, made to feel shameful, and dumped. Nothing. These are not relationships, per se. They are experiences. They are learnings.
Stargazer is so right on when she says that we “normals” want to bond. It is part of our humanity to be with one another, love each other, and lift each other up. It is a terrible experience when we realize we were doing our ‘honest’ human thing with someone utterly incapable, who see’s human relations as a ‘game’ to win.
Try not to give too much energy to what he is doing with anyone else. Rest assured it is the same as what he did with you, perhaps with some twists to suit the details of his new situation. But, overall, he is doing his same old thing. He cannot do anything but. So no one is getting something you didn’t.
I thought the same, only to discover years later that many women had become entangled with him, and suffered losses just like I did. Some worse than me.
More hugs to you….Slim
Thank you everyone. It is really hard to know that this person completely started me from his life. I know he has deleted all of my photos, my phone number, anything in his house. That $500 watch and the engraved watch box I bought to go with it. I sure now he said he mom and dad bought it for him. I won’t ever hear from him because to him I never existed…….
On the other hand I have someone that I have been hanging out with. This is someone that I have known for 5 years. He has been there through the entire thing and knows everything. We dated before but broke up due to not being able to find the time to see each other. This relationship was normal and ended well. We’re taking it slow because he knows I need to go at my speed and he is letting me do that. He is a really good person, not a sociopath. The difference in these two people is like night and day. When he tells me he is doing something I don’t have to worry that he is lying to me. He lives 45 minutes from me and I don’t have to worry that he is off with someone else. ðŸŒðŸŒ Snails pace is what I want… To all I appreciate the the kind words and support. Thank you
Yea they are con men. All they do is lie.