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Donna recently posted a Blog about Narcissists/Psychopaths and their constant lying. It rang a bell with me. Below are some of the tall tales I heard. Wonder what they told you? Be interested to hear your stories.
Lies – all lies – but it took me a while to figure that out. His stories were always amusing, self-deprecating, not told in a bragging or boasting way…just stories. But they always had a bit of the dramatic to them. Like: He once got even with his police-officer aunt, who had it in for him, by attaching a rope to her axle and tying it to a rock, then peeling out in front of her – when she jumped in the car and floored it, the entire axle came off. He had to join the Army because he tried to shoot his Dad who was beating his Mom and the cops gave him that as an option to not go to jail. He eventually was assigned as one of the drivers for a general. As a joke he and his buddies bought a pig and trained it to walk in parade, in uniform, for one of the big inspections. He was picked for a special team of interrogators and shipped clandestinely into Vietnam to question prisoners. He once got one to talk by lining up his family on top of a hill and pretending to shoot them. As he fired a blank pistol they were pulled over the crest with ropes tied to their waists. He was shot twice getting into a helicopter after one of these interrogations and had a scar in his chest and on his leg.
When he left the Army he became a truck driver – but not just any truck driver – he moved classified loads of secret cargo for the government, accompanied by escorts in black sedans because of his Top Secret Army credentials. He was once pulled over in a weighing stations while hauling ammo and the police officer in charge refused to look at his credentials, so he used his special phone provided by the government and within a few minutes was told to drive on. Once, driving a load through Arizona, someone shot at him with a bow and arrow – he found three arrows embedded in his van. During 9-11 he was picked up by a secret service car and whisked to a secret location to help with interrogations and kept in a locked room for three weeks.
When I knew him he was trying to get permanent disability because he claimed a stroke left him nearly blind (of course that happened while he was driving his truck and he barely was able to pull it off the road…). However, it surprised me that he had no problem repairing a tractor engine or watching TV or was able to drive 60 miles round trip to visit another woman. Yet when I accompanied him to his disability hearing, he clung to my arm and touched walls as he walked and chairs as he sat, just like a blind person would.
After he left I started to investigate… talked to his brother and Mom and some friends of his. Yes, he was in the army – as an auto mechanic. Why he joined? He was flunking out and was drafted. The rope-to-an axle story – that was straight from American Graffiti. The pig story – that was a joke played on a German general in the 40’s. The Vietnam interrogator stuff – again, a story pulled from a memoir of a real soldier. The scars on his chest and leg? Removal of a cyst and an infected wound from a berry vine. The trucker stories? Found some of them in an old teamster magazine. He worked for an outfit that hauled dry goods. The other woman – oh – that was all in my imagination – he was just helping her out of a bad situation out of the kindness of his heart.
So yes – they lie about EVERYTHING! And even though I thought some of his tales were a bit over the top, I believed them – until the sheer number of them started to ring bells, raise flags. I would guess that 90% of what he told me was an exaggeration, a misdirection, a fib or an outright lie. I can now laugh at them, but at the time I WAS taken in. And what was his purpose? Who knows? To impress? To confuse? To make me believe he was something other than an aging, out of work, ex trucker with no prospects? Yeah – that didn’t last long.
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Hi emilie – the lies your ex told reminded me so much of what Donna told about her ex. The audacity of those people ! Not even just subtle covert lies that some people tell but so blatant ! Real con artists. I have a situation to tell about lies though I am not sure if it is basic lying or if it is gaslighting – but anyway, I recently moved back to where I have a home and where I had rented out 2 separate areas ( one part was a smaller studio that is attached but independent of the other ). In any case, I have moved back into the studio part but I did some minor construction to make it a one bedroom ( which is beside the point but I wanted you to have a visual ). I had spoken to the woman on the phone who rented the larger area and all seemed fine with her. Then I met her in person and she started to say really strange things that were contradictory or untrue. For example, I was talking to her by her front door and a big orange Tom cat came running up and she said that it was her cat but that he lived outside. Then I was outside on another occasion and she happened to be outside and she pointed to the far end of the yard and said “ look, there is my cat ! “ I’m looking and looking and couldn’t see a big orange cat and after some time it was discovered that she was pointing to a small dark multicolored cat that kind of camouflaged and she told me that she had this cat neutered and calls her “ momma cat “ but the cat lived outdoors but she feeds her but she does not feed male cats and doesn’t want them around. I didn’t question her about the big orange male cat but just filed it if you know what I mean. Then on another occasion she told me she didn’t think I was coming back and had planned to plant some trees. I explained all about trees and that I already planted 2 and my plan of the property was to have room for a vegetable garden ( which I had planted and was growing when I left )and that I wasn’t going to plant any more trees. So very soon on another occasion she brought up the whole tree thing again and how she would have planted these special trees like her sister had if I hadn’t come back. I then texted her to explain that she had no right to make plans about any planting on my property and then she replied that she never said anything about planting trees ! Well, I’m not going to go on but there were more things that she said that were strange and untrue. In the end, we are not talking to each other and are avoiding each other ( except by a text if something is very necessary) and it is much better this way. I’ll have to see how things pan out but I am definitely feeling better by not seeing or talking to her ! Blessings to you Emilie
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My ex-N also told a bunch of lies, many of which I don’t recall the specifics of other than making himself seem valiant and others dumb or crazy. One red flag that popped up on our very first date, which was for lunch but lasted 8 hours and included dinner too, was on our way to dinner that night and he claimed his ex-wife was bi-polar and his ex-girlfriend just before me was psycho. It immediately set off red flags but he charmed me and I pushed the concerns to the back of my mind. I’m absolutely confident that he told others, and his current wife whom he married 8 weeks after leaving me, that I was crazy. I kind of was by the time we split. I also wasn’t woman I had been my whole life. He made me crazy! After we split I reached out to his ex-gf and found she’s a wonderful person! She had also been driven to some “crazy” reactions to his behaviors and a timid shell of who she once was trying to keep him happy and avoid the outbursts. We both eventually recovered to the strong independent women we had been before he came into our lives. I have since moved to another state and she’s moved 2 or 3 times to other states but we’re friends on Facebook.
He claimed when he was younger he had been part of a stolen vehicle ring that stripped the VIN numbers off the cars and then covertly shipped them overseas. Somehow, he knew law enforcement was closing in on them and he got out before being caught (in my head I was rolling my eyes and saying, “really???”) He was a retired prison guard from the state we lived in (I know for a fact is true) so I didn’t know whether the crime ring was a big lie or he somehow lied his way through the testing process to get hired as a guard.
One day, early on when I wasn’t falling for his crap as easily because I had not completely fallen for him and still had some strength so I was distancing myself from him, he came to my house and we sat on my patio where he told me he hadn’t been around much because his buddy’s young son (about 9) was found to have a terrible disease. He had tears in his eyes as he spoke and even wiped one off his cheek as it fell from his eye. I didn’t believe him but also didn’t want to be a horrible person if a child actually was terminally ill so I reluctantly accepted it as true. Never heard another word about this boy and about a year later he apparently forgot about this event and was bragging about how he could make himself cry on cue. That confirmed for me that the story was a big lie.
For a brief time we were doing a lot of hiking. On our final hike together we found a trail but when the trail stopped he began forging his way through trees and ground cover and eventually we had to cross a small stream. He hopped on a couple of rocks and crossed and just kept going without waiting for me or even looking back! I was sure he was hoping I’d slip and fall so he could “come to the rescue” and look like a hero. That was our last hiking adventure because he picked up a tick that day and that was the end of his hiking. I continued on with it after we split up.
Another incident wherein I believe he was hoping I’d get hurt was we went with some friends to a professional baseball game. We were in nosebleed steep seats on an upper deck off right-center field. There weren’t many others around us but at one point I had come back from getting food or using the bathroom or something, and had gone to the empty row behind our seats to get to ours. He was sitting in the chair next to mine and I had to step over my seat, onto the fold down seat of my seat all while going from the row above in this steep area. Most people would turn and offer a hand for stability. Not him. He was ignoring me and it was to the point that the other woman with us scolded him and said, “give her a hand!” Those people turned out to be some of his flying monkeys in the end and we have not had any contact since the split 7 years ago.
These people have an unending need to be the hero and they will tell lies and commit acts of omission or commission to put themselves in that light. It was about 3 years of absolute Hell trying to recover from an intense, overwhelming relationship that was half that span. But, it sure educated me and when red flags popped up in future dates of mine I bailed out before too much time was invested.
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Hi needtoheal – so glad that you were able to move on from all his garbage and to heal and make a new life for yourself. I’ve been thinking about why we can get sucked into their psychotic shenanigans and I think that we get isolated and don’t get the validation of our reality that we need. Validation is so important for those who are healing and also for them to hear stories that they can identify with. Thank you for sharing.
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Mine was a constant pity player.
Told everyone at work he was feeling down cos he’d found a lump but couldn’t discuss it cos it was private,it turned out to be a 3mm mole on his arm for which he was bandaged from shoulder to wrist. Then decided he had diabetes but would change the name of his medications varying between only tablets to regular high dose insulin injections. Then he had a stomach problem but the diagnosis changed each time he saw me, it went from diverticulitis to Chron’s disease to coeliac disease…then to cover all of it he’d say ‘I’m losing my memory a bit lately’….yes, he obviously kept forgetting I worked in the medical field. Told me he’d spent years working in Suadi Arabia earning 100 grand a year before marrying yet his first marital home only cost 15 grand for which he had a mortgage.
Said he hadn’t asked to see me over Christmas because he’d been soul searching sad feelings over the daughter he left behind aged 3 and was agonising over trying to reconcile. I offered to help, talked in depth about how to go about it whilst he was shaking and crying real tears. I spent that meeting hugging him and trying to help him and conveniently putting aside the fact that he hadn’t even wished me happy new year. He never mentioned her again. When I brought it up a couple of years later he’d completely forgotten having that conversation.
It got to a point that I doubted everything he ever said and that’s what made me research. Lies contradictions and push pull behavior. -
Hi laylabelle – the good news is that with the blatant lies, once you catch on to how in your face and ridiculous those lies are, it becomes much easier to spot. Then there is the type of sociopath whose lies are so twisted with bits of truth interspersed. With both though, until you get who is talking, you just feel so confused. I like this thread of posts because lying is an essential ingredient to their script and it is helpful to hear the actual tales and experiences of those who have gone through this. Blessings
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