An article in last week’s New York Times magazine contained the following amazing statement: “Repeating a claim, even if only to refute it, increases its apparent truthfulness.”
Although the article had nothing to do with sociopaths, the statement made me think of my ex-husband, James Montgomery. Among his many lies, Montgomery claimed to be a member of the Australian military, a decorated Vietnam War hero, and a member of the Special Forces. None of this was true, but from what I can tell, he’d been making the claims since at least 1980 (we met in 1996). They’d been repeated many times, for many years—which apparently enhanced their believability.
Like most of us here on Lovefraud, I felt like a complete fool for being so totally deceived. Why couldn’t I see the lies? But it turns out that I have plenty of company. Psychological research indicates that in general, people can distinguish truths from lies only about 53 percent of the time. That’s not much better than flipping a coin.
No signs of lying
Some people believe that there are physiological signals that someone is lying—for example, extraneous hand gestures or averting eye contact.
In one study, scientists asked more than 2,000 people from all over the world, “How can you tell when people are lying?” The number one answer was the same: “Liars avert their gaze.”
This may be true for some people, but it is not true all the time, and probably not true at all with sociopaths. Here at Lovefraud, we all have stories of the predator gazing into our eyes while he or she lied through his teeth.
Some researchers believe that liars tend to move their arms, hands and fingers less, blink less, and have more tension in their voices. Still, these behaviors are not consistent—some people who lie display them, and others don’t.
The point is, in hundreds of studies, researchers have found no reliable signal that indicates when someone is lying.
I don’t know, but I assume that the studies were done on general populations, and not populations of sociopaths. If we can’t detect lying in normal people, what chance do we have with sociopaths?
Truth About Deception
The situation gets even worse in romantic relationships. The reason, quite simply, is that we want to believe and trust our romantic partners.
“As people become more intimate and more emotionally involved they also become less accurate at detecting their partner’s deception,” states the website Truth About Deception. “People are too willing to give their romantic partners the benefit of the doubt.”
The Truth about Deception website is dedicated to explaining lies in romantic relationships, and the information presented is scary. For example, it states, “Most people think they are really good at telling when their partner is lying, but research shows that thinking you are good at detecting deception does not make it so.”
This creates, according to the website, a dangerous situation:
- As intimacy increases:
- People’s confidence at detecting deception increases
- People’s actual ability to detect deception declines
- Partners have more reason to lie
The website suggests that the only real way of determining if a romantic partner is lying is through some type of monitoring or surveillance.
Awareness, intuition, evaluation
So what’s the answer? How do we know when someone is lying?
The first step is to realize that people do, in fact, lie. That’s how honest, trustworthy people get into trouble—we don’t lie, so we don’t expect people to lie to us. This is a dangerous blind spot.
Our initial clue that someone is lying will probably come from our intuition. If we get that hit, that inkling, that the truth is not being told, we need to pay attention.
Then, we need to critically evaluate what is being said, along with evidence that proves or disproves the statements. When facts are irrefutable, we should believe the facts, and not the pleas of the liar.
You can tell when they are lying–100% of the time—-scroll down—-
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.Their LIPS ARE MOVING! lol
gillian i was up on the pedestal…the smartest, most beautiful, most giving….etc….and then he would make a weird comment such as he doesnt know why hes so lucky to have someone like me and he fears one day ill wake up and see him in my bed and call the police!!!! probably played out so many times with others that he was predicting his own future with me…what a NOISY NOISY mind these creatures must have
Newworld, if you go back over the things they say, they leave “clues” to how they REALLY feel, and we just don’t pick up on it til later–after the fat hits the fire!
My X-BF used to tell me that “You know, I am an SOB”—HE WAS RIGHT—I should have listened! LOL
It is like the old “I love you, but…..” line. Everything before the BUT is FALSE and everything after the BUT is the TRUTH. Mine used to say ” I really love you, BUT sometimes I want to strangle you”
My late husband had a “friend” who was a P, and I knew he was a P—he treated his wife like a slave, and eventually she left him….one day I was with my son, we were driving back from a “wrap party” for the Independent movie he had just finished working on and on the way back to our home, I was upset with P-BF, and crying and as we passed the turn off on the freeway that lead to my late husbands’ P friend, IT CLICKED—I knew then that my BF was ALSO a P…It clicked like one of those “Ah Ha!” moments and I told my son then that P-BF was just like so-and-so, a flamiing P! I broke it off with the BF the next time I saw him. (and cried myself to sleep that night)
When my husband was alive and that P-jerk came over I was never even polite to the guy, and he really wasn’t so much my husband’s “friend” as he was a guy that just liked to fly planes so they had that in common. The guy used to tell my husband how PV$$Y whipped he was, and that HE had his wife “under control” and my husband should show me who was boss. After his sweet wife left, he would come over and whine that he wanted me to fix him up with some of my single friends, for “no strings attached sex” and I would look him in the eye and tell him that I wouldn’t fix him up with my worst enemy. Then laugh like it was a “joke”—haven’t seen him since he came over and showed his butt at my husband’s memorial service and I asked him to leave.
His kids are just like him and he can’t understand why. Didn’t fall far from that tree! Environment AND genetics!
gillian; my ex s path is the same i checked ph bill the week he moved out he called nearly every female he knew and i bet his conversations were probably the same as your ex h. i had to give the ph bill back as it was posted to my place by mistake but i read it and checked out ph numbers before i did. i still have some old ph bills and go over them sometimes try to firgure out who the numbers are he had answers for them all.i never knew any one who had so many female friends, as he called them but i m sure some of them were more than just friends. i also noticed form his ph records that int he weeks after he left me he called his mother nearly every day its weird cause when we were to gethr he used to call me every day so he repaced that with calling his mother, ph bills reveal a lot. their friends also accidently reveal thing sometimes, i remember i was a t a bbq with the ex and his friend said i was going to invite …….. a girl i had never heard of and my ex said it doesnt matter i m with someone now any way and i said who was ……….. he said just a girl i usedto know. then after we broke up i found out this girl he had a thing for ages since shool days but never mentioned her to me. after we broke up he looked her up and had a n afair with her. he was so good at not mentioning things or people like that . thanks and i agree you ex and mine made from the same mould.
My S – when we were actually doing quite well ( I thought) had the nerve to let a girl come over to borrow his carpet cleaner. He swore she was “just a friend and has her own boyfriend who lives downstairs in the apartments’. Big red flag, when she came in, she gave him a big hug/cheek kiss right in front of me. Mind you, he is 55 at the time and she didnt look a day over 25!!
Well later in the relationship – after many women became known to me that he was sleeping with, talking to, etc… I found her in his phone. I normally dont snoop for these things but red flags were everywhere and I was desperate to know some truth. I called her and come to find out, he had an affair with her on his previous wife, met this young girl at work and moved her into an apartment with him for 2 years!
Then had the nerve to let her come over, hug him and a big cheek kiss in front of me and tell me it was just a friend. No mention of the whole history between them, not to mention she is half his age.
Their phone is a wealth of information thats for sure. And they leave out details all the time – knowing that they are protecting their lies.
gillian,
May I come to that party? HAHA! I have a similiar image in my head.
In retrospect, I think the BM didn’t even have to lie to me about things because I didn’t ask. I think the things he jumped down my throat about were the things he was actually doing. Each time we had a break up spell where he would send me the most hateful email I could ever imagine… I would figure… well, I guess I am single. Plus, after a few of these outbursts, I decided to check Match and low and behold… “Online Now!” after each time he flipped… within the hour. First, I was shocked. Then, I got used to it. It was just part of the flip out program.
One time, he FREAKED OUT after we got back together because I fessed up that I had gone on a date during our off time. He always INSISTED on total honesty and transparency. (with me, that was easy because I was so honest anyway.) There was one date he would just not let go of… I went to the guys house and we shared a salad. Salad! He just couldn’t get over this. Much much later, he revealed to me once, then twice, that he had gone to a former lover and a new lover during a break down between us. Of course me and my salad were the most unforgiveable foul ever and his sexual relations were “with integrity.” Integrity was one of his favorite words to use to describe himself. “Sleezy Cheesy” was his favorite way to describe me. :o(
The Bad Man was such a nightmare. How many times did we talk about that stupid salad?! I don’t even know.
Also, there are men that I dated when I was much younger that I didn’t realize until so much later…like a decade.. that they were total liars. I am just not wired that way so it was the last thing I would expect from someone I was giving my heart to.
Now it’s “Don’t tell me. Show me.”
Gilliam,you may have to rent the ASTRODOME! for your party, but I want to be there too! Afterwards we can all go out and celebrate! LOL
YOu know it sounds silly I guess, but just imagining that kind of “revenge” (not shooting them or axing them to death, but just TERMINAL embarassment–that is if you could embarass a P) and then laughing about it is actually some salve to the soul.
I find more and more that I am laughing now–about funny things that happen during the day, or the one-liners my kids and I bat back and forth—My P son called me “Osama, my mama”—he thought that was sooooo cute! But you know it is FUNNY now and we all laugh about it. The other thing is he sent me a sign that said “The beatings will continue until morale improves” to hang on the shop wall, and now we laugh about that.
If the guys make any complaint about anything I always say the “beatings will continue” thing until we are rolling.
I am so glad to be able to laugh, smile, and joke around again. One of the best things about my life before my husband died was that I always used to say that “there has been more good beef, and more good laughs across this dining room table than any other table I’ve ever seen” and that was so true. We laughed all the time.
Even when my step dad was dying, we were still laughing—sometimes with tears, but still LAUGHING and enjoying each other. My husband was the KING of the”one liners” and always had something witty to say, just the right thing.
I never really thought I would ever get back to those days of laughing and joking and silly things–but it is coming back and I am so grateful to be getting there. Even on “bad” days (and they are so much less and less frequent) it isn’t as bad as it was. It is also good to see so much growth here with the people on the blog too.
Just a brief point about this blog entry – Take this to the next step and purposefully get caught at some of the more innocent lies to further reinforce the partners thought that he/she can always tell if you’re lying.
It’s like having a fake tell in poker. It’s all about control of the information in and out. You can take the inherent belief that the person knows you so well and reinforce the hell out of it to mask all sorts of deviant crap. People get unnerved by people who appear “perfect”.
It’s all about manipulation.
SecretMonster
I think that the majority of women have incredibly strong intuition, it is something that men lack, having exposed an inveterate liar what do they do, either they go totally to ground (like my ‘S’ has, haven’t heard from him in weeks) or lie their way out of it in the hope that they will survive yet another another day of total deceit, do they laugh up their sleeves thinking ‘great she fell for that one’ or do they sweat in a corner somewhere?
I am still in that black space thinking that maybe I was wrong, maybe he was telling the truth, but know I am not wrong, paranoia sets in, and you start questioning everyones intentions, which leads to a lonely exsistence. Sleepless nights and when sleep finally comes the dreaming is dis jointed and scary…
My ex used to hum when he told a lie, I used to think it was sweet but didn’t realise it was because he had told a lie however large or small they still had to be invented… Yes, he is sick, yes he does need help, yes he will carry on with his games, but to him them are not games they are his life.
Manipulation is soul detroying because you end up not believing in yourself, I am fortunate I wasn’t taken for any money but feel I have lost part of my soul, but invariably you wander around (I do anyway) taking to yourself argueing with the other person he has created (the person HE created in you) I have come up with …
All he gave me materially I can return
What he took from me is irretrievable
A friend said yesterday that I was grieving and needed to get it all out, when someone close dies you have something to show for the years of love, the feeling I have at the moment is eating into me, I sway from missing him to hating him, please someone tell me that it does get better
Actually SM, I have used just this thing in playing poker, and I am quite adept at playing poker.
Years ago I read a book called “Body Language” which was my first introduction (at the time a teenager) to the way our Body Language speaks much “louder” than our mouths, and is generally more “truthful.”
Ps are to some extent “successful” or not so much, by their ability to manipulate their “body language” (which includes of course tone of voice, facial expressions etc) to appear to be truthful. In some ways they have an advantage in that they are not hampered by a conscience which will make non-Ps tend to “give away” their deceit.
Fortunately for the rest of us, the Ps can’t keep this up 100% of the time and there are “cracks” in their “masks” that if we understand them and what they are, make them much more easily detectable when we see a P again. The most obvious one to me is when they are frustrated that you will not accept their lies, is that eventually many seem to give you a LOOK that is almost specific I think to Ps–it is a look of utter RAGE that I can’t remember a single instance of seeing on a Non-Ps face even under the most trying of circumstances or no matter how mad a Non-P got.
Other past victims have also described this LOOK—so I know I am not imagining this—the whole trick I think to staying away from Ps enough distance that they can’t prey on us is to be able to SPOT these “cracks in the mask” and realize that they are the sign of a PREDATOR and disengage from all of the other “appearances” of their being “nice.”
I’ve had the displeasure to encounter many Ps in my family and my life and all of them have had significant cracks, including the LOOK, and now that I really do “get it” I will never ever fall prey to one of them again for a significant time because at the FIRST RED FLAG, I am gone! A few red flags almost always present in the early stages of relationships with them. Ignoring those early signs is what gets victims in trouble and allows them to be hooked in.
And, by the way your “getting caught in an innocent lie” wouldn’t get you by my P-dar detector now, because at the FIRST lie about anything except “do these pants make my butt look big?” would make me totally distrust you.