I don't have the patience for these folks. My former work BFF has turned into a compulsive exaggerator and we just don't hangout that much anymore unless we are with other friends.
Example, she said she ran a marathon in "about 5hrs". I checked her time online, it was closer to 7hrs.
Post by LoveTrains on Aug 14, 2012 13:00:59 GMT -5
I had a male and female friend like this in high school. Then they started dating and became the craziest train wreck of a relationship/couple, ever.
I eventually had to really distance myself from the female friend. Her little lies were really hurtful and cruel during a wedding of a best friend. She would make up stuff about why she couldn't attend wedding events like the shower or bachelorette party, would lie about school and work, etc, etc.
Post by jillboston on Aug 14, 2012 13:01:39 GMT -5
And I thought my MIL was bad.. She told me that she also got into Boston College (my alma mater) but that her father wouldn't let her go there because she is a girl. (I knew that she hadn't gone to college) . I said " oh it must have been the College of Sacred Heart because BC didn't accept women until the 70's". Then she told me that my DH was accepted at Harvard but went to Bentley instead. Um. No.
Post by jillboston on Aug 14, 2012 13:06:51 GMT -5
I just don't get liars. My 5 year old self relates to them - not so much anymore.. At show and tell in kindergarten my friend Sue talked about her pony so I lied and said I had one too because I was jealous.
Post by catsarecute on Aug 14, 2012 13:11:26 GMT -5
My husband reconnected with a high school friend recently. I always got a strange vibe from this guy but couldn't figure out why. He claimed to be a baker and posted pictures of these crazy elaborate cakes on his facebook page. Turns out he stole the pictures from various blogs and websites. A friend traced every picture back to the original site.
He also told a friend across country that he was going to come out and visit him. He said he got his plane ticket and was looking forward to it. When the time came for him to go out, he never showed or never said a word about it to his friend. His friend knew he was lying all along because he is a liar. So weird. I don't know how people can remain friends with strange people like that.
Yes, a good friend. One example is when she missed my shower and said it was because she left my gift on the train and was trying to retrieve it. She then posted pictures on Facebook that she was at a Cub's game. She also talks about non-existent promotions, vacations, etc. I just know to take everything that she says with a grain of salt.
I have a coworker like this. She is known as Hyperbole Hannah. The only people that are really friends with her are the ones who believe her strange stories. Most of the lies are harmless and ridiculous, but it really irks me.
Post by EmilieMadison on Aug 14, 2012 13:23:08 GMT -5
My sister is. The worst part is that she lies about things to us (her family) that we ALL KNOW is a lie. I have no idea how she doesnt take a second to consider that. But it really must be a compulsion because she keeps 'em coming. It's embarrassing (and I admit, entertaining).
This sounds like my sister. At a glance, her Facebook profile makes her life look like something it's not. She has listed schools she only attended for a semester, pretends to have several degrees. She also claims she lived in NYC because her husband went into the city PT for work and had an efficiency apartment which she visited several times. It's listed as her residence from x yr to y yr.
When you talk to her, she exaggerates so you never know what to believe or join in excitement about. Then you turna round and share good news with someone else, and it's wrong information.
I try to keep my conversations with her light these days. She wonders why I don't get excited for her any more.
Being a champion gymnast as a child Winning national writing awards Knowing certain famous people
She is very into "accomplishments."
And she is, in her own right, actually accomplished.
But now I don't know what's real and what's not.
Do you get the sense she's like this with everyone, or is she just intimidated by all the fabulousness that is miso and is trying to keep up?
Either way, I don't see myself having any sort of close relationship with someone like that. We could probably hang as acquaintances, but that'd be it.
LOL at fabulousness.
She is this way with everyone. Apparently, I'm the last to know or to realize this constant fibbing.
Post by heliocentric on Aug 14, 2012 13:32:52 GMT -5
There is a woman in our circle of friends like this. She exaggerates tons of things and it drives me insane.
Every story turns into something fantastic. She goes to see a band and gets invited on stage and meets the band and is asked to be in a video. Or goes to a restaurant and the owners befriend her and make her special meals that aren't on the menu. (Maybe these things happened once, but with her they are a common occurrence.) She claims she could do the one-armed pushups in P90X. The woman in the video can't even do them (though I'm sure some women can).
Once when I drinking and feeling ornery I called her out. She refused to budge. She insisted she could get from our house (we're neighbors) to the closest IKEA in 20 minutes without speeding. The closest IKEA is 35+ miles away. When I called her on it, she said "she grew up in the area and has special shortcuts." Unless they involve time travel she is full of shit.
DH is friends with her and it honestly is a point of contention for us. I admit I'm probably extreme on the factual side, though, so it's like oil & water.
That was a poster named HCrimson08 who had quite the imagination (and had actually had another lying liar who lies username before HCrimson08 -- on that one, she pretended to be a 9/11 survivor who had lost her boyfriend).
Yes, she was a liar because she was a one-upper. We cut her out of our lives and it has been so much better since. One of my bffs had a friend like that and her lies were straight up ridiculous...fake name, fake age, fake place of birth, fake education, fake money, everything was fake. Her whole life is a lie. Sometimes I check out her fb page and it's like reading fiction. I feel so sorry for those people who feel like they need to do that.
Yes, one of my good friends in HS (that I am still friends with now) lied constantly. I am not sure in her mind she was even lying, I think she sometimes just kind of....got her truths mixed up? I'm not sure. but we got into a lot of arguments bc she would lie about something and the truth wouldn't have been a big deal (ie. "do you want to go to the movies tonight?" "I can't, I have to take care of my grandma who just got out of the hospital." Then I would find out she went on a date with a random guy. I didnt care if she didnt go to the movies, but why the lie?)
Anyway, so we are still friends but I just take everything she says with a grain of salt. May be true, may not be. For all I know she has stopped the lying and everything is true but like I said, grain of salt.
I have an aunt like this. It causes me not to trust her with any important/sensitive information.
Some examples: She was paid by CVS to go to cosmetology school so she could help customers put on/pick out makeup/ WTF? She knew JFK when he was alive She has had lunch several times with the well-known lead singer of a band that was famous in the 70s, because he was a patient at the office where she worked. She has hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank My uncle is planning (and has been for 5+ years) to take the whole family to Italy on an all-expenses paid family vacation so we can see where our family is from.
She has an addiction to pain killers, and I think these stories pop up more when she is using than when she is not.
Not a friend, but a classmate. We went out a couple of times and she started telling me some extremely crazy stories that were also contradicting. I had thought she was a nice, decent girl but after getting to know her a little bit better and discovering her lies, I had absolutely no intention in developping a friendship. I think that she herself realised she had talked too much because she didn't call me or email me anymore.
On the other hand, my mother is a compulsive liar. Some are white, small lies that she tells to strangers but some others are very big. This is one of the multiple reasons why I can't have a relationship with her, is so hard for me to believe her after I caught her with so many lies. I can't even believe her when she says she loves me
You guys know some serious liars. Maybe I should downgrade my friends to fibbers. None of their lies to me are harmful, although there was an instance where one friend lied to her boyfriend when bf and I were arguing. She basically changed her stance to align with his eventhough she and I had discussed it earlier that day. That made me mad but it wasn't a huge deal.
my mother is a compulsive liar. she will lie about the most inane details of her day. it is so pointless and infuriating. and it destroys any sense of trust - I just save us both time and assume everything she tells me is a lie.
I would not choose to remain friends with someone who does this.
One time he told us the story of his fraternity brother who was getting married and discovered his fiancee was sleeping with the best man and instead of calling off the wedding, he put pictures of them doing it under everyone's seat at the reception and did a big reveal in his wedding toast. That's a popular e-mail forward I've seen a few times.
He also seems to take jokes and anecdotes that he hears and turns it into someone he knows said this or that. Like the girl he works with who told him that her tire was flat, but it wasn't a big deal because it was only flat on the bottom. Which I know I've heard as a blonde joke before.
And he, of course, claimed to have a La-a in his class and even went so far as to say he had to call her mom about something and the mom yelled at him for mispronouncing it.
There was this hugely popular undergrad professor at my university who did this. He would tell stories as if he and his students had done something when I had read the same story in Reader's Digest jokes, or would take a relatively well-known phenomenon and rename it with his last name as if he discovered it (e.g., the Multiple Sleep Latency Test became the M_____ Sleep Latency Test). It gave me a creepy feeling back then, and even more as I got deeper into the subject area and saw everything that he ripped off. I think it made him a popular teacher because he was one of those "big personalities." Then it came out that he was screwing a bunch of his undergrad research assistants and he got fired.
Update: Interesting, I googled in a "whatever happened to him" thing and he actually didn't get fired, it looks like he continued to teach until 2011. I can't believe a major Ivy League university would put up with that crap.
Post by ladybrettashley on Aug 14, 2012 14:11:46 GMT -5
I had a friend in HS that was a compulsive liar and all her friends knew it. Usually they were harmless, but were always about how smart or rich or pretty she was. Yes, she was fairly smart, she was relatively wealthy for our school, and she was reasonably pretty. But she wasn't the smartest, richest, prettiest person and so she always made up little anecdotes to make herself seem better. She went on and on one day about how she got a 1490 on the SAT, but then low and behold, she didn't end up with honors at graduation (which she would have automatically done at our school if she had really gotten a 1490). I pretty much just rolled my eyes at anything she said.
Post by badtzmaru22 on Aug 14, 2012 14:19:49 GMT -5
I have a friend with a kind of popular blog who exaggerates and steals tidbits from the lives of other people we know and claims them on her blog as her own. They are mostly small things: a love of the band Hanson, having a shirt that says "crunk" on it. Both of those are comedic snippets that have appeared in her blog, but are actually things that are true of me and not her. The only major thing I question is a supposedly very serious burst ovarian cyst incident that she wrote about. I feel bad if this really happened to her (we aren't hang out all the time friends) but this story appeared right after this actually did happen to a mutual friend of ours and The details were so similar I have been skeptical ever since.
My mother tells lies and it irritates me that she tells them about things I supposedly said or did. Even when they are harmless when you call her on them she is very hurt that you would insinuate such a thing.
My mom does this. She exaggerates my personality flaws and then makes up a story to demonstrate said personality flaw. Then she tells the story over and over again until she believes it.
When I call her on it she's all, "Really? Are you sure? Oh maybe it was so-and-so. But I really think it was you."