Anyone know any compulsive liars?

[CompulsiveReader]

I joined one of the Mumsnet "due in X" groups and we have a WhatsApp chat which is lovely but there's one woman who comes out with the most unbelievable tales.

She tells these long stories with a lot of "she said this, then I said that, so she said this and I said that" just super detailed. The stories themselves are on the boundary of something that might possibly have happened on a weird day but the level of detail is just so high and screams liar to me. I noticed that the stories generally have the theme of people noticing something mildly unusual or impressive about her/her kids and making a big deal of it or else it's someone you wouldn't expect to pay you any attention (celebrity etc) having conversations with her.

I don't know why she does it though, nobody in the group ever really comments on or reacts to her stories, I suspect we all think they are lies (or at least heavily embellished).

Ultimately it doesn't affect me, I find it a little annoying but mostly amusing. But why does she do it?! Is this a thing that people do? Please share your stories of compulsive or suspected compulsive liars. I have never come across anyone like this before.

I worked with a woman who used to come put with some tall stories, one was she was staying in a hotel in America and there was a terrible smell in her room, it turns out that someone got murdered in the room and his body was still under the bed. Then another tale where she was walking down the road and suddenly fell into a manhole, and her head was just poking out of the top, sounds far fetched, but we never knew if there was any truth to the stories she told. Another woman used to speak about her 'boyfriend' who was a very famous Premier League footballer in the late 90's, we all knew it was just her imitation, but I think she actually believed it was true.

Surely Boris Johnson is/was the example to us all

A guy that I was in school with and sort-of friends with for a couple of years afterward. Couldn't stop with the self-aggrandizing lies. Having met his family, it was pretty obvious why as he was the (relative) 'failure' in a family of successful types. Haven't heard about him in years now but he was the same from his teens through to his forties. Always inflating his humdrum life into something more fancy. He could never be a staff member but always had to claim he was the manager and constantly changing jobs when his ambition exceeded his ability.

It was ridiculous when you'd walk into a fast food place and he would be behind the counter serving customers. Perfectly fine occupation but no, he was the manager and only serving customers to show the other staff how it's done only for said staff to say "You're not the manager."

A former manager of mine who was the epitome of Imposter Syndrome. Bright and clever but in no way should have been in charge of a local government department of two dozen people as she had zero interpersonal skills and a talent for rubbing people up the wrong way with snide comments and putdowns of the "Pot, meet Kettle" variety. ie, pulling someone up on absenteeism when she could barely do a full week of work herself without pulling yet another fake illness story.

She would tell Person A to go and do a task just to get rid of them then meet Person B and tell them to do the same task to rid of them as well. When confronted about it she'd deny ever saying anything to anyone and then go and hide in her office with the lights off and the door locked. On one occasion, she climbed out the (ground floor) office window and went home in the middle of the day.

She was always hinting at a dark past and inferred she was in a witness protection programme. This was discounted by one of my colleagues who had a family member who was in college with our manager and said that she had always been a friendless fantasist.

Yes. A woman who runs a local "rescue". It's not it's a hell hole dog trading/hoarding place that has many hundreds of people trying to get it shut down.

She's pathological and dangerous. She believes her own lies and has caused endless drama and pain for people and animals.

She is so dangerous she keeps getting arrested. Last time by armed police but her narrative remains the same. The police are corrupt and anyone who whistleblow is a troll. And terrible, dang ours woman.

My manager, if she told me it was raining I'd have to go outside and look.
The lies I have overheard her tell her boss are astonishing and she will throw anyone under the bus to save herself.
He life is one elaborate drama after another, I stopped listening.
Awful woman.

That reminds me of a quote from a chap about the liars. He has some learning difficulties and normally never says anything that could be taken as anything other than positive.
Approximately:
"If he told me that the grass was green, I'd look outside to check. And then I'd wonder why it benefitted him for the grass to be green..."
It described the situation quite well.

About 20 years ago i used to work with a woman who told everybody that she had trained to be a doctor but had to give it up when she got cancer and that's why she was working in a call centre (in no way health related work).
I looked her up on LinkedIn a few weeks back. No mention of medical training and a totally different career history for the years we worked together.

In the end, I just had to assume everything my then DH said was untrue unless I could be bothered to verify it for myself. The lies he told though and the way he alienated me from so many people 😡

@xxSideshowAuntSallyxx same, my ex never had any follow-up treatment for any of his ailments. Broken bones etc that just healed (when he'd moved on to the next thing to big note or get sympathy for). Apparently he's got cancer now too 🙄

A FOF is married to someone like that. She claims to be a qualified solicitor yet has never practiced because of "The Patriarchy" (sic). Funny how all those other female solicitors manage to have a career despite this all-pervading male oppression.

She claims that she is working hard on overturning the misogynist Law Society by, well, sitting at home and not doing anything approaching a day's work for over 20 years now.

She is incredibly argumentative and, when trying to claim legal expertise, will come out with a stream of legal terminology that is mostly US-oriented rather than British/Irish - almost as if she's just parroting what she's seen on TV.

I knew someone similar. Eventually a group of friends looked into it and caught her out.

turns out she didn’t have any family and no friends and she was just sad and lonely, and she told the stories to gain attention and affection .

you never know what someone is going through, they could be a narc, or they could be going through something awful and be in need of human connection.

My friends dh is another 'tall tales' storyteller. I'd not refer to him as a compulsive liar, as he doesn't cause harm or deliberately use it to manipulate people. But he's full of shit.

He's been there and done everything, his house is always worth 3x its value, he buys luxury cars for £5 and sells them for £5000, he not gone hiking, he climbed Scarfell Pike. you get the idea. My friend, his dw, usually tells him to stfu and to stop talking bollocks which always makes me laugh. We all pull him up on his rubbish talk now and take the piss . But it's amusing to hear him talking to strangers. Initially they'll believe him but then you see their expressions change as they realise it's all bullshit.

He had a pretty rubbish childhood growing up, so I put it down to wanting to be liked.

I'm autistic (may or may not be relevant ) I use to lie a lot (either to get myself out of an issue or to make myself sound better)

It still happens occasionally. The only way I can describe it is at the time it feels like I'm telling the truth but after I will question myself.

So for example someone might say 'do you know how many rescue breaths to do when doing CPR? 'And I would confidently say 'yes it's 4. ' and genuinely believe I'm right. Then later it will pop into my head that I might be wrong so I Google it and discover I answered incorrectly. But at the time I thought I was right.

But writing down lies suggests the person knows what they are doing. Could they be exaggerating? I know someone who does that. She's a great story teller.

My ex and my daughter are two peas in the same lying, manipulating, bullying pod. Lies constantly. They enjoy it and the upset it causes, while framing themselves as the victims.

Dd went to live with her dad and accused me of alsorts and alienated me to everyone. After 2 years of heartbreak and trying to get through to my dd, I've decided they're never going to change. I'm wasting my life trying to make up for things I haven't done or said.

I lived with one abuser, I'm not going to keep going with his daughter as well. Some apples are born rotten 💔

I worked with a man who constantly told unnecessary lies, I felt sorry for him really as it was pretty clear that no-one believed him. For example, he claimed to have been the inspiration for the football anthem/one hit wonder 'Vindaloo'. The circumstances in which this happened changed over time and depending who he was telling. Once a colleague separated (very amicably) from his wife and the liar dropped heavy hints that it was because he was having an affair with her. Then when no-one 'bit' he started to complain (in a very braggy sort of way) about 'rumours' going around about it. I'm pretty sure he also made up girlfriends- he was never just dating/seeing someone etc he was always in a heavy relationship from day 1 and helping the GF with some sort of personal drama (in which he was always the hero). Something dramatic always happened to end the relationship (usually GF getting pregnant by an ex and going back to them) before anyone could meet her. I suspect that he had low self esteem and thought this made him seem more interesting.

Yes, a former "friend". He had interesting enough anecdotes, but I don't know now whether they were true or not. Also seem to know a lot of gossip about others, who otherwise appear nondescript at work.

Has lots of enemies and it was always the other person's fault. Believed himself to be the victim, but he's the controlling and manipulative one.

Strange thing is he really believes his own lies and when you call him out on it, he doesn't even acknowledge it and carries the conversation on as if you've never confronted him and he just word salads you. It was truly mind fucking stuff.

I'm no expert, but having read up on narcissistic personality disorder, I strongly suspects he is one. Even if he's not, he is well and truly a practised liar amd very unsafe to be around.

After reading the posted anecdotes I’m going to have to “out” myself on here with some of the ridiculous things I have heard the past 20+ years. Just a snippet, my Sis claimed to be blind in 1 eye for a year when she was 11, just as I got my new glasses. Hospital couldn't find anything wrong with her sight. Also, she claims to be allergic to everything, or pretends she never eats certain foods, but I’ve caught her out plenty of times. My DB claims he's been in the military and played professional football. Both said to someone in the military and a professional football player in front of my own DS. He’s done neither. I tell everyone not to believe a word they say. They’re both hilarious if I’m being honest. Its definitely some sort of chemical imbalance in the brain as there's another 4 that's nothing like them.

I was friends with someone she didn't exactly lie but would amplify or let's say exaggerate the story she was telling although some of the stories she told I wasn't there to witness and it did seem like she was lying or maybe the roles were reversed?She always tried to create this persona where she was very intelligent, had great comebacks with her quick witted thinking and would put everyone in their place all her stories were about these types of encounters where someone tried to do her wrong and she put them in their place and everyone applauded her, you get the gist.

One day i went to meet her in the cafe she was working in whilst we were uni students and on many occasions she would tell stories about how she put her manger in her place and how she was running the place but what i witnessed was totally the opposite where she was actually in the receiving end of a heated bollocking and she just looked helpless, mouth zipped and nothing of the persona she created.

I guess all the things she wanted to say in her mind to her manager or all the other encounters she had with people hence the stories she's made up were actually the frustrations of her not being able to say them to their faces, which is why she would go around telling these stories as if she did say them and how she put people in their places with these great comebacks.

I had 2 friends who were liars, both different types of liars though, I found that interesting.

Friend A used to ramp up stories, make a dull story a little more entertaining or funnier with some half truths when sober, after a few drinks she would tell outright lies such as saying her mum grew up in a different country and she visited there as a child etc. - I believe this friend has a personality disorder which ultimately lead to the end of our friendship, the lies along with other undesirable behaviour went on well into her mid 30’s.

Friend B was a compulsive liar, would
lie all the time about big and small things would also “steal” other peoples experiences and tell them as her own - I discovered this when a mutual friend told me about something friend B had done but it had actually happened to me and I had told her about it - Bizzare! I’m not in contact with Friend B anymore so don’t know if she still lies I was friends with her late teens/early 20’s.

I knew a compulsive liar a few years ago. He claimed to have climbed Mount Everest without oxygen. I know some people HAVE done this,but it's very rare. He also said that he used to be in the SAS. And that he'd joined the Foreign Legion years ago. And that he was a bomb disposal expert. I came to the conclusion that he was a fantasist.