To find people who tell blatant lies annoying?

[PenguinBear]

There is a woman at work who really annoys me. She is always saying something or other which is so far from reality I don't know how anyone can believe it.

Her latest one is that she swims for 30mins a day and managed to loose half a stone while swimming one day as she is such a great swimmer and goes so fast. I mean come ON, does she really expect people to believe that?! That's just the latest example in a long list, nothing I can do except walk away.

Why do so many people do this?

Oh my goodness I love nighty night cath and Jill are hilarious !

A bloke i knew when i was younger was the ultimate bullshitter. He told us:-

He was a ninja who had killed a chinese ambassador on a secret mission

They were using his blood to find a cure for cancer

He had rowed in the olympics

Plus many others. We just thought he was a twat and laughed at him behind hisback. Why do people bother?

I work with somebody who has faked 3 or 4 pregnancies and miscarriages in the last year. It's so sad. And at first I hoped that i was wrong, but no.

I knew someone who once told me that their livingroom window had been stolen by their ex and dumped in the woods down the road. Who tf would steal a window? And how exactly would they carry a 7ft bit of glass a mile down a main road without help and without being seen? she was also pregnant every other week and her family were dying off in strange circumstances surprisingly often. Possibly even more surprising since they were in fact alive

My boyfriend as a teenager was like this, his most memorable (and the last) being "I had to agree to go away for the weekend with the girl in my class (in uni), she's got cancer and it's her dying wish". Oh, please, you're not that special ffs! I have no tolerance for that kind of crap these days.

Bree what you said is very interesting. I wonder what your opinion is on this: Do you remember a few years ago a big news story (culminating in a fascinating documentary) about a young woman who was a serial bigamist? She was a total narcissist and fantasist, a bit delusional, and left a trail of vulnerable, slightly geeky young men in her wake as she whooshed around, styling herself as some sort of femme fatale, and marrying them all.

She was apparently epileptic, and I remember seeing her falling to the floor and fitting on the stairs outside the courtroom when she was on trial, while the cameras were on her. I've always wondered whether that was genuine, and whether being epileptic went hand in hand with her complex MH issues, or whether it was a piece of theatre for the benefit of the cameras.

I was when I saw my medical records a few years ago and saw that I had been diagnosed with "pseudo-seizures" as a teenager. FFS, I didn't even know what a seizure was when I started having them (I was only 11). No wonder the b*stards never sent me for an EEG or put me on medication for eight long years - they just assumed I was lying and let me suffer.

I went to college with a girl who told tall tales. She had a metal plate in her arm so couldn't feel anything (until someone stuck her with a fork arf) spoke for 2 years with an Irish accent, (found out later she had never even been to Ireland).

She once came into the pub and told my sis and i that she had received a letter that morning from the hospital advising she had a brain tumor and had only 3 months left to live. My sis who was unwise to her ways asked what she was going to do (re treatment) she replied she was going to finish college first and then travel - that was in our first year.

I just ended up pitying her

I used to work with a girl like this. I like to think of her as a Catastrophiser rather than a pathological liar - always looking for an OTT dramatic angle to enahnce the most humdrum of stories. A complete attention seeker and a PITA. She did sometimes tell outright lies too, but mostly they were just ridiculous theatrical embellishments of the truth.

She was the type who would announce to the whole office in floods of tears that she was PG every time she was 2 days late for a period.

MrsKR I don't know - it's truly bizarre isn't it? I assume they have low self esteem and a need to draw attention to themselves (particularly with things that ellicit sympathy) but I just don't understand why so many people are like this. Everyone seems to know someone. I just cringe at mental image of me telling telling silly, dramatic, pointless lies that anyone can see though - I don't know how they can have the brass neck to do it!

I do sometimes wonder if there is actually anyone entirely sane, you know.

I had a friend at school that was such a compulsive liar. She told this guy was stalking her, left her notes in her house while she was sleeping, which funnily enough were in her handwriting. She then told us that she went to the beach with him and then killed him and buried him in her back garden, apparently when she was carrying him back from the beach a police man stopped her and she told him that the guy was 'just a bit drunk' and he let her carry on......

Another time she phoned us telling us that she'd taken 100 asprin and her dad had taken her to the hospital and now she was home, that's why she wasn't at school. So me and my friend, really worried, bunked off school and went round to her house, she was completely fine and had just blagged the day off.

it's all very annoying but harmless. What infuriates me is the fob off lies I have been given by tradesmen not doing their job properly. Especially when they turn it round and accuse me of it being my fault and d4ny saying what they said. I really need a good voice recorder as proof !!!

ps. deny - hit the wrong key in my rant! sorry

I know someone who was terrible for this - funnily enough, since she changed job to something fulfilling (she's intelligent but was underemployed really before) she has largely stopped doing it. I suppose it's something missing in the liar's life that drives them to do it.

Funnily enough whenever I think of all the women I have known like this they have all been fairly plain, but have all had extremely deluded high opinions of their own attractiveness, and have believed themselves to be utterly irresistible to men.

I am one of those, unusual(?) people who cannot lie. Even a white lie I have difficulty with, but struggle to find something not unkind to say that is not actually a lie.

I used to work with an American woman in her 50s who said that her husband had been a firefighter in NY and died in the World Trade Centre. Obv terrible and I considered her a friend and always defended her against any doubters as I always figured who would lie about something like that? Eventually she slipped up and just embellished it one too many times, so sad and disappointing frankly!

I always get an overwhelming sense of pity for compulsive liars. Why would they do that, its so sad. It must be because they feel very inadequate.

Although it might sometimes be because they are trying to make other people feel inadequate, hmm.

I am like that dig. Sometimes if there is something personal/delicate that I'd rather not have to explain to people I find myself over-explaining the side issues and skirting all around the actual issue, without actually mentioning the issue, because I just can't tell a blatant lie if my life depended on it. But I am also intensely private about some things and I don't like to seem weak or needy or vulnerable so I have a real need to cover up stuff from people, which is a bit of a conflict of interests.

I hate that about myself. I am trying to learn to live by the 'Never Complain, Never Explain' mantra, but it's really hard. When people probe about stuff and you just leave their questions hanging in the air with a mysterious, vague answer......it takes a will of iron!

My ex is a compulsive liar and it caused the breakup of our relationship. It can have a devestating effect.

Lies she has told

1. She's diabetic
2. She has had twins
3. I used to beat her up and stalk her.
4. She had a sister who died of a drug overdose.

Plus lots of little, silly lies. She has residency of our children and it really worries me that they are going to be affected by her behaviour. I spent years trying to convince her that she didn't need to do this and I loved for her (she's a very intelligent and attractive person) but to no avail. Eventually the pressure told and I left but not without it causing me enormous damage.

I use to work with someone like that.

Told me that she was allergic to gluten so she couldn't drink milk!

Also she needed the day off to have an op, she ran like the wind when I bumped into her at Alton Towers.

She was one of those people who were never happy unless there was a drama going on.

PMSL at losing half a stone by swimming for 30 minutes.

I can't stand it, especially when it is in situations when you can't just say, "well that's clearly not true is it?" or "Hahaha you're SOOOO funny"

I have a good friend who lies a lot, I think it is all just down to the fact that she doesn't really have anything going on in her reall life and feels the need to be interesting so makes things up.
It is sad really because she is a really lovely woman and the lying spoils that.
To be honest though I don't think she even realises she is doing it most of the time, it just comes so easy to her.

DP had a girlfriend who told quite a few whoppers, mainly to try and stop him from ending the relationship. There was the pregnancy that never was (revealed after he caught her doing tequila slammers) and then dhe told him her mum had committed suicide. After they split up she got engaged to someone else and boasted to him about the arrangements for the wedding, including saying that her mum was coming over from Australia. DP thought it was kinder not to mention she was apparently coming from further away than that... got to feel sorry for people who do this.