Friend lied about stillbirth - possibly sensitive

[CarolPeletier]

I have been friends with someone almost ten years. A couple of years into the friendship they told me they had become pregnant aged 12 and the baby was stillborn. She went into a great deal of detail about the whole thing. While I completely sympathised and cried along with her I wished she had told me another time as I was days away from giving birth myself. I felt awful for her dealing with that, especially at such a young age.
Since then we have had an on off friendship, she can blow hot and cold, make rude remarks, be very judgemental... If i am honest I think I would have ended the friendship long ago but I make allowances for how messed up she must be after what happened to her, and she often excuses her own behaviour as she suffers depression and mood swings as a result of the stillbirth.

The other day I was out for lunch and ran into her mother, who my friend does not see often now as they fell out. We don't really know each other, except to say hello in passing, but had a coffee after my friends had left. She started complaining about her daughter and how she makes bad decisions etc, and I mentioned how what happened as a child must effect her every day. The mother was gobsmacked, said it never happened and that it was a complete lie. She told me her daughter is a compulsive liar. This was verified by her friend who lived next door to them when my friend was a child, who would have surely noticed a pregnant 12 year old and known of what happened. I feel certain from their reactions, and from my friends past of lying and doing things for attention that my friend lied.

Part of me feels my friend must be mentally ill, and I should try and help. But mostly I just feel sick to my stomach that she could lie like this, distress a heavily pregnant friend with this lie, excuse every bad behaviour.... I just want to cut her out my life, even though I know she has no other friends.

Should I be more understanding of her apparent mental illness? Aibu to feel completely disgusted and manipulated. I just don't want to speak to her again, not even to tell her I know the truth. She has told others this lie too.

Hmm, I'd be dubious about both of them to be honest. A friend of mine had a stillbirth at 14, pregnant by her father who had sexually abused her since she was 3. Her mother knew (my friend told her) but denied it was possible/ happening/ etc etc. My friend attempted suicide - cited the abuse and lack of support from her mum. Her mum spoke with the hospital psychiatrist, denied any of it happening, my friend was diagnosed with personality disorder, other psychiatric disorders. Eventually her sister came forward and said the same things had happened to her - had her daughter DNA tested to reveal it was her fathers child and that she remembered her sister getting fat and then going away for a bit (sister was 9 at the time). Eventually her mum came clean. Until tha point you'd have thought my friend was completely bonkers, making it all up. She was made out to be a total liar, completely unreasonable and very very ill. And she was, but she wasn't making it up.

sorry if this does not make sense. im just thinking and typing....

Not saying its true if a child is raped/sexually abused by someone she knows. it often gets covered up. people say its not true. so then the mother would have said it was not true. if there was some sort of cover up. and also did she tell you in confidence?

But also it might be a made up story. does sound more like it might be. and if it is and she feels the need to say such a thing then i guess she has a lot of problems/ mental health or what ever.

but she defently should not have saod anything to you op its very insensitive. i guess she wanted some attention... its a shame its negitive attention

juno i agree could be something like that. cross post. put it much better than me

I am another one who was going to say perhaps it is true and the mother is the liar but on the other hand I think that might be through not wanting to believe she'd just made it up. Like it'd be the lesser of two evils if the mother was the liar from your point of view iyswim? But taking into consideration the rest of it, the other lies etc it does seem as though it is a very real possibility that she's not telling the truth. I think I'd have to cut ties, I'd want to confront her but I probably wouldn't.

I had a friend like this. She claimed to have had a twin brother she was having sex with. Got pregnant at a young age and lost the baby. She was a complete fantasist.

i would be sceptical about both really i don't think you will ever unravel it i would disengage and disentangle yourself from it all either she is a liar or her mom is either way is it really your problem to solve? if you want to take on that responsibility where would you start? just back away casually because unless the death was registered and you can google it up you will never actually be able to find out without calling her on it

I know someone who lies like this too. Similar stories about first her mother, then her sister having cancer, shopping with her sister for mastectomy bras, having to dash off to support her, the sister was pg and there was going to be an oncologist in the delivery room...little did she (or I, at first) realise that her sister was in an MN antenatal group and posting about a perfectly normal pregnancy, birth and first few months with the baby! I worked it out when the date & time of birth and the baby's name and weight were identical, and I was absolutely knocked for six. I never did tell the sister about the lies - how do you tell someone that their sister has told all their colleagues that they have cancer and have had a double mastectomy?

junosmum that is really sad, but it sounds different. As in, there was ONE consistent story in your poor friend's case.. Not hundreds of different new lies plucked at random from the big file of lies in her brain.

Stay away from this sicko. I worked with someone where the number of MC varied depending on who she told the story too. She was really creepy.

Yep. I know someone like this too. Just lied & lied about lots of things and then went too far. I cut her off and don't regret it.

I'm another one feeling a bit :/ because I know someone who was raped and impregnated by her father at about 11/12 and lost the baby, and the mother covered it all up. Vile fucking witch.

I guess it depends what the friend told you about the mother's involvement. The description of the 'funeral' doesn't seem to tie in with this being a covered up thing.

I just couldn't help thinking that the mother could have covered it up and now be lying in front of her friend to keep up the pretense. I think in your situation I'd absolutely have to speak to the friend or it'd bother me forever. I wouldn't accuse - just tell her what the mother said.

Fucking hell china, that's horrific. I was disturbed by the stillbirth lie, but the mum you are talking about really deserves the title of vile fucking witch. I really can't even begin. Awful, hideous stuff goes on in the world. So unbelievably sad.

Btw I am not in any way trying to downplay lying about a stillbirth in detail to a heavily pg woman in my above post. That's an awful thing to do, if that's what this girl actually did.

Im actually a bit aghast that its assumed the mother is right and the woman is a liar.
I know stillbirth is horrific and its easier to assume not true but ...
I dunno. I would like to find out if it were me.

If it was a massive cover up, imagine. Ugh

I have a friend who makes stuff up occasionally and I have never challenged her on it because the day to day stuff she tells me is completely true and I just sort of rationalise the other stuff as being some sort of need for her to make things up about big heavy issues to manage some sort of emotional trauma that is real, that is there, but it is not factually true.

She has told me lots of lurid tales about a relative. If I had to guess I would say some of them are probably true. But she has also told me that the person died; and about a year later that the person found a way to get hold of her out of the blue and freaked her out by trying to see her. Clearly both things can't be true. I didn't challenge her, I assume she forgot telling me about the "death". I think this is just her way of trying to make sense of something genuinely traumatic.

This is not like your situation where the person really hurt you and manipulates you with her "terrible past". I wouldn't bother to challenge her though because I bet you anything she will swear up and down that it's all true and others have got it in for her and hate her and want to make out falsely that she is a liar. I would just leave her alone. If it is true she still isn't a good friend to hold this over you like this.

People make stuff up for all sorts of reasons but I think it is much more important to ask yourself whether they mean well or badly by it (rather than whether it is factually true); what the effect is that they want to have on the people they are telling; and I think she wanted to hurt you and manipulate you and "punish" you for your impending happy event when she told you her story

Shameless It's utterly, unimaginably horrific, isn't it? The father is now in prison for other crimes (against some of his other daughters and family friends) but the crime(s) against my friend and some others go unpunished and the mother continues to go totally unpunished in something she was a part of and she still supports him over them. I believe she is evil and I never say that sort of thing.

My perspective is probably really skewed from knowing what this lady went through but I couldn't turn my back on a friend in this set of circumstances in case there was something similar going on.

I have met / known a couple of people like this who turned out to be fabulists, without a doubt. They lied more and more outrageously, often in an effort to top other people's stories, and always in order to impress or shock their listeners, or to gain others' sympathy. In their myth-making, whatever happened to someone else, it happened to them in spades. They were eager to portray their life experiences as being more extreme and vivid than those of anyone else, and beyond anything realistic. I wish I understood the mental illness that must be at work with these people. But in the end, really the only thing you can do is recognise their illness and distance yourself.

I think you should tread carefully as there is a strong chance her mother could be lying. Was her friend with her when you asked? If so it could well be the case that she lied to save face, especially if it had been successfully concealed at the time. If a 12 year old was pregnant in all likelihood they would hide it for as long as possible, given that and the fact that a stillbirth might not have gone to term it is entirely possible that she went into hospital, gave birth and then it was all hushed up when there was no baby to bring home without anybody outside the family knowing.

Plus often when children that young are pregnant there may be other factors at play like familial abuse. If it happened and her mother's attitude was that it should never be spoken of she may well just be continuing to deny something which she finds shameful and wants hidden. Or she may rationalise it as a 'miscarriage' and therefore think that what you said was untrue.

Has your friend got a history of making up things like this? Has she made any other outrageous and unlikely claims? People who do this tend to it repeatedly on different subjects rather than making up one whopper and sticking to it for years. Also, has her story been consistent? When people lie about things they tend to forget which lie they told. Have you ever noticed that the story has changed over time or details have been added or lost?

You could confront her. Perhaps couch it in terms of 'Your mother denied it happened, isn't that sad, she must be in denial. Does that hurt you?' Her reaction may speak volumes....

Maybe the mother was horrified that somebody outside of the family knew of the situation (especially if she's an older lady she might see it as some terrible secret which should have been hushed up and never discussed).

I agree it's quite likely that your friend is lying but I wouldn't assume.

I've known two pathological liars in my life.

The first was hilarious - he'd had about 7 different careers by the age of 40 including being a male stripper and being a personal trainer for Kate Winslet. He was also something so high up and revered in the military that he kept being called away to run special training courses in Afghanistan. He found sex painful due to only having one testacle and more than half his family had died tragically, including a pregnant fiancée who was either shot or killed in a car accident depending on who he was talking to. As long as you didn't trust or confide in him he made a highly amusing friend.

The second was less amusing. She was in my year at school and convinced a whole year group of 17 year olds that she had terminal cancer and had only a few weeks to live. Everyone was devastated. But a few months later we were just very confused!

Just because the mother/neighbour didn't know, it doesn't mean she wasn't pregnant and miscarried late.

Also what lies has she told you over the years?

What a tangled web. I can see why some posters are saying it may be the mum hiding things or trying to keep things firmly brushed under the carpet.

I have a friend who had a secret pregnancy, hidden from ALL friends and family, gave the baby up for adoption, decided she had made a terrible mistake, went through all the steps to get him back, and NONE of us knew. Another close friend and I only found out by chance a year later, when she had her DS back with her. She had moved out and pretty much cut all contact with everyone to hide it. A few months later, I bumped into her brother at a bar and asked how he liked being an uncle. Cue total shock. (I felt awful, I didn't realise she still hadn't shared her secret with everyone)

My point is that if f you had asked her mother at the time what she felt about having a grandson who had been given up for adoption, she would have been just as shocked and in denial as your friend's mum. Not saying that is the case, just saying it is possible.

I wouldn't assume she's lying. What makes the mother more trustworthy? And if she told a lie, which bit was it? If there was a pregnancy and still birth that was hushed up then she may not have had a funeral, I can see how you could fantasise that the funeral went ahead and pretend that it happened in order to feel better. The problem is that you can't know, you can only rely on instinct.

FWIW I lied about something terrible. I said my dad used to beat me up as a child. This is a complete lie. What he did do though is rape and sexually abuse me, I just couldn't say it out loud so I made up the lie as a halfway thing, it led to me finally being able to say what the truth is. Ask my mum though and I'm a fantasist.

I feel for this woman, I might be projecting, but if you can't manage to be friends with her then you have the right not to be.

Problem is... sexual abuse, especially in families gets covered up very well. Also, you can't always tell when a person is pregnant. I have a friend that was flat as a board until she was almost 7 months in, she still didn't get big enough to really notice. Her baby was fine and healthy, just small.

I would venture to say if she's this much of a compulsive liar, she probably was abused as a child. I had a friend when I was younger that lied about everything. Until one night while she was sleeping over, I found out that her mother was beating her. She lied to feel better about herself or as a way to escape the shitty reality she was in. I told my parents who disappointingly minimized it and told her that her mother "just had issues". I'm pretty sure since my mother was a teacher, that was illegal to not report it. But that's a story for a different day. She grew out of it when she moved out during her teen years and had no reason to lie.

That said, lies or not... She shouldn't be telling you about a still birth a few days from giving birth. That's just shitty behavior. It's like telling someone who's child is off on a class trip about the time their child ran into the street and got hit by a car and died during a class trip.

It accomplishes nothing except make the other person worry. Her baby has been gone a long time, she had no right to put that sort of stress on you. She could have waited to tell you since she apparently kept it a secret for this long.

I'd ditch personally. She sounds like too much drama.

Maybe the pregnancy brought back memories for her though. I have had a stillbirth and every pregnancy around me reminds me of what I've lost. I worry about other mothers. I've never said anything to these women but people cope in different ways.

My mum seems to have forgotten about my son too and it's not even been a year.