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.

I once knew a woman who claimed she had terminal cancer. We did all sorts of charity fundraising. She made a huge show of it and loved the attention. This went on for a good couple if years.
I couldn't work out why she was still eating huge amounts of food drank like fish and smoked like a chimney and never looked or appeared to be unwell.
Turns out not only did she not have terminal cancer but that she she had never had any form of cancer at any point.

Hmm that's true senpai, but if that really did happen to her she possibly just couldn't think beyond her own loss. I know from personal experience that grief can make it difficult to consider other people's feelings sometimes.

If she's lying there is probably a reason for it. I still wouldn't feel too bad about finishing the friendship based on both her other behaviour and her treatment of the OP, but equally, I'd be reluctant to brand her an "evil cunt" or whatever she's been called on this thread. I'll save that for people like those china mentioned in her post. Though it was an awful, awful thing to lie about.

whatever the rights and wrongs of it, it's just too much work to be second guessing.

On the grounds of sheer lack of sensitivity, the fact she ruined your last days of preg & childbirth, the criticising your parenting, ignoring and the jealousy of you have other friends; walk away. If this was a partner or parent, there'd be more red flags visible than sky. No reason to put up with your life being filled with unsolveable trouble, unless she was your child.

I once had a colleague who would have increasingly unlikely but plausible things happen to her. I'm not too sure where the truth ended and lies began, but there were too many discrepancies for it all to be true.

To start with she had a mild/moderate disability and would do public 'awareness raising' and give interviews, then she sustained an injury, then she got cancer, had chemo and surgery, it quickly became terminal, and then equally quickly went into remission (with a big announcement at someone else's birthday), then her sister went to prison, then she wrote a screenplay which a Hollywood A-list family friend loved and was going to direct and star in, then she won a competition, then her mum died... I'm sure some of these things did happen on some level but so much of it just didn't add up.

It's awful but I think it's more common than people realise, and I think it is to generate attention, kindness and sympathy. It's best to either ignore the person, or if you can, just ignore their lies and show them kindness for other reasons.

The more I read of these posts the more I remember acquaintances who did this. One was "the best opera singer in the South of England" was an amazing actress and had all sorts of health problems. I was just reading my fb feed and reading posts from a girl who claimed she had cancer at uni (she didn't go as far as fundraising - that's awful button. If she kept the money you raised surely she could have been arrested for fraud)? Anyway all of the ones I remember (and now I think about it there are lots) grew out of this by the time they graduated uni and started working, had families etc. Think it's an immature, attention-seeking thing for some people. For others it might be mental illness. I wonder if the OP's friend has changed her behaviour for the better at all. I'm not saying OP should be friends with her anyway, I'm just wondering.

Your friend is obviously very troubled/damaged if not mentally ill with a recognised condition.
If you really don't like her any more then just back off from her but if you feel she has been a friend then try to understand.
Personally, I would tell her that I knew she had made it up and that it upset me and then leave it to her to walk away or to try to remain your friend.
You don't have to go along with her lies or behaviour because it is not your problem.

has anybody every tried a form of ABA with these acquaintances to train them to modify their behaviour. eg, rewarding the truth no matter how banal with warmth and attention. And ''punishing'' an exaggeration or a drama with a muted response?

The woman I know, she's not a friend, so luckily, I wouldn't be around her enough but if it were a sister I'd try to do that! I am not saying this would work btw!

Hmmm yeah I kind of did that naturally with "the best opera singer". Because she was actually capable of being a lovely, fun girl when she wasn't spouting shite. I didn't respond to the stories that sounded exaggerated and had fun, friendly chats with her when she was just being genuine. Friendship didn't last though sadly. Wonder what she's up to now...

I had a friend like this. I met her when my boyfriend at the time had cancer & she then found out her boyfriend (who I never met & never saw pictures of) also had cancer. He then died. Things she said didn't add up, and my mum worked with her mum & mentioned it in passing about how awful it was. Her mum was completely shocked, & said it was completely untrue. Her mum confronted her about it & friend subsequently disappeared from my life but I've heard from mutual friends that the guy she was actually talking about didn't have cancer, wasn't in a relationship with her & didn't die.

I think people like this are dangerous. Let her go.

F0x I tried that with my sister when I started to click as to what was truthful and what was fiction. Sadly got me more grief as DPs and other family members are still enthralled by her. So the more I 'uh huh' or tried to change the subject, the more crap I got for treating my sister horrendously... It did work a bit better with a friend who was like this, but ultimately I found her too much work (and I suspect she found me too much as I wasn't buying in!) so the friendship waned.

yeh, i can see that.......... you end up being cast as sceptical and unfeeling. It's a tough one to deal with. You can walk away from friendships but so hard to know what to do if it's a sister.

Must be awful if someone in your own family is doing it to you and the rest of your family. I did see the best opera singer around her family and she was totally normal and got on well with her sis. She seemed to save the tall tales for friends. We were at uni so wonder if it was an attempt to seem more interesting. New place, new persona? Her accent was completely different to her family's too and she admitted to cultivating it at uni.

I'm so sorry for your loss Flambola

i will never understand what motivates people to lie like this. My first baby was stillborn when I was eleven days overdue just over ten years ago. At the time I used the Sands Internet forum quite a lot. There were a number of posters on there who were discovered to be fakes. Some even went as far as using a picture, purloined from somewhere,of a stillborn baby,as their avatar!! My second daughter was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of 4 and I am a member of a few oncology Facebook groups, again there have been a couple of fakers discovered on these. It's unbelievable.

Unfortunately I know people in real life who are quite capable of this. My brother is an inveterate liar as is my friend's mother who actually told me she lost a baby, at 22 months, to spina bifida and went into great detail about his birth and death but the second time she told me about him his name had changed. Her daughter and ex husband later confirmed it was all a lie. I was 14 when she told me this and couldn't imagine an adult lying about such a terrible thing. Having gone on to lose a child and have a second diagnosed with a serious life threatening illness it's even more sickening.

Hi, thanks for all the replies.

I hadn't considered that there could be abuse. Your replies have made me question my certainty that she is lying, but I don't think the mother would be trying to cover it up as my "friend" described a funeral that her whole family attended. She was cross that the father of the baby and his family did not attend. She said it was a class mate.

I didn't ask the mother about it, i made a statement about how her daughters past must haunt her everyday (in trying to excuse her for things she had done to her mum), the mum asked what i was talking about, i said the baby, she had no idea what i was talking about. At first she thought i had made a mistake, confused her with someone else etc.

Someone on here asked about other lies, there are lots of little things like her subsequent baby crawled at three months, could read age two (he couldn't even talk), that she knew gangsters who kidnapped her friend, was best friends with a celebrity.... I mean some could be true but I dunno...
There have been larger lies. When I met her she told me she had cancer and was in recovery. Her boyfriend at the time accidently outed her as he did not know what she had been saying. She claimed I had misunderstood and she was talking about someone else but this was untrue. I distanced myself at that point but over time I saw her again.
She said her Dad was dead, then another time said he lived in London. I put that lie down to her sense of being abandoned, maybe she meant he was dead to her.
She constantly has to out do. I went on holiday abroad, she used to live there, I went to a concert, she had previously met the person I went to see.... Again, could be true I suppose but the story outdoing is annoying.

So, hands up, I don't really like her. However we have a long history and I have always put up with things as I assumed she was messed up from the stillbirth and she literally has noone else. She occasionally makes other friends but for one reason of another they never last long.

So given the answers here, the lack of a solid lie, should I give her a chance to explain? I could do as another poster suggested and just tell her what was said by her mum. Deep down I don't want to get drawn in any further, but a part of me feels guilty that I am abandoning her when I have no solid proof she has lied about this. Yes she has lied about other stuff, but I remained her friend and so cannot use that as ammunition against her now. To be clear, if this is a lie I will never forgive it, shall walk away.

labtest, yes, it's commonplace my friend is on a forum for parents of children who've had serious heart operations. She gets invested in to other children's recovery and progress, and one day she had tears rolling down her cheek because somebody's child had 'died'. Except it turned out that the child had never existed. The level of insanity is baffling.

Considering all the detail in your update of her unstable behaviour and propensity for fantasising it seems much more likely that this is ANOTHER lie as opposed to her Mum lying.

As I said in a previous post, she's like a troll on MN or similar site, it's just she does it in RL. Avoid her, she sounds thoroughly awful.

And Labtest, sorry for your terrible losses.

In my first job I was supervised by a woman aged about 58. She had no children but constantly talked about "My Little Suzie" her DD who had died. Suzie's age at death and cause of death changed on a daily basis. I began to seriously doubt the veracity of her story. Another member of staff pulled me aside and told me that as far as they could ascertain the woman had been pregnant once and had an early M/C many years before, the rest was all fabricated.

I felt terribly sorry for her but it was a horrible thing to lie about.

In context, it does sounds more likely to be a lie, but if it was me I would have to just say to her what happened. I mean, you can literally tell her the story of how you bumped into her mum and what her mum said. If she tries to go down the 'Oh my mum is such a cow lying about that' route you can gently say that her mum seemed to genuinely have no idea what you were talking about regarding the baby. I think you'll be able to tell a lot from her response - accomplished liar or not!

shes a fantasist. You really should probably distance yourself.

Please trust your instincts. You know she is lying. She clearly has a personality disorder. I have known 3 women like this and I no longer talk to any of them. The relief is enormous. People like this take up so much of your time, it's exhausting. And you just don't have time, with a baby to look after. Cut off all contact. You can say you're too busy with the baby. Altho, I have a feeling she has a thick skin and won't leave you alone. So you may have to just say it bluntly. Tell her you don't want to be friends anymore and then cut all contact. I had to endure a friendship for 8 years that was like this....it never gets better and if I could speak to my younger self, I would tell myself what I've said here ^

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

I think this is the key. You seem to get nothing out of this friendship, your friend isn't even nice to you, and you are basically letting it continue because you feel guilty. Just look after yourself. You can't save your friend from herself and continuing to suffer her manipulation does neither of you any good.

I wouldn't confront. I'd send a card saying that I was unable to process such an incessant high level of drama and that most of my friendships are just based on sharing the normal stuff.

maybe she'd get the hint and it saves you from wading in to a big drama.

I recently ended a friendship with someone who lied a lot. Not quite to the level of your friend. But the good people here cottoned me onto the fact that however sorry I felt for her, true stories or not, I wasn't obliged to be her friend. She wasn't a good friend to me, and at the end I don't think I was to her either. Largely because I didn't like her. I couldn't bring myself to say it for a long time, because I wrongly felt obliged to be her friend. The relief has been phenomenal, I was euphoric for the first 10 days with no contact with her and now I'm just a lot happier!

I was also given a decent piece of advice elsewhere:
Never ask if someone is lying - the liars lie more and the honest get offended