As name suggests, I've obviously namechanged:
I used to do this. As a teenager, I built up a huge web of lies to my friends, my parents, everyone really. None of it was about anything hugely important, although in my alternative reality I had better friends, and more male attention than in real life.
It all unravelled a bit when one group of friends met another group at a party and discovered they knew different 'versions' of me iyswim. Mortifying for me but they were actually mostly really kind about it.
Since then, I've never done anything like that. But the urge is still there. It's almost like I go to tell someone a story, and an 'alternative' version pops ready-formed into my head, in which the events were a bit funnier/ more outlandish/ just generally better than real life, and it's hard to cut that out when I know it'll get a better reaction, and stick to mundanity.
I work very hard at not lying now, but it literally comes as naturally as breathing. With DH in particular I try absolutely never to lie, but even with him I occasionally have to go back to him and say 'You know what I said earlier about xyz, well it actually happened this way...' He knows how easily I lie, but trusts me to always tell him and he never flips out at me, so I always do go back and tell him the truth if the 'wrong' version of a story has slipped out. I'd never go back and correct myself with anyone else though, as it would sound too weird. I just try not to do it in the first place and if I do then I have to remember.
I think it helps I have an almost exact memory for conversations, so bar the random friends meeting accident have never been caught out. I don't know why I do this. Possible hypotheses:
1.I come from a long line of bletherers. My Mum and her family are extraordinary raconteurs and definitely all embroider stories that then improve with the telling. I've never noticed or caught any of them in an outright lie though.
2.My parents were in some ways exceptionally strict growing up, and early on I learned it was easier to lie and do stuff anyway than tell the truth and inevitably not be allowed. Therefore skills were honed from an early age. It makes me determined never to be that strict with my own DS.
- I'm just broken.
This is not a characteristic I like in myself, at all, and I do make quite a lot of effort to control it. I think in a way it's almost like being an alcoholic though - I get a sort of 'buzz' from a lie - partly peoples' reactions, partly not being caught, and partly just that the lies are almost always so much more aesthetically pleasing, for want of a better way of putting it, than reality. I have to try to avoid doing it totally, or I get caught in the buzz, not to mention the necessity of maintaining lies once they are started, and it just sort of snowballs.
Anyway - after that essay - I shall sidle off...