Why do some people tell loads of small bullshit lies and think you don't know?

[OhioOhioOhio]

I've noticed this a lot lately, particularly with regards to one person whom I'm kind of stuck with, for the moment anyway.

Why do they speak loads of unnecessary small lies? What gain do they get?

I don't say anything but I do quietly think 'fk off with your bullshit' each time.

www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/compulsive-lying

@managedmis 😬😆

@DioneTheDiabolist - well, yes, he was an untrustworthy liar, but he was also kind, generous, a great listener, and the best sex I will ever have. Which is why I put up with it, but it was really annoying, and it got to the point where he knew I knew, and he knew I knew he knew I didn’t believe him. And we’d talk about it and he’d be totally normal for months and then he’d get stressed, and suddenly out came the James Bond stories.

Yeah my sil.was like this some of her lies were small but some were whopping she also massively exaggerated situations so she was always in the right and sometimes her lies were dangerous , she saddly passed away suddenly a few years ago and in an obituary her friend wrote ,she was apparently a very talented swimmer in her youth and had successfully swum the English Channel ,which my dh,her brother was most surprised about and doesn't recall it!

Just wanted to acknowledge your contribution @gardenclubgnome. I thought it was brave

@gardenclubgnome, I also think you are brave to acknowledge that! However, if it's at all reassuring, they sound like the kind of lies which a fair few mumsnetters post in conversation here. It's almost just a social lubricant, especially if you don't know the people you are talking to (or are anonymous on a forum); people like to amuse and entertain, and they often want to gain approval or admiration. I can think of a few posters who are notorious for telling absolute whoppers .

It's usually as a way to gain attention or reinvent the truth from a place of insecurity. PIL do it all the time and are very prone to exaggeration and catastrophising. On virtually every car journey they 'nearly died' usually some minor thing like someone in front not indicating or whatever, oh DD loves her cousins so much and talks to their photos (she's met them twice and at 15 months she 100% couldn't give a toss. She mostly talks about the cat), and making up that DD had crawled for the first time with them which they then posted on Facebook. DD still only combat crawls to this day but rather than admit her physical dev is a bit behind they would rather make up that she had done milestones. I tend to grey rock and dont buy in to it.

I knew someone like that. She told lies about being pregnant. Having a baby die. Meeting a man in australia when she had never been abroad.

The whooper was that she was having an incestual affair with her brother.

I work with somebody like this.

I would say she find rather than lies. Never anything that would be used against somebody, but just bullshit in everyday life.

She'll say she's done something work wise, when it's quite obvious that she hasn't.

She will relay stories about her family, which just aren't true.

I felt sorry for her at first, bit now my sympathy has worn thin as it's just annoying now that as the OP said, she thinks she has 'duoed' me.

duped

fibs rather than lies

Just call them out on it

I know someone who does this. This last year, she's cured herself of gestational diabetes, placenta praevia and pneumonia by going vegan. She's been hospitalised with severe anaemia but cured it herself with organic vegetable juices. (She had none of these and was never in hospital.)
She also tells everyone she's a penniless single mother, much to the surprise of people who know her husband.

I once worked with a colleague who lied constantly. Usually to explain being late to work. Eg. the car doors wouldn’t open and he had to crawl in through the boot, he had lots of car accidents,apparently, but was never injured and car was always fine, then he started having to go home early. The front door lock was broken and he had to wait for a locksmith( his wife couldn’t) .
He lied and said he had no children when his daughter was born.
Eventually he got sacked for asking for annual leave from a manager and suggesting he would give slip to different manager. He would then write his slip in full view of staff and remove it when he thought no one was looking. This happened several times.
I’m not ashamed to say we literally all spied on him in the end.
The frustrating thing is he could be charming so staff who rarely worked with him really liked him.

Friend, lovely journey, little heavy traffic, kids very well behaved in the car, first off the ferry.

Friend's OH, bloody nightmare of a journey, roadworks, non-stop traffic jams, felt like throwing the screaming kids out of the car, almost last off the ferry, stuck behind the idiot who couldn't find his keys.

She was always the same, We only eat home-made food, no additives. He came up from the freezer in the cellar with a box of Birds Eye beefburgers!

I had family members who were compulsive liars, which I just couldn’t understand as I’m brutally honest. One of them said that they knew how to win the lottery, although they’ve never actually won. They’ve always lived off benefits & have fiddled the system for many years, yet claim to have retired at 50 on a wonderful pension ... Then there’s the expensive holidays that they have, in reality they use the coupons out the Sun newspaper & go away in a caravan for a few days once a year. The amount of holidays they claim to have had would mean that they would’ve gone away about 3 times a day for much of their life. Yet they talk about everyone like they’re the scum of the earth .

It is pointless lying but loads do it.I would, and have always said the same ..rather deal with a thief than a liar.

My dad is sadly like this. I'm very close to him and love him but honestly, I don't believe a single word he says, everything is fabricated or exaggerated.

I think the problem is that he's always been addicted to dope, has smoked it heavily as long as I can remember and as a result has basically slept through his entire life. Its no exaggeration to say that he can sleep all night, then need a 2 hour nap at lunchtime and the same in the afternoon too. He has done so little with his life as a result, that he feels he has to make stuff up.

He's told ex girlfriends that he has been in the police and been in the army and has made up stories of mine sweeping in Kosavo. Just total lies.

He tries to tell everyone that he worked for himself for 8 years, or 12 years or 16 years (depending on how he's feeling that day) when we know for a fact it was around 18 months. It changes every time too, he's so off his face that he can't remember what he's told other people so can tell the same story twice with different endings!

He talks about an incident where he was arrested by the police at gunpoint and nearly 'had his head blown off' when in reality he was arrested and let go because his best friend had stolen some fax machines. We did have our house searched but as far as I'm aware it was a pretty standard police investigation for theft with no outcome as he wasn't personally involved. According to him though, our village was closed, there were loads of armed police and helicopters and the police came, took him away and brutalised him. No mention of this in the local paper or from anyone else at all. Apparently he had years of PTS afterwards which obviously gave him the perfect excuse just to sit at home, smoking dope.

I was watching the Usain Bolt film with him the other day and he started telling me about his amazing football career and how he needed physio after the games to keep him in tip top condition - he told lie after lie after lie, apparently they were injecting him in the shoulder with steroids at 16, he was made to do ice baths after each match, he had all these incredible injuries and was well known for being absolutely amazing etc etc... In reality he played socially for about a couple of years for a 4th division club, second team.

It's getting to the point that I don't believe anything he says. I wouldn't mind but it honestly doesn't matter to me what he has done or hasn't but I am personally offended that he needs to lie to his family and to our faces. He must think we're idiots.

Sorry, not 4th division, a pub team

gardenclubgnome are you autistic? I ask because I am and I do this too. I think it’s part of ‘acting’ in a social situation and also not understanding the difference between white lies (your hair looks great! It’s lovely to see you) that everyone tells, and different kinds of lies. A social lubricant is absolutely right.

I think one of my colleagues thinks I make stuff up. She tries to catch me out or trip me up and she asks lots of very specific questions.

For example, I’ve mentioned (because she asked!) that my DH earns well and I don’t financially need to work. So she questions me every single time I do extra hours (I love my job!) or say anything about payday. I think she doesn’t believe me. Although she’s been to my house so knows we are comfortable.

I was talking about a friends illness and treatment and she argued that that’s not how they would treat it. I have related a few funny or interesting anecdotes at work and she always queries them and wants exact details/dates/names.

It’s quite funny really. I actually love her, she’s one of my closest colleagues, but I can’t shake the feeling she thinks I’m a bullshitter.

I knew someone like this. Lovely guy, WILD stories.

But then it turned out that is IS a Prince. DID have lunch with the queen that weekend. HAS published a mainstream book and WAS doing work for Harvard. 😂😂😅

Sometimes I think people must believe their own lies ,I think my sil sometimes did ,but then often she would slip up.and forget what she had told people so I don't ,know ,I had an ex like this he told lots of silly lies he had scar on his chest and told me he had been stabbed ,but when forgot and told me he had ,had a birth mark removed

I knew a person like this when I was a teenager. Lots of outrageous lies. She was very overweight, came from a large poor family which it didn't look much fun to be in from the outside. I assume it was to create a more exciting fantasy life.

I was the only one who called her out on it telling her i didnt believe her stroy snd pointting out parts of the story that couldnt be true and we were very frosty with each other after that. Others would be friendly to her face but laugh at her behind her back which I don't think is fair. In summary I have no idea the right way to deal with people who are obviously lying.

I believe it's overestimating your own intelligence and underestimating the intelligence of the people you're lying to.

I used to to it a lot as a teenager - made up some whoppers to my friends. They must have known it was all lies. I think it was a combination of low self-esteem and attention seeking.

I'm grateful I grew out of it! But very embarrassed when I look back.

A girl I went to school with was famous for this. With some of the lies it was obvious why she did it - for example , claiming she had an older boyfriend who then died in a plane crash, which was clearly meant to get attention and create drama. However, she’d also tell weirdly mundane lies that wouldn’t have impressed anyone; for example, saying that a teacher we all knew was retiring had actually been asked to stay on because the school thought she was such an asset. With that kind of thing, it could only have been some kind of thrill around getting away with it (as the OP said, ‘duping’ people).

She’d also occasionally throw in lies that, while clearly lies to anyone who knew her, weren’t so outlandish that you could easily prove them false. For example , she said she’d seen a band filming their video locally - and while they were famous, and the location was very unglamorous, they weren’t huge like Take That or East 17, who would have caused riots amongst screaming teenagers if they’d been filming locally; therefore it could just about have been true.