Should I ghost my friend?

[Artemisanco]

I feel really bad about this and I'm looking for advice as it isn't something I can talk about in real life.

I have a problem with compulsive lying. I don't know why I do it, but it happens. It isn't constant and I am not lying right now, but I end up lying about events, where I am from, my job and other things for no apparent reason. I've gotten a lot better with this in recent years, but not always under certain circumstances, which brings me to my problem.

I met this woman online (not romantic) and we started talking. At first there were more people and during this time I lied about parts of my life. I never expected to ever meet these people in person, and so it felt reasonably harmless. Me and this woman however have started getting close over the past year and now she wants to meet. I consider her a friend and would love to meet her, but I've never corrected the lies that form some of the basis of who she thinks I am, and I feel it is now too late as if I say anything at this point she will just feel hurt and betrayed. So I don't know what to do. Of course if I suddenly cut all contact she will feel the same way, but if I meet her in real life and she meets my DH or someone else then I'm sure she would find out about things.

I feel pretty terrible and I don't know what to do. I expect to get quite a lot of abuse, but I thought I'd try anyway to see what people think I should do. I don't know why I do these things and it has been a long time since I've got myself in this kind of situation. I didn't think it would be like this and now I'm very stuck. I don't think she would accept me if I told her at this point; not because of the content of the lies, but simply because I lied in the first place and then covered it up for nearly a year. Maybe it would be easiest if I just disappeared, but we talk nearly every day.

Send her an email explaining the situation just be honest with her you have nothing to lose. Please don't ghost her that is terrible behaviour

Please don't ghost her. Ghosting is nasty and cruel. Coming clean would be best but if you can't do that at least let her know you can't continue the friendship.

I'm intrigued. Does your husband know you're a compulsive liar? Is your own life built on lies?

I'd tell your friend the whole truth. If said friend was me, I'd ghost you.

I would send @Shamoo’s message as well.
You’ve really got nothing to lose.

Shamoo’s message is good.

I think the more you post the more of who you actually are is coming through. You’re portraying a sanitised view of yourself to us. This is what you really need to address. Being the real you.

As for your friend, if you ghost her or if you tell her the outcome will be the same: she will be confused and upset. However if you tell her, she may choose to continue the friendship. If you ghost her, the friendship will definitely be over. Therefore you don’t really have anything to lose by telling her and everything to gain. Including being honest and exposing who you are, which is vital if you are to stop.

Speaking as someone who's been ghosted, please don't do it to this woman. It's very hurtful, leaves a person with a lot of self-doubt and questions, and when all's said and done she hasn't done anything to deserve that.

I'd come clean. The friendship will probably be over but I think you will feel better for it, and I'm almost certain it will be far less painful for your friend.

What sort of lies have you told her op?

This is critical, because if it’s things Like I like punk music or something it’s fine, but if you have lied to the extent the friendship is faked because she thinks she’s friends with someone totally different to you, You are the fake, and She is also vulnerable then it’s better to quietly let this fizzle out, no ghosting but just let it fizzle.

Telling her will ruin her trust in people. Ghosting her will hurt. And leave her wondering.

So let it slowly fizzle out and don’t let her know you basically have been cat fishing her.

think the more you post the more of who you actually are is coming through. You’re portraying a sanitised view of yourself to us. This is what you really need to address. Being the real you.

Capsulate

This is the problem. She's dangerous. In some way. So fuck twisting the knife.

I'm just finding it quite hard to explain in a way that is both honest (how ironic) and makes sense. I don't lie all the time to people and my life as it stands is not a lie. I still can't always help myself when it comes to strangers by randomly fibbing if I'm confident I won't ever see them again, but I haven't lied to anyone I know or care about beyond 'I think your hair looks great' for about ten years.

Without being too detailed, my friend and I share a sad life experience and bonded over it. No lies there. My friend thinks I'm from the same country as she is, because for some reason I lied about that. It's not relevant to the experience. I've lived in the country for years, but I'm not from there. It means that I've had to lie about where my parents are from to keep congruent. I've also lied about what I do for a living by about the same amount of saying that you are a vet when you are in fact a dentist.

If I'd known back then that we would get this close, I would have told her from the get-go. Not that lying to strangers is in any way excusable, but I lied about some things, didn't correct them, got closer and by then started to feel ashamed to correct them, kept up the story and now we're a year on and it's spiralled and I'm an asshole and selfish and kicking myself. I've never lied to her about my feelings or experiences, just about where those experiences took place. I've never wanted to or attempted to create any new lies either. That doesn't make it better, but I'm trying to explain.

The lies themselves would probably not upset her much if it wasn't for the fact that I've lied for this amount of time. If it sounds as though I am not upset or sorry... I am, but posters asked me why I lie in the first place, so I was trying to talk about that a little. I have mental health problems, but am otherwise successful in both my career and personal life, so I don't have a 'reason' to lie to people. It just happens. It's not exactly something I'm proud of, hence posting about it anonymously. Yes, I've tried to access help for my mental health, that's why I know how futile it can be.

@Shockingstocking

think the more you post the more of who you actually are is coming through. You’re portraying a sanitised view of yourself to us. This is what you really need to address. Being the real you.

Capsulate

This is the problem. She's dangerous. In some way. So fuck twisting the knife.

I think you've misread the meaning of the post you've just quoted from tbh. That poster was saying that the op needs to be more authentic.

Look, nobody likes being lied to, and for that reason, most people don't like people who lie to them. I think it was actually quite brave of the op to come on and tell the truth, even if it's just on an anonymous forum. It would be good if that courage extended to telling the truth to the friend, but I can also see the point of pps who are saying let it fizzle out, as the truth might actually be pretty damaging to the friend.

Most of all, the op needs to get some help for this problem. It is probably more common than people think, but some people tell worse lies than others. I mean, how many trolls do you see on MN, making up awful things about themselves before the thread gets zapped? It's horrible, but it's what some people do, for whatever reason. Nobody is asking you to be friends with the op or anyone like her, but coming on to the thread to stick the boot in, really isn't helpful. I just don't get what you are getting out of this thread @Shockingstocking. You don't want to help the op. You have written her off as unsalvageable, unless I have misread your meaning? You haven't really said anything which will be helpful for the friend either. Is it just stress relief, deciding that some stranger you've never met has a personality disorder, is a narcissist and is dangerous, swearing and ranting about something which doesn't affect you at all? You don't even know what she's lied about. All I can guess is that you must have had awful lies told to you before and it really angered you and you're projecting that anger here. Sorry if that's the case.

FWIW, the woman i mentioned on page one, i was never especially angry with, as her lies, terrible as they were, never effected me badly, or at all, except that i sympathised with her over her abortion, (the one which never happened). I just assumed she must be terribly unwell to tell lies like that. She didn't actually hurt anyone and she did own up and apologise. We aren't friends now, but not because I hate her, but our lives just went in different directions. She seems fine now and much better for confessing what she'd been doing. She is married and is a mum, doing well at work etc. Everyone knows what she did but nobody that I know of totally disowned her. I hope this will be the case with the op and it's important she knows this can happen. Not everyone, or IME not anyone or very few people, will react like shocking 🤷‍♀️.

Again, assuming nobody has gone to prison or been cheated out of money. Also assuming she didn't catfish in, for example, self help groups, about a certain problem, which she actually has never experienced.

Can't you just tell her you fibbed about some things in the group chat so that you wouldn't be recognisable online if it was someone who knew you in real life? Then you felt silly and couldn't think how to undo this. Then just give her the truth

@User43210

Can't you just tell her you fibbed about some things in the group chat so that you wouldn't be recognisable online if it was someone who knew you in real life? Then you felt silly and couldn't think how to undo this. Then just give her the truth

X posted with your update op.

I mean...you lived in a country for years, but said you were from there originally, when you are not..? That sounds like the kind of little detail people would change to remain anonymous on Mumsnet tbh? People are always changing gender of their children, number of children etc.

I don't know, because I haven't been privy to all your conversations op, but that doesn't, on the face of it, seem so terrible to me.

I would do as this^^ post suggests I think and then fgs stop making shit up!

The lies don't seem all that awful actually. I've shared online about my childhood SA and I would never have shared personal details about where my family live IRL. So I think the way it started is absolutely fine. The problem is that the OP developed a closer friendship with this lady than she anticipated and, rather than admitting earlier that she's told white lies about what country she came from, she made it worse by embellishing the lies she'd already told.

What this shows is that the OP should have come clean much sooner but I don't think the friendship necessarily has to be over.

Ok so the living in/from the country isn't too bad. Close enough that if she asked you questions about the country you'd be able to answer - unless of course the thinks you have a certain ethnic background and you don't? That's going to be pretty hard to hide if you meet in person?!
Parents being from there when they are not - well unless they come up in conversation - and I don't regularly talk about my parents to my friends - I can't see that being an issue. Assuming they never meet. At my age my friends only met my parents when I got
Married
The job thing though......I know you've used an example but vet vs dentist is COMPLETELY different and friends do tend to talk about their jobs so not sure how you can spin that one? Unless you fain ignorance and pretend you didn't lie? If you talk daily like you say I imagine she'd have to scroll through 1000s of messages to check the detail? If you talk about your fictional work daily though??? Well you're just setting yourself up to be caught out aren't you and would seem you like living the lies you have spun around yourself and it's harder to forgive?

I'd meet and see how it goes? If I was meeting someone I'd built a friendship up with online I wouldn't want to talk about my parents or my job - we'd probably talk about the issue/reason we joined the same online site in the first place?
Unless of course you joined a specific Veterinarian group?!

Can't you just tell her you fibbed about some things in the group chat so that you wouldn't be recognisable online if it was someone who knew you in real life? Then you felt silly and couldn't think how to undo this. Then just give her the truth

I was going to suggest this too. I know it's possibly more lies, but gives you a way to tell the truth. Point out that the experience you both went through is true, tell her absolutely everything you've made up and what the truth is, and that you understand if she doesn't want to meet up any more but you needed to come clean before meeting. You lose nothing by doing this but might be able to gain a real life friendship without any ongoing lies.

To message someone every day for that long must mean you have some kind of connection and it would be a shame to treat her with such contempt by ghosting her.

Who knows. Maybe she's lied about some things to you!

capsulate

I think you're awfully invested in this. And in twisting my words. I would hardly write off someone while also advising them to get therapy. Unfortunately I do think her attitude to what she has done is odd and disappointing in terms of the likelihood that she will change. And she does need to change because you can't be close to someone and lie persistently without causing damage. I doubt she'll change. But hope she does. However she seems very good at eliciting sympathy so it probably won't be her who ends up blind sided and suffering from trust issues.

Ah apologies @Shockingstocking, I must have misunderstood your meaning in that case. I was feeling invested out of empathy for the op when I thought you were being overly cruel and couldn't understand why. Now that I know it is a simple misunderstanding, I will be less so .

Or perhaps I meant unnecessarily aggressive rather than overly cruel 🤔. Or maybe both...but anyway, now I know I've misread your meaning, I apologise unreservedly @Shockingstocking.

No worries. I don't think the OP gets that this is very damaging to be on the other end of. I'm not frothing at the mouth but I do think she needs someone to sit her down and show her the consequences of her behaviors for others and address whatever wider picture this is part of. Rather than suggesting a new lie or offering sympathy that won't lead to her getting some help. I guess I am a bit miffed because she doesn't want help, she wants PR expertise in pivoting out of a scrape. This will have consequences for someone and she should take this as a signal from the universe to dig deep at this point. Who knows what the other party has shared or how they'll feel.

Just tell her you've been catfishing her and leave the ball in her court. At least you'll still have a chance at friendship whereas if you ghost her there will obviously be no friendship and you would also have to live with yourself having been such a cruel coward.

@Shockingstocking I'm not really looking for PR advice on how to get out of this. When I posted earlier today I already knew that I was reaching the end of the line when it came to this situation, and I guess I was trying to prepare for that and get a feel for what might happen. The reality of likely losing or damaging this friendship is hard for me, the fact that it is my fault doesn't change that.

If I was in denial about it, I don't think I would have posted. I was hesitant to name the lie for the exact reason that I think it sounds less awful than it actually is, so I wanted to leave it at the concept.

I have now told her.

Well done. She's the victim here

Please get yourself in front of a good psychologist. Via zoom if necessary. This is not ok and you are clearly not ok

Has she responded??

@ivfdreaming No, I've only just told her.