Why do people lie?

eddiecat78

I don't mean the Philip Schofield type of lie - I mean when people lie for no reason.
We were once invited for coffee by a very wealthy retired couple who had moved in next door. They said they loved the house and the village and intended to stay for a very long time. That afternoon we discovered that their house was already back on the market. I felt they had taken us for a couple of total idiots

I don't think they were doing it to cause an effect on you. I think they were doing it to make themselves feel better. So, not to make you feel like idiots but to make themselves feel like something they weren't: part of a community. As if they were living a little dream that they knew was about to be taken from them.

I've recently learned that when someone says "I have absolutely no reason to lie to you, and I never will", take it with a massive handful of salt!
My partner has said this to me for years and I've got so sick of calling him out on his lies, he's finally been dumped, and I'll never believe anyone who tells me they have no reason to lie to me, because ican guarantee that they will!

DeeJaysMum

I've recently learned that when someone says "I have absolutely no reason to lie to you, and I never will", take it with a massive handful of salt!
My partner has said this to me for years and I've got so sick of calling him out on his lies, he's finally been dumped, and I'll never believe anyone who tells me they have no reason to lie to me, because ican guarantee that they will!

Good for you, DeeJaysMum! Hope it all works out well for you. (I had one of those in a past life!) 💐

I lived with a compulsive liar. Most were ridiculous lies that cost him money (I’ve got this or that freebie, when he’d actually paid for it). Thank heavens we split up. Guess it was him propping up a fragile ego.

LRavenscroft

A very interesting post. The people I have known who tell whoppers were usually out to impress because they felt inadequate. I do know someone in their 60s who has put on their profile that they have been to such and such a university whereas in reality they did a basic one tech year course 50 years ago at was then a poly but is now a uni. All their lives they boasted about what they were going to do but have never done it. Unfortunately, you do get situations as I am in at the moment of trying to get rid of someone who is trying to 'fix' me because they are so bossy and want me to meet them same time, same place, every month for afternoon tea. I am having to stretch the truth by saying my friend is down from Wales so I can't make it etc but said friend is only down for a weekend which doesn't clash but it is good enough for me not to offend Mrs Bossy who actually does a huge amount of work for charity and organises a lot for people in need. How could I say to her 'Sorry, don't want to hang out with you. You are too controlling'. So, it has to be done softly. I think one needs to ask what sort of lie and why is it generated?

I reply to my own post and eat my words! Mrs Bossy won't accept said white lies and contacted me again yesterday about meeting up. It looks as if I will politely have to tell the truth and say 'I am not going to make arrangements as I don't feel like socialising.' Surely, it is down to people to take the hint when you go vague but maybe there are those who walk amongst us who are so fixated on their own agendas that one has to eventually be brutally honest. Oddly enough, it is her driven agenda that gets a lot of work done for charity and those in need. Perhaps 'stonewalling' will be my next move if she does not accept the truth.

I have a friend who is a compulsive liar, most of the time it's attention seeking but it can be really annoying sometimes. On occasion I have called her out on a couple of things then I don't hear from her for a couple of weeks, I think she realises that she gets in a tangle ! The trouble is , none of us ever believe a word she says anymore which is not a nice way to be

Just very recently while staying at a BiL’s place, we met someone he knew of old - a late 70s somewhat flamboyant ‘character’ IYKWIM.

He talked a lot and I did wonder at the time whether he was using some ‘embroidery’, so to speak, but the next morning BiL said he’d looked him up on LinkedIn, and apparently the first name he’d been using for years wasn’t his given one (it was much more distinctive) and he’d told us sundry fibs about where he’d attended university (an Oxbridge college rather than a less elite establishment), and various other things, inc. that more than a dozen times he’d been part of a University Challenge team!

My invariably chilled BiL merely found it all highly amusing.

White lies are in everyday use for many and are not a serious issue. In Schofields case he had denied a relationship with a much younger vulnerable person, it’s not so much the lie, it’s the lack of judgement that he actually encouraged the relationship.

eddiecat you are taking it all too personally. If the couple were inveterate liars, they will do it to everyone, no matter how intelligent - or stupid they are. They will not be assessing you before they lie, they just lie, its there way of life, and probably barely notice that they are doing it.

Far too many people take too much offense at so much. Why do people spend so much time thinking people are getting at them in some way? Why do people think that everyone is taking such interest in them that they are setting out to show them up in some way. I always assume that in every day life other people, are like me and just accept people as they are and the last thing I am doing is wasting my time making all the pointed remarks that people seem to see happening all around them.