![]() Most people tell white lies to avoid hurting someone else’s feelings, but a pathological liar will lie for no apparent reason. ![]() Michelle Barton, Director of Psychology Life Well, claims “a pathological liar is somebody who lies without effort, someone for whom telling a lie comes more naturally than telling the truth.” She says that it has become such “a part of the liar’s everyday life to the point where their whole existence is a fabrication.” In the article “11 Fascinating Scientific Facts about Pathological Liars” by Carolyn Steber, psychologist Dr. What a relief to hear something I could finally believe.Ī pathological liar, often also called a compulsive liar, will lie habitually, so much so that lying has become second nature. One day, I asked why he lied so much, and I think he answered me honestly for once saying, “It’s just easier than telling the truth.” I begged him to just tell me the truth so that I could make a clear decision and move on with my life, but he just kept lying. The fact that I was crying every day, exhibiting clear symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and experiencing daily panic attacks and insomnia didn’t phase him. Yet almost every weekend for the next couple of months, there would be more: a new slew of graphic email texts, another online affair from years back. Making it far worse was how every single time I discovered another lie, he would continue to evade the truth, later confess in the face of hard evidence, and then finally insist that I now “knew everything” and could start to “relax” since everything was out in the open. Over the next couple of years, I uncovered such a web of deceit that it felt like the past two decades of my life had been a complete facade. What bothered me almost as much as his delusion was the fact that he continued to lie, even when confronted with the evidence. Only after asking him nine more times did he then admit that the person in the photo was the love of his life, and although they had never met, he planned to fly her across the world and move her into one of his father’s apartments. I knew he was lying I could feel it powerfully in my gut. When I called him up to question who it was, he told me that since he had taken up drawing again, he had just been printing out photographs of random people from the internet. Sign up for Well+, our online community of wellness insiders, and unlock your rewards instantly.In the fifteenth year of my marriage, I stumbled upon a computer printout on my middle-aged husband’s desk of a girl who looked to be the age of one of the high school students I used to teach. Oh hi! You look like someone who loves free workouts, discounts for cutting-edge wellness brands, and exclusive Well+Good content. “And avoid confronting the liar, should you catch them in a lie.” This is especially true with a pathological liar, who's likely to respond to any confrontation with denial or defensiveness-so, you’d be better off saving yourself the stress and bandwidth, and opting to source the truth elsewhere. “If you’re dealing with any high-stakes information that you need to be sure is accurate, make sure to get confirmation of that intel from someone else,” says Dr. ![]() Learn all about protecting your personal boundaries in the episode of the Well+Good Podcast linked below. That said, setting boundaries in a relationship with either type of liar-particularly if it’s a partnership you have to maintain, like with a family member or co-worker-and being cognizant of taking what the person says with a grain of salt can allow you to maintain a basic, non-toxic rapport. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |