A reader asks…
I have a friend who is, truly, a great person. I want to spend a lot of time talking about how great she is because of what I’m about to tell you, but you’ll just have to believe me that this is someone who has devoted her life to helping others, who gives generously, sacrifices fearlessly, and constantly makes me proud.
The problem is that she lies constantly. It’s never to hurt someone. She doesn’t lie to get money, or to scam people. It’s always for reasons I can’t understand. She tells me things happened that did not, or that people said things they didn’t. When she gets caught in a lie, she just deflects, or spins the next lie.
I really love her, and I’m not going to stop being friends with her. I read your piece, In Defense of Lying, and was hoping that you might be able to give me advice that doesn’t involve telling me she’s the worst person in the world.
Can you help me deal with this, and with her?
My Answer
You already know that I am not an honesty purist. I think people have an absolute right to privacy, and shouldn’t generally have to justify their lives and decisions to other people. I think that lying can be an easy way to protect those boundaries. It sounds like you’re talking about something different, though.
I’ve had a few friends like this. They don’t lie to hurt people or to get out of trouble. They’re also not lying in an effort to erect boundaries or preserve their privacy. In fact, they seem to lie for basically no reason at all, almost as a tic. I’ve struggled with the behavior—alternating between rage and frustration—until I began reflecting on a period of my own life.
When I was in middle school, I had great difficulty making friends. So I began lying to my parents about what happened at school. I spun tales of all the friends I had, the funny things they said and did, the time we spent together. In reality, I was sitting alone at recess and almost never had friends over. But lying to my parents shielded me from the shame of not being able to make friends, and meant that I didn’t have to experience both friendlessness and being judged for my friendlessness (in hindsight, I know my parents wouldn’t have judged me, but that’s beside the point).
I also started doing something else: lying to kids at school about my life. I don’t even really remember the lies. Just ridiculous stories to make myself seem more interesting. I don’t know if anyone believed me, and I’m sure if they didn’t, it made it even harder for them to like me.
When I got to high school, I started making friends and the lying stopped.
We all lie from time to time. Yet we treat lying as somehow categorically different from just about anything else a person can do wrong—especially when women do it. Lying is a completely normal human behavior, yet each of us—liars, all—acts as if lying is something only other people do.
I wish we could be more honest about lying, and the purpose it serves in relationships. That we lie out of fear, yes, but also out of love, out of a desire to be heard, out of self-protection, and sometimes because the lie depicts what we perceive as our true self.
Your friend has simply taken the normal, common act of lying and accelerated it a bit out of control. I bet she feels really ashamed. I bet that’s why she gets so panicked, and spins a new lie, when you catch her. We tell people that lying is unforgivable, even as we lie about how frequently we all lie. One study found that lying comprises 7% of all communication, and another found that the typical American tells four lies per day.
I don’t think that lying is good or right, but I do think that if we destigmatize it, people will do it less. Shame causes lies to fester, and shaming a person for lying causes them to lie more (and better).
People who lie in the service of cruelty, or to hurt others, are in a different category. If your friend was feigning poverty to get money, or stealing from people, or making false allegations to the police, or otherwise using her lies to negatively affect her community, my advice would be different.
But she’s not, so here is my advice:
Your friend—much like me when I was in middle school, much like many of the liars I know who appear to lie compulsively—is lying for emotional reasons.
The key is figuring out what the emotion is, and addressing that.
Perhaps she worries she’s boring, so she exaggerates her stories. Maybe she’s ashamed of some of her behavior, wishes she were more outspoken, fears no one likes her, or doesn’t want to share the most vulnerable parts of herself.
I was recently talking to a friend whose loved one—we’ll call them Sarah—had suffered a catastrophic loss. Sarah kept telling her whole family that no one was showing up to help her, that no one honored their meal train commitments, that people canceled coming to the memorial service, etc. These things were all false. My friend was angry. But what she forgot in her anger was this: Sarah was conveying that she did not feel adequately supported, and that she felt overwhelmed by her loss. The lies, to her, were accurate reflections of her emotions, and perhaps an easier way to convey what she was feeling than by talking honestly about her emotions.
I encouraged my friend to address the emotions behind the lies rather than the lies themselves. I think you should do the same.
But if you want to deepen your connection to your friend, I think you should talk to her about the lying. Remember, shame encourages lies, and people often lie because of a deep sense of shame. Your goal should be to show her that you don’t love her any less because of her lies; you only want to help.
A script like this might help: “Hey! I just wanted to let you know that we all lie. I lie, too! And I love you no matter what, and even if you lie—even if you lie a lot! But I have noticed that you sometimes lie about things that don’t matter, and the truth wouldn’t make me love you any less. I’m just wondering if maybe you’re having a hard time stopping lying, or if there’s something going on underneath that I can help with. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just wanted to let you know that I notice, and that I love you no matter what.”
Destigmatize the lie. Give her a chance to come clean. That may be all she needs to turn over a new leaf. But if she’s not ready, she’s not ready. You know her stories are unreliable; don’t make important decisions or judgments based on what she says. Enjoy what she can offer, and ignore the rest. That’s all we can really do with anyone, in any relationship that we want to maintain.
As always, we are wiser when we share our own expertise and experience. Please share your thoughts in the comments! To ask your own question, please email zawn.liberatingmotherhood@gmail.com. Questions are always anonymous!