How do you deal with chronic liars?

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KCT said:
I think they live in their own little world and will find a way to get around whatever you confront them about.

I’d keep conversations to harmless, benign topics or avoid the person. They think they’re right no matter what. —KCT
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:o I have to agree with this. It seems to me the people I know like this, will never accept that they were lying with the truth staring them in the face.😦 So I believe they live in their “own little worlds” and we cannot see into it.
 
na, you know the pains your mom went through with you? if it was me i would still poke him in the chest and don’t worry about not seeing your nephews since they are your sisters children. do you think she would keep you away from them for standing up for your mom? how does she like the fact that her husband is flapping his lips about her mother?
 
xmydreamsfadex said:
na, you know the pains your mom went through with you? if it was me i would still poke him in the chest and don’t worry about not seeing your nephews since they are your sisters children. do you think she would keep you away from them for standing up for your mom? how does she like the fact that her husband is flapping his lips about her mother?
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You do know the OP is a woman, don’t you?
 
xmydreamsfadex said:
na, you know the pains your mom went through with you? if it was me i would still poke him in the chest and don’t worry about not seeing your nephews since they are your sisters children. do you think she would keep you away from them for standing up for your mom? how does she like the fact that her husband is flapping his lips about her mother?
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I don’t really understand my sister. She knows he lies. She herself is very honest. One time, he told my 97 year old grandma that they wanted to get pictures of my nephews. He asked her for $60 dollars. When my mom told my sister that they could get pictures at Walmart for $20, my sister acted surprised that mom would suggest pictures. Mom explained that J. told Grandma he needed money for portraits and my sister just shook her head and said, “Mom, we’re not having pictures done.” For some reason, my sister seems pretty beat down. I guess she thinks that this is as good as it gets for her. 😦

But, my relationship with my sister is pretty fragile. She has no friends ( I’m not exaggerating). And, her support system consists of my parents, his parents and myself. If I take a stand, my sister has no one. This is doubly sad because I’m not very close to my sister.

Her husband just makes me so :mad: :mad: :mad: . He tries to manipulate my 97 year old grandma into giving him money all the time. It causes her a lot of anxiety. My parents have now put her cash in a lockbox in the house–my dad has the key. So, J. knows he can’t ask her for money. She doesn’t have the key.

They don’t want grandma giving my BIL money because he has a problem supporting his family. He went to jail briefly for nonpayment of child support, so he has to work now. For months, they were living on food stamps and my parents were paying their utilities. Finally, my parents cut them off. But, he still didn’t get a job until he went to jail. My sister won’t get a job either. Of course, her complication is that she has two kids three and one, and her husband won’t watch them.
 
You must call the lie anytime it is spoken by a chronic liar and do so in public if they have lied in front of others. Don’t put yourself in a position of protecting a liar from public shame. Lying is an addiction, it’s how this man copes with his pain. Being less than honest ultimately denies this man every opportunity to change. His actions deserve these kind but straightforward, no nonsense replies - the truth, and gradually your unwillilngness to accept lies and manipulation will reign them in or at least estsablish boundaries that you can live with. Honesty is always the best policy. It can take years to learn how to deal with dishonest people, but the best way to do so is without emotion, just sticking to the facts and let the facts speak for themselves with respect to the situation. I’d also look for counseling for this man. He sounds sick and is making your sister miserable. Ultimately he is very weak and with strong but kind people around him, he should curb his lying behavior.

Your sister sounds like she needs tremendous support and prayers. Helping her deal with her difficult circumstances in a good and honest way is where I’d put my energy. If for nothing else, for the children.
 
leonie said:
My sister has been married to J. for three and a half years. He has a lot of problems. He’s not very smart. He has adult attention disorder. He doesn’t have very good people skills. But, all that is okay. My sister has her own problems with anxiety, common sense, etc. I think some people are put on this earth so we can help them. I see my sister and her husband as one of the reasons that Jesus said we shall always have the poor among us. They just aren’t gifted with the type of skills and talents that help us to succeed in the world.

But…my BIL has some moral problems that really causes a lot of difficulties and anguish in our family. For one thing, he steals. It’s petty stuff–like the change off my parent’s dresser. Once, he stole $180 from my grandmother’s drawer. And, he is a chronic liar. Because he isn’t very smart, it’s pretty easy to spot his lies. He lies about things that don’t even matter. He lies to make other people look bad.

I could give lots of examples. Yesterday, he told a false story about my mother to make her look bad that was an obvious lie. He tells my 97 year old grandmother-- who is starting to get dementia and anxiety-- lies about my mother.

but, what do you do when someone is defaming another or telling an obvious lie. Do you call them on it? Do you walk away?

The most tiresome aspect of this is that my brother was involved with a girl for ten years that was a pathological liar. But, she was clever and manipulative, so we didn’t catch on for many years that she was lying. It was ridiculous. She’d lie about things that didn’t even matter.

Why are my siblings attracted to these personality types?!?
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I think that your last question says a lot. My sister recently ended a relationship with a pathological liar. After a while, she said to me that she thinks he believed his own lies at times. I think though, what she also came to terms with was that she fell in love with someone that to the rest of us…was bad news. So, sometimes our siblings or friends or whoever make choices – that often show that they need to change something about themselves as well. My sister needed to stop wanting to be with just anyone…to be with anyone rather than being alone–and start caring about God and herself, more. Being alone is better than being with someone who lies to you all the time.

I also work with someone who lies a lot. I used to get upset, but now I just pray for him…it’s the best thing to do. It’s the only thing to do…:o
 
Leonie, lying to get money from people is a crime. I don’t know if the name used in your jurisdiction is beguilement or something else, but it’s criminal everywhere.
 
I know what its like…my cousin has been a chronic liar ever since she was a little girl… One of the posters said it had to do with low self-esteem and I tend to agree.

The final straw with my cousin was when she lied about my uncle’s tombstone… When my uncle died it was the raining hard for about 3 days straight in the central part of Puerto Rico and the ground was too soft to put the tombstone in place. The funeral director told us that we had to wait for the rain to stop and the ground to harden up so that they could put the tombstone in place… My family and I tried staying longer in Puerto Rico but financially we couldn’t manage it and so my cousin was asked if when she went on vacation to Puerto Rico the following month if she would handle making sure the tombstone got put on my uncle’s grave.

For me this was a big mistake but since I did not want to upset my mother in arguing about it I let it go… Anyway, zoom to a month later and my cousin calls my mother from Puerto Rico. My mother naturally asked her if she had gone to the cemetery and got the tombstone put in place. My cousin said yes… my cousin’s brother who lives in Puerto Rico then got on the phone and for some reason my mother asked him the same question and he said “no”…

This made my mother furious and she hung up the phone… My mother cried so hard afterwards… 😦 My uncle was her baby brother who she raised single-handedly after her own mom died when she was 7…so my cousin’s lie cut her deeply… and it was tearing my mother up that she could not get the tombstone put on her baby brother’s grave…

Suffice it to say my mother cut off all contact with her and so did I… Sometimes people are just too toxic to be around and won’t change unless they make the decision to do so…

The best advice is to keep conversation topics with chronic liars about general things like the weather…

God bless
 
Maryam said:
I know what its like…my cousin has been a chronic liar ever since she was a little girl… One of the posters said it had to do with low self-esteem and I tend to agree.

**that is just so hoorible that she did that… but you’re right…sometimes you HAVE to let go and distance yourself.
in my case (i posted about a sister that lies all the time as well) i really do believe a lot of it is pure jealousy.
my other sister and i are married with families and she is never married with a teenage son.
instead of building a life with her son and being happy with it, she seems to want nothing more than to say whatever she can to make herself seem ‘better’ somehow than everyone else.
she also HAS to ‘better’ whatever anyone else might buy as well.
(it’s become a joke between my other sister and myself that she ‘suddenly’ HAD to have a new car right after mine finally died and i got one. sadly she’s that way with just about everything and even encourages her son to show off whatever he gets to other kids so they ‘know’ he got something they didn’t or something more expensive).
the problem is: few people REALLY believe her lies (except our parents who SHOULD know better and certain ‘friends’ of hers that have no way of knowing better).
i was just thinking the other day that BECAUSE of her lies, she has no TRUE relationships at all.
**
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I have been reading a lot of what all of you have had to say about lying and liars. Low self-esteem may be part of it, but our society encourages it through television, movies, commercials… There are also many different kinds of lies and liars - check out the web site listed here.

geocities.com/changes1611//sins22lies4.html

The most significant finding to me was the person who told the lie to “protect” someone else. Give me a break, NEVER is a lie better than the truth. It may hurt our feelings or make us angry, but we can deal with that. It is lies that are not possible for us to deal with.
 
scarlet405 said:
The most significant finding to me was the person who told the lie to “protect” someone else. Give me a break, NEVER is a lie better than the truth. It may hurt our feelings or make us angry, but we can deal with that. It is lies that are not possible for us to deal with.
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**i beg to differ.
for example: we have a daughter (26) who has made some pretty bad choices during the past 8 years. to TRY and make a VERY long story short: my parents worry about her and her 3 children (1 of which we are raising) a great deal. BUT…they are elderly, live on a fixed income and have a number of health problems that stress aggravates.
while i will attempt to hide the worst things from them (it is not their burden to carry) daughter has NO problem whining, complaining, lying and attempting to manipulate them to feel sorry for her. (actually she’s very much like the sister i spoke of who will lie about anything at any time).
MANY times my mother has called me in tears after hearing some worrisome thing from my daughter and i DO lie about the severity of certain situations in order to calm her and my father and ease their minds.

**
 
Maryam said:
I know what its like…my cousin has been a chronic liar ever since she was a little girl… One of the posters said it had to do with low self-esteem and I tend to agree.

The final straw with my cousin was when she lied about my uncle’s tombstone… When my uncle died it was the raining hard for about 3 days straight in the central part of Puerto Rico and the ground was too soft to put the tombstone in place. The funeral director told us that we had to wait for the rain to stop and the ground to harden up so that they could put the tombstone in place… My family and I tried staying longer in Puerto Rico but financially we couldn’t manage it and so my cousin was asked if when she went on vacation to Puerto Rico the following month if she would handle making sure the tombstone got put on my uncle’s grave.

For me this was a big mistake but since I did not want to upset my mother in arguing about it I let it go… Anyway, zoom to a month later and my cousin calls my mother from Puerto Rico. My mother naturally asked her if she had gone to the cemetery and got the tombstone put in place. My cousin said yes… my cousin’s brother who lives in Puerto Rico then got on the phone and for some reason my mother asked him the same question and he said “no”…

This made my mother furious and she hung up the phone… My mother cried so hard afterwards… 😦 My uncle was her baby brother who she raised single-handedly after her own mom died when she was 7…so my cousin’s lie cut her deeply… and it was tearing my mother up that she could not get the tombstone put on her baby brother’s grave…

Suffice it to say my mother cut off all contact with her and so did I… Sometimes people are just too toxic to be around and won’t change unless they make the decision to do so…

The best advice is to keep conversation topics with chronic liars about general things like the weather…

God bless
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Your pic of Mary is beautiful! What site may I ask did you get that from?
 
while i will attempt to hide the worst things from them (it is not their burden to carry) daughter has NO problem whining, complaining, lying and attempting to manipulate them to feel sorry for her.
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This is an example of what I am talking about, although typically we DO try to protect our parents and the elderly. The thing is that most of the time they know what is going on and do not say anything directly to the “protector” about it. You tell lies to protect, in your case, your parents but your siblings are quite open about lying to them, taking from them… My husband had this happen with his elderly grandmother and his brother.

The brother would go to her all the time wanting money for food, or to pay a power bill, any number of excuses and then he would spend the money on alcohol and partying with his friends. The grandmother would become upset and call us, my husband did as you did for a while, until the brother also started hitting him up for money and so on. It was then, that the 3 of us sat down together (the grandmother, my husband and myself) and we had a down home “earthly” talk with the grandmother. We explained that we would no longer be giving money, he could eat with us, he could stay in our rental property free, but we would NOT be the cause of his death. Drinking was what ultimately killed this 46 year old man.

She was greatful that we took her into our confidence, because she had already heard it all from her “friends”. It was hard on her and it was hard on us, because there was still a great deal of love there. We prayed and prayed that God would intervene in his life, and sometimes it looked like our prayers were answered, but ultimately he made his own choices and we were not ENABLERS.

I hope I do not hurt your feelings with this, but if we do not stand up for what is right and make known the truth, we are worse than those we call liars, because we ENABLE them to continue. It is something to think about, and it is HARD!
 
scarlet405 said:
I hope I do not hurt your feelings with this, but if we do not stand up for what is right and make known the truth, we are worse than those we call liars, because we ENABLE them to continue. It is something to think about, and it is HARD!
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**oh my goodness NO…you haven’t hurt my feelings at all and i understand PERFECTLY the situation you describe.
we have learned many hard lessons regarding our daughter and have FINALLY just called it quits.
in fact, she will be moving out of our home (for the 5th time) this weekend and we have told her she will not be allowed to move back in. hubby and i will be meeting with my family in a few weeks to explain to them we will no longer enable her to live the lifestyle she has chosen. yes, we love her; yes we love our grandchildren BUT…the only way she is going to learn she is on a dead end path is if she is given free rein to not only travel it but to also be completely responsible for the consequences that choice will bring.
**
 
The path you have chosen is HARD, and it is SAD! I agree with it though. Sometimes doing the right thing is so hard, especially if our heart is involved.:o You are going down the only path left to you to help your child. I know that it is different with a brother or sister than with your child, but the end result is that love is involved. We all pray and hope that they will make the right decisions, and we have been pushed into a corner.:eek: I wish you the best of luck. God Speed.
 
whatevergirl said:
Your pic of Mary is beautiful! What site may I ask did you get that from?
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I got the picture from a Byzantine Catholic priest… He sent me 50 copies (8 x10) through the mail which left my jaw hanging at receiving it. I thought I would only get like 2 or 3…what a wonderful surprise for me indeed! Thanks be to God!

If you would like one PM me and I will send you a copy through the mail… 😃 I got 8 copies left so if anyone else would like one let me know in a PM before they also are gone…

/end of Hijack… 😊

God bless
 
kbharbert said:
that is just so hoorible that she did that… but you’re right…sometimes you HAVE to let go and distance yourself.
in my case (i posted about a sister that lies all the time as well) i really do believe a lot of it is pure jealousy.
my other sister and i are married with families and she is never married with a teenage son.
instead of building a life with her son and being happy with it, she seems to want nothing more than to say whatever she can to make herself seem ‘better’ somehow than everyone else.
she also HAS to ‘better’ whatever anyone else might buy as well.
(it’s become a joke between my other sister and myself that she ‘suddenly’ HAD to have a new car right after mine finally died and i got one. sadly she’s that way with just about everything and even encourages her son to show off whatever he gets to other kids so they ‘know’ he got something they didn’t or something more expensive).
**the problem is: few people REALLY believe her lies (except our parents who SHOULD know better and certain ‘friends’ of hers that have no way of knowing better). **
i was just thinking the other day that BECAUSE of her lies, she has no TRUE relationships at all.
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Sorry to hear about your sister… That is terrible that she is contributing to her son behaving in the same way… My cousin learned to be a chronic liar from her dad… He was more of a tall tale teller and like your sister had to have everything better than everyone else…

It is very very sad what parents can pass on to their kids personality-wise…

My prayers are with you and all of us who have chronic liars in our families…

God bless
 
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