The Moment People Realized Someone They Knew Was A Pathological Liar

"Liar, Liar pants on Fire!"

Some people should be given an award for their fibbing talents.

I heard some whoppers from back long ago, and I'm STILL in awe.

Great lies need great delivery.

If you need to sell it, YOU have to believe it.

That's why it feels like so many liars think they're telling the truth.

In their mind... THEY ARE!!

It's fascinating. And horrible for all of the people who were lied to.

It's a special kind of rage and humility when you discover someone you knew has never told you the truth.

Well, the actual truth.

Not their truth.

Redditor smashdelete wanted to hear about the times people could tell they were being duped, so they asked:

"When did you notice someone in your life was a pathological liar?"

Seek Therapy

"When she told everyone that she was pregnant with the teacher's child, had an abortion, and someone at school was bullying her by putting baby booties in her locker."

"She was never pregnant. She put the booties in her own locker for attention."

- Dboy777

Frustrated Larry Bird GIF by SB NationGiphy

Over and Over Again

"Witnessed my mom retelling the same story over and over again on the phone to different people. I noticed the story kept shifting over each call, and by the time she was done her story made no sense and had no connection to reality (I would know, I was the only witness). Talked to her about it and quickly realized she can't even remember what she lied about and what is actually true."

"I then finally understood why my oldest brother used to say that mom is a 'mythomane.'"

- floopdidoops

James Joyce

"A lady joined our creative writing group. During a discussion about James Joyce (and how difficult some texts are to read, let alone understand) she told us that she'd always found him easy to read and understand. In fact, an English professor at Trinity used to call her and ask for her opinions and insights."

"While unlikely, this was her first session, so we let it slide and accepted it as truth. Later that session, one guy wrote a story about a murder in England that someone he knew was tangentially affected by. Up spoke the new person, to tell her story which was broadly the same but had twice as many dead people. This progressed - if someone had a story, she'd one-up them almost immediately."

"She got the nickname 'Eleven-erife,' because if you said you'd been to Tenerife."

- jrf_1973

Similar Story

"Told him a story about how I got drunk, broke into a construction site, and climbed up a crane with a couple of friends. A few months later he told me that same story as if it happened to him (except he also had sex on top of the crane)."

- Sycod

"This has happened to me. Told a guy who is a compulsive liar a story, met them again a year or two later and they've forgotten that I was the one who told them, then proceeded to tell the story as if it happened to him. I've always known he was a compulsive liar, but after that, I started to wonder if any of the things he said were ever original ideas or just things he'd stolen from others."

- CryptographerMore944

Thief

"She stole my identity and ran up thousands of dollars of debt in my name. That’s when everything I thought I knew about her unraveled."

"She didn’t live in Japan and speak fluent Japanese. She wasn’t a classically trained cellist. She didn’t go to film school. She didn’t have terminal cancer; she was waxing her scalp and hiding out in the hospital cafeteria during her 'chemo' appointments. Her 'miracle baby' whom we had a funeral for didn’t die because of the car accident; she had an abortion to cover up cheating on her fiancé. She was the one who spread disgusting rumors about me in high school because she wanted me to be friendless and have low self-esteem."

"She was my best friend for eight years. When I found out about the fraud, I tried to help her pay back the money she owed and get a lawyer. That’s when she tried to manipulate my family into having me involuntarily committed. I haven’t seen or heard from her since but I have no doubt she’s out there, off her meds, still being a one-woman soap opera."

- werewere-kokako

Deadly

"I worked with a few of them. Always with the 'trained by a grandmaster, my hands are registered as weapons' nonsense."

- _Goose_

Freak Out Running GIF by TLCGiphy

UNMUTED

"It was my colleague at work; every single time when we used to talk, she was so nice and kind, but once, on a Teams meeting, she forgot to mute her microphone, and she said really unpleasant things about me. It was the end of our relationship and also the end of her career in this company because they fired her the same day."

- cuitee_bby

What are the odds?!

"I was dating this guy a while back and we were trying to figure out where to go for dinner. I innocently asked him what he had for lunch - not because I really cared what he had for lunch, but just in an effort to eliminate some options. He told me he had a tuna sandwich. Ok. So no seafood… We settled on Chinese."

"As we walked into the local Chinese place, we ran into one of his sports teammates who said 'OMG!! What are the odds?! First, we run into each other at the pizza place for lunch and now dinner! We’re in sync or something!'”

"That’s such a stupid and irrelevant thing to lie about and he lied SO effortlessly… I knew in that moment that he was a pathological liar and the relationship was dead in the water."

- RedDress999

Insane

"My wife at the time told me that her mother murdered her (wife's) 3-month-old child and her father 15 years previously. And then, when I refused to go to Easter lunch with her mother a few weeks later, I was the a**hole. One of so many insane lies."

"She told me that after we were married. Before we were married, it was a completely different set of lies. Unfortunately for me, I believed her completely in everything at first. But once it unraveled, it got wild."

- Leading-Shop-234

Mine

"He found a pair of sunglasses that were provably mine, made up some s**t about bringing them from home, and called them the wrong thing."

"Claimed he test-drove a viper once. Says the manager and a mechanic had to ride with him and his dad in the back seat."

"There is not, nor has there ever been, a Dodge Viper with a back seat."

- disturbed286

One of my exes had a habit of lying about random, unimportant things like this. Never major things, though - but things like 'When does your shift start?' and 'Is this cup yours?'"

She confessed to it pretty early on and explained it's a habit she was carrying from growing up with an abusive father, where lying constantly was a safety measure. It got better."

- Adiantum-Veneris

Not Us

"When a friend of mine reminisced about what the two of us had been doing on a specific date. I knew quite well what I did that date, his story was not it."

- Ok-Astronomer-5944

Confused Little Girl GIFGiphy

Royalty

"Worked with one. He drove our cleaning van but told everyone he had been a Royal Dutch Commando (but he constantly got the beret color wrong), he also owned a Marina in a certain city two provinces away (a quick Google search gave the true owner's names and contact information), and he had a garage full of expensive cars. (Yet he came to work on a beat-up motorcycle that was more duct tape and chewing gum than metal)."

- Derai-Leaf

As Grown-Ups

"There was this guy, don’t really know him, but he’s well known in our town. He has been bullied for being in a wheelchair when he was younger- so I’ve been told - but as far as I can see now as grown-ups, people are nice, say hi, and have a talk when possible. Recently there have been these Facebook groups, negative ones spreading hate about this guy in a wheelchair, but they get taken down quickly. I felt so bad for this guy, especially when an FB group was created in pure hate."

"This group randomly sent requests for people in our town to join and be part of it. It was a secret group so only people invited could see it. I was never invited but several people I know were and they reported it to FB and the local police. Several weeks passed and I learned that he made the groups himself and spread hate about himself. I was so shocked and sad for the guy that he would go through all that trouble, and for what? I still don’t understand."

- helianders

Flying Above

"Former coworker. Super nice guy, but he had to one-up anything anyone else said. Usually about mundane stuff, but the two I remember are: once, I mentioned that my boyfriend had gone hunting and shot an elk. The coworker immediately informed me that he had shot a mountain lion with a bow. Ok."

"On another occasion, another coworker mentioned that he had started taking flying lessons. A lying coworker piped up that he had once flown an F-14. He was never in the military, so he had no real explanation for how he got the opportunity. Shockingly, he was later fired when it turned out he had lied about having the required credentials for the job."

- xiphias__gladius

A Bad Loop

"They lied. They got found out. They apologized and said they wouldn't do it again. Then they lied again. They got found out again. They apologized and said they were reeeeally sorry this time. They lied again. That's where you stop trusting them."

- kairu99877

Lying Simon Rex GIF by Simon Rex / Dirt NastyGiphy

Every liar, like a poker player (another form of lying), has a tell.

You just have to look closer.