Identifying a chronic liar can be a complicated process. The fact is most people want to believe in the people around them. We don’t like to assume our friends and family could be lying to us. It is too painful to think that their close friends and family would deceive them; however, the chronic liar does not have the same conflict. They will lie to whoever, whenever, as it fits the situation. Chronic liars may not even believe they are lying.
Even more disturbing is that most chronic liar’s actually end up believing their own lies. They are extremely experienced in convincing the world around them to accept their lies. They have the ability to turn everything to make himself or herself the victim or the hero of any given situation. The more you try to see through the lies, the more lies they set up to cover their tracks, making the truth even harder to see.
An important thing to watch for is inconsistency in their stories. Most often, their stories do not add up. They may tell a story several times, each time they tell the story it is with a different ending or different details. They will keep going with this until they reach the desired response.
A chronic liar is a skilled actor, knowing just how to spin things to the audience they are trying to convince. Many times, they try to cover up things they have brought onto themselves or to divert things they do not want to take responsibility for. It may also take them years to come up with lies to cover things that happened years ago that they want to put in a different light.
Once anyone starts seeing that their stories just do not add up you may want to confront them on it, beware of this, because when you do that you will be accused of being a stalker, an abuser and other derogatory names. With people that are chronic liars, they truly hate when their words are disputed and often will change their story to make the story more believable. The more holes are pointed out in their story the more they develop their stories to achieve the desired reaction the next time. They may also become particularly upset with you personally and will attack you in any way they can. If you do not believe them or their words, you are automatically their enemy.
There is no middle ground with them; you believe them every time they say something, or you are the worst person in the world. This applies to spouses, ex-spouses, children all the way to friends and family. With this sort of person, no one is safe.
Once you have identified a person as a chronic liar, it leaves you free to disassociate yourself from them. These people feel the need to create drama wherever they are and do not care that they hurt or slander anyone in the process. They are often left with no friends. Some even manage to alienate their family due to all the lies and drama.
If you find you cannot dissociate yourself from a chronic liar, at least you do not have to give into their drama. This is an opportune time to listen to them, smile and nod without reacting to their drama. There is no reason to encourage them in their quest to make everyone accept their lies. You have to the ability to identify these people and make sure they cannot cause any drama for your house.
