Auntie SparkNotes: My Friend Tells Obvious Lies

Dear Auntie:

So I have this friend, let’s call her Zoey, who tells a bunch of fake stories. They’re not the kinds of stories that you tell people as a joke. She tells them to people expecting to be believed.

Example 1: She was a nationally ranked tennis player in middle school and actually went on to internationals in London. She says she has no video proof because it’s a long time ago. And also, the place she practiced at was a “private” training ground, and therefore, that cannot be Googled either.

Example 2: She has a bunch of guys hitting on her, one of them being a guy named Eddy. Eddy is a multimillionaire whose family owns an oil field somewhere in the ocean. We Googled his name and no match. We Googled his family name, and also no match.

Now, here’s the kicker: her sister said she never went to Europe and has no clue who Eddy is. And her sister says she doesn’t do tennis. There are multiple incidents like this, but these are the longest ongoing ones (six years and counting).

What made this worse was that on one of her job applications, she said she did tennis. And she made her current boyfriend jealous of a nonexistent guy (or I assume that he’s nonexistent).

I’m lost, Auntie. What can I do to overcome this feeling of distrust for this friend? She doesn’t know that other people know it’s a lie, so should I reveal it all to her that others know? What should I do in general? Please help.

Well, let’s start here, Sparkler: I can certainly confirm for you that this situation is, indeed, profoundly weird, and that you’re not wrong to be feeling confused and concerned about how you should handle it. It’s always unsettling to realize that someone is lying to you, but particularly when it’s about such random, meaningless, and easily verifiable stuff.

But at the same time, your friend’s lies aren’t just bizarre. They’re revealing, in that they are uniformly hamfisted attempts to make herself look interesting, accomplished, or desirable. Which doesn’t make it awesome, of course — misleading people is a crappy thing to do no matter how you slice it — but it does say an awful lot about her motivations for being dishonest. This is a really, deeply insecure person; she lies to make herself feel better, because the truth about her life doesn’t feel good enough.

Which brings us to this: Depending on the subject, frequency, and practical effect of your friend’s lies, this may be a scenario in which your best course of action is to just quietly roll your eyes and letting it slide. Her rich and handsome admirer or gloried past as a young tennis star are fabrications, yes, but it’s not like they cause any harm (except perhaps to her reputation, since everyone knows they’re baloney) — and considering how defensive she’s likely to get if you call her out for being a liar, it may be that confronting her just isn’t worth the aggravation. You’ll have to decide for yourself how much it really matters to you, and to your friendship. Is this coming up so often that it’s truly testing the limits of your patience? Or is it infrequent enough that you could get by with a pat response to her fabrications and an immediate change of subject? For instance:

Friend: Eddy says he’s going to buy a planet and name it after me!
You: If you say so. Anyway, how’s your cat?

That said, if you are going to confront her about it, there’s definitely an argument here for being as compassionate as you can in the process. So if you feel like something has to be said, I’d suggest something like this: “I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I know this story isn’t true. Pretty much everyone knows, actually. I’m not angry, but it’s very confusing. Is there a reason why you keep pushing this lie?”

To be clear, the most likely outcome of this conversation is that your friend says, “BUT IT IS TRUE,” and doubles down with her efforts to convince you, to everyone’s acute and continued embarrassment. But if there’s any approach that will convince her to stop with the transparent and awkward lies, it’s this one, in which you alert her as kindly and non-judgmentally as possible that everyone sees through her fabrications. For your sake, I hope it works. But if it doesn’t, it’ll be up to you to decide what you’d rather do: end the friendship entirely, or content yourself to take every claim she makes for the rest of your lives with several thousand grains of salt.

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