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How to communicate after a contentious divorce... Following a contentious divorce and custody battle, there are often high emotion and tensions between the parents. Research shows that constant and chronic conflict between the parents negatively impacts the children. The children sense their parents anxiety in their voice, their body language and their parents behavior. Here are some suggestions from Dean Stacer on how to avoid conflict.
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Author Topic: How to confront the compulsive lying?  (Read 1002 times)
bananas2
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« on: April 21, 2017, 10:37:05 AM »

For those of you who have an SO who compulsively lies (many of you, I presume), I'm wondering how you deal with it? Do you confront it, ignore it? I'm at a loss as to how to approach my BPDh when I catch him in a lie.

He will lie about anything - big or small. In a moment of rare sincerity once, he told me that the reason he lies is bc it makes him feel powerful that he's the only one that knows the real truth, so he enjoys the feeling of having information that others don't. I told him at that time that I thought it was good that he was aware of why he lies, and that now he can start working on the problem. He brought it up to a former therapist, but as soon as they started working on the problem, he switched therapists (not a surprise). He's currently seeing another T now & supposedly one of his goals is to learn how to be honest, although I seriously doubt he's working on this.

For reference, I'll share my most recent experience with him lying:
The other night, we were lying in bed in the dark having an argument. He said he was going to use his phone to record me (he has done this many times & I've asked him why he does it, but he won't provide a straight answer). I told him not to record me, and he agreed not to. It was dark, so I couldn't see if his phone was recording or not. Yesterday, I asked him if he had recorded me. He said he didn't. Looked me in the eyes & said "I swear to God I didn't record you." I asked him to show me the videos on his phone to make sure. He brought up the videos & I saw a video on there with just a dark screen. I knew it had to be the recording of me in the dark. I asked him to play the video. He quickly lowered the volume on his phone and played it, so I couldn't hear anything. He said it must have been an accidental "pocket recording." I told him to turn the volume up - and there it was -- my voice on the video from our argument. I said "You lied to me again!" His response? A casual, "Yup, I lied. Sorry. I won't do it again." He then proceeded to be mad at me all evening bc he got caught lying again. It's like he doesn't even care anymore.

So if I confront him, he either acts like he doesn't care and/or gets angry & throws a tantrum bc he got caught, but if I know he's lying and I ignore it, it just enables him to lie even more. What can I do?
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Grey Kitty
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« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2017, 11:37:44 AM »

All you can do is accept that he will lie about anything, and therefore you shouldn't believe anything he says, unless you have proof from some other source that it is true or false.

If he's only mad at you for getting caught and has no remorse for lying, I don't see how that is going to change.

Well, accept that, and consider what limits it places on your relationship.
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Herodias
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« Reply #2 on: April 22, 2017, 05:39:12 PM »

I agree with Grey Kitty, my ex lied all the time too. His Mother said he always did this. Sometimes I would get him to tell me the truth, by telling him I will find out anyway, so tell me now and I will not say anything. Sometimes that worked. I always found out the truth. He lied to everyone, not just me. Sometimes I would go to his job and find out he told people that my Dad died or that I had breast cancer. I would kind of go along with it because I didn't want him to get fired. I have always wondered if I had acted like I didn't know what he was talking about, would that have stopped him or would it just start a huge fight. I don't know. I just didn't believe anything he said and when he really wanted me to know something, he would show me proof. Even that could change. Like his work schedule. He would show me his schedule and then during the week he would tell me they changed it. I never knew what he was doing. Mine would always talk about wanting to be truthful, but never did it. I think it is easier for them. They don't seem to care about consequences, because they can throw a tantrum and get out of dealing with it.  That's a tough place to be in.
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waverider
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« Reply #3 on: April 22, 2017, 05:49:20 PM »

Stems from insecurity, and the safety blanket for insecurity is privacy, so they throw up a barrier of smoke and mirrors to hide behind. To them their business is non of your business so they camouflage everything.

You cant directly stop it, even with boundaries, as it is all pervasive. It takes a complete change of personality to prevent it. You simply have to take everything they say as "interesting" as you would a stranger, without making any important decisions based on anything they say.

Trying to "fix" it drives it deeper and they will resort to type under times of stress and you wont be as aware of it.

Be wary of "insightfully confessing" smaller lies to distract you from a bigger one.

You cant live your life in endless suspicion or you will take on even more damage. The only truth is you will never know the truth, only parts of it.
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bananas2
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« Reply #4 on: April 24, 2017, 10:35:41 AM »

Thanks for your responses.
So, I guess the only way to go about this is to ignore his lies? Confronting him about a lie just leads to him blowing up at me. But ignoring absolute proof of a lie makes me feel dishonest that I'm pretending to believe him, and forces me to push down my feelings until they eventually manifest in me blowing up, getting depressed, having a breakdown, and/or worsening my already terrible health problems.
This is awful.
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DaddyBear77
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« Reply #5 on: April 24, 2017, 04:30:09 PM »

So I've learned a lot about trust lately.

Trust is a relationship between two people, and only two people. And it can't be "asymmetrical" - I trust you, you don't trust me. I don't trust you, but you DO trust me.

A healthy relationship DEPENDS on mutual trust - you trust me and I trust you.

Do you trust your pwBPD?

Do they trust YOU?

No one can FORCE someone else to NOT LIE, and by extension, you can not fix the problem of not trusting your pwBPD

This doesn't mean you should IGNORE his lies - quite the opposite. Face the fact that he is lying directly, then decide what YOU will do now that you have that knowledge.
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Grey Kitty
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« Reply #6 on: April 24, 2017, 05:41:41 PM »

So, I guess the only way to go about this is to ignore his lies?

There's a joke "Q: How can you tell if a cowboy is lying? A: Because his lips are moving."

If he says something you know to be untrue, I wouldn't suggest you strictly ignore it.

Excerpt
Confronting him about a lie just leads to him blowing up at me.

But yes, confronting him about it, trying to prove it is a lie, trying to get him to admit that it is a lie is pointless.

Excerpt
But ignoring absolute proof of a lie makes me feel dishonest that I'm pretending to believe him, and forces me to push down my feelings ... .

Exactly. There is a very fine line of middle ground where you aren't pretending to believe him, but you aren't expecting him to stop either, you just don't want to discuss it, or listen to another lie to back up the last one, etc.

"I don't believe it, and I won't talk about it anymore."

Or simply when you know he's lying, time to stop talking to him because you don't want to hear more lies.
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waverider
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« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2017, 07:11:40 PM »

You dont want to jump on the runaway delusion train, but neither is it healthy to jump in front of it trying to flag it down. You just get run over and it keeps on going.

Its much the same as any obsession or addiction. it is not about you the goal is to blow away any imposed obstacles. Hence you get bullied into compliance rather than trying to seriously win your trut
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isilme
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« Reply #8 on: April 25, 2017, 10:34:50 AM »

I see lies as a manifestation of the warped reality that comes with BPD, and so have encountered many times where H's interpretations of things I see as totally wrong, backwards, or incorrect, but also know that arguing about it is not going to make him stop seeing it that way, not going to change his mind, and not going to make my day any healthier. 

Pick and choose which lies need addressing and which don't.  Sometimes BPD seems to make them just contrary for the sake of it.  Sometimes they WANT to trigger us into fighting so they can accuse us of causing the fight they need to have to expel their emotions.  Poking at us is like castor oil for them.  They can't deal with their own tummy ache and take their own medicine, so they engage in behaviors we HATE to make us the bad guys, and to make us react in a way that allows them to spew out their emotional vomit, and lets them feel justified in doing so. 

He probably knows you hate lying.  He also probably has some sort of fun doing it, waiting to see when you will argue back.  You can hold your own convictions and not believe him and still not respond when he chooses to lie.  That's about what YOU feel inside.  Your reality is not beholden to his.  And his is going to be shame-reducing, blameshifting, colored to suit his emotions, his needs, his wants, and not respect yours.  That does not take your truth away.  It does not mean you accept it.  It just means you choose not to engage in that situation, as it's a waste of time.  You can say, "I don't agree.  I don't think that is correct." whatever.  But don't try to convince him he's wrong or he's purposefully lying.  Hell, in his mind he may have re-written it enough he 85% believes it at that point. 

Nothing you do will change his toddler-need to lie, anyway.  Don't try to teach a pig to dance - it won't work and annoys the pig. 
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waverider
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« Reply #9 on: April 30, 2017, 12:31:05 AM »

The most toxic of lies are those that contain a nugget of truth.
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Exhausted8
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« Reply #10 on: March 02, 2021, 05:46:48 AM »

Hi,
I'm new here and just read this thread about compulsive lying.
Two things... 1. My bpd is also a compulsive liar. At the beginning of the pandemic, we had a discussion about the importance of telling the truth about where we go and what we do... Then of course, she was caught lying about where she'd been. I isolated away from her, for my safety. She became angry, lots of screaming at the door, finally picking the lock and coming in to the room I was isolating in.
A friend suggested the Life360 app. I brought it up to bpd and after a few more weeks, she agreed we would both put on phones and I would come out of isolation.
On Valentine's day, she disappeared for several hours, and deleted the Life360 app. I went back into isolation. She now is angry and screaming that I caused this, I am forcing her to be "tracked" because I am controlling. I am remaining in isolation until we are both vaccinated, but not making a big deal of it... just quietly staying in the 2 rooms she's letting me have and wearing a mask when I leave those rooms. She continues to disappear for hours at a time with no explanation about where she goes.

2. It is interesting that your bpd is the one recording arguments. I record when my bpd tries to pick a fight, gets ugly, etc. so that when she comes back and claims it happened differently ("Her truth"  as she has told therapists) I can listen to recording and know I'm not crazy and that I am remembering the incident correctly. She refuses to listen to the recordings, of course, as they would prove "her truth" is incorrect.
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trappeddad
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« Reply #11 on: March 17, 2021, 11:39:21 PM »

it is a futile effort to stop these compulsive liars.      either accept it or make alternate plans.       but you cannot change these people.    wish i had easier advice
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