Do Your A's Lie Nonstop?
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Pacific Northwest
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Do Your A's Lie Nonstop?
Separated from soon to be EX AW. She routinely sends texts of obvious lies. When I point out the lie she just moves on to the next lie. Its getting to be pretty funny to see what she will come up with next. Are all A's like this?
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My xABF lies about ME, all the 'things' i am. A puppet, a *****/cheater, a liar, too many things to even name. Those types of lies aren't funny, however, I will not have to listen to them much longer.
I think A's lie to themselves to make them feel better about themselves. Lots of projection.
I think A's lie to themselves to make them feel better about themselves. Lots of projection.
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Join Date: Aug 2016
Posts: 121
Absolutely.
My RAF's lies began to hide his drinking.
Then the lies started being about things that were totally unrelated. It became so ridiculous. He was lying about things that wouldn't have mattered or had any consequences.
Then again, I was no better. I began lying to hide my feelings and my snooping. I would lie about seeing or talking to other people like friend/family. In my head I was afraid he'd be paranoid that I was talking about him or our problems... giving him another excuse to drink.
I was lying thinking I could manipulate his addiction.
Pretty sad.
My RAF's lies began to hide his drinking.
Then the lies started being about things that were totally unrelated. It became so ridiculous. He was lying about things that wouldn't have mattered or had any consequences.
Then again, I was no better. I began lying to hide my feelings and my snooping. I would lie about seeing or talking to other people like friend/family. In my head I was afraid he'd be paranoid that I was talking about him or our problems... giving him another excuse to drink.
I was lying thinking I could manipulate his addiction.
Pretty sad.
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Join Date: Nov 2014
Posts: 667
Yep. It gets pathological. At one time I thought it was 2 seperate issues. Meaning the alcohol was one problem, and the lying another.
The lying never stopped, but neither did the drinking.
I actually fantasized that I could get over the drinking. But the effects of the lying were about as bad, if not worse, than what the drinking was doing.
I don't miss either in my life.
The lying never stopped, but neither did the drinking.
I actually fantasized that I could get over the drinking. But the effects of the lying were about as bad, if not worse, than what the drinking was doing.
I don't miss either in my life.
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Do alcoholics lie???? hahahahahaha. Of course............
I think I posted this in the quacker thread.
My ex went to see the Mets, in Shea Stadium. We lived in NJ. I was also a Met fan but didn't go to that game, he went with his friends. I watched the game, it was over around 4:30. I thought perhaps with the traffic that he would probably be home about 6:30-7:30. He showed up at 1pm.
I asked him why so late, did you stop at the bar? He told me that it was a double header with extra innings, and that he came right home after the game.
I told him, I watched the game, it was over at 4:30. He told me that games are not televized live, and that I was watching the wrong game. The game I was watching was actually pre recorded days ago.
I knew better, you don't argue with a lying drunk. We really didn't have live coverage of sports, news or anything else in the 90's or later. It was all in my imaginative mind that we did...........
amy
I think I posted this in the quacker thread.
My ex went to see the Mets, in Shea Stadium. We lived in NJ. I was also a Met fan but didn't go to that game, he went with his friends. I watched the game, it was over around 4:30. I thought perhaps with the traffic that he would probably be home about 6:30-7:30. He showed up at 1pm.
I asked him why so late, did you stop at the bar? He told me that it was a double header with extra innings, and that he came right home after the game.
I told him, I watched the game, it was over at 4:30. He told me that games are not televized live, and that I was watching the wrong game. The game I was watching was actually pre recorded days ago.
I knew better, you don't argue with a lying drunk. We really didn't have live coverage of sports, news or anything else in the 90's or later. It was all in my imaginative mind that we did...........
amy
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Originally Posted by letitend 
I think A's lie to themselves to make them feel better about themselves. Lots of projection.
He went as far as blaming me for marriage demise, not being affectionate. And 5 relapses over 7 years, constant family abandonment/rehabs, lack of employment, unwillingness to shower, and sleeping all day after a good helping of pain pills have absolutely nothing do do with it.
He also declared that "we were never right for each other". Whatever floats your boat, dude, whatever helps you sleep at night. Denial runs deep.
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It's all part of the denial process that is deeply ingrained in them. The truth hurts, so they don't want that.
The thing is, they lie about the stupidest stuff too, something that is so insignificant, but it's a habit they develop.
The thing is, they lie about the stupidest stuff too, something that is so insignificant, but it's a habit they develop.
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Yes, they do lie. But I also think that in some people there is a brain component. Some A's have been so damaged neurologically that they may think they are telling the truth. That is, their heads are so messed up that they think the lies actually happened. A sort of confabulism. It is one crazy disease, isn't it?
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Speaking as the alcoholic here....yep. We lie All. The. Time. when drinking. About the big stuff, like the drinking (when, where, how much, with whom, pick a way to lie about it and we've probably done them all) and about....the smallest, most inane stuff possible.
I made stuff up. In conversations, even when I had a legit contribution or story, sometimes I'd tell a made up one instead. Seriously...insane. So much of my life became lies- of omission and commission.
The comment about separating the drinking and the lying- spot on. Once the drinking stops, the lying can stop. If you choose rigorous honesty (as AA prescribes), this applies to all parts of your life from what you do to sharing your feelings. And that kind of life is simply amazing, free, and just stunningly...better.
Active alcoholics drink, lie, hide, obfuscate, pick a word, to anyone and everyone. Recovered alcoholics don't.
I made stuff up. In conversations, even when I had a legit contribution or story, sometimes I'd tell a made up one instead. Seriously...insane. So much of my life became lies- of omission and commission.
The comment about separating the drinking and the lying- spot on. Once the drinking stops, the lying can stop. If you choose rigorous honesty (as AA prescribes), this applies to all parts of your life from what you do to sharing your feelings. And that kind of life is simply amazing, free, and just stunningly...better.
Active alcoholics drink, lie, hide, obfuscate, pick a word, to anyone and everyone. Recovered alcoholics don't.
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Oh, Yes, I can relate to the lying thing! It seems that the farther the alcoholic gets into the disease....the worse the lying gets.....
This is my take on some aspects of the "lying"---While it seems obvious that some of the lying is to cover their tracks and protect them selves from discovery or wrath....I think---especially in the latter stages---that a lot of it is CONFABULATION.....making up the "missing parts"....
Like...with very small children...when trying to flesh out a story when they really do no know certain things....
Or...like, after a stroke or some other brain pathology.....
The heavy drinking alcoholic DOES function with lots of blank spaces in their memory....and it does get worse over time....
so, I theorize that they make up the missing parts...and, throw in a little imagination, while they are at it.....
Example...I recently had a woman, that I have known for years, in my community, tell me...straight faced, that she and her ex were married for seven years...and she had known him for 13yrs. Actually, she was ;married for four years and had known him for a total of six!! (I was at the damn wedding and she come to my house and cried, loudly, on my shoulder about the divorce).
I happen to know that she is a closet drinker for many years....
I know another woman who was spiraling very fast into the latter stages...who went form telling about her father cooking turkeys for the whole community o n Thanksgiving....It went from two or three turkeys to about 12 tu rkeys, as she repeated the story over the years.....
It seems that they will take a grain of truth (possibly)....and make up the rest as they would like it to be.....
I , also, wonder if it might be, also, a regression in behavior.....After all, we teach children that they have to Learn to tell events ACCURATELY...and that, not to do so is wrong---in other words, a lie.
So, I theorize, as the brain function is progressively diminished in function, due to the effects of the alcohol (especially the frontal lobes)....the early learning to tell the accurate truth, falls to the wayside.....
In further support of this "dandylion theory"....they seem mistyfied and defensive when it has been pointed out that they seem to have a strange relationship with the TRUTH.......
In further support of the theory....this feature of "lying" seems to be sooo universal to all alcoholics as they progress in their drinking.....
In Summary--- alcoholic lying seems, to me, to be a haphazard mixture of
personal Protection, Confabulation, and Imagination......
This is my take on some aspects of the "lying"---While it seems obvious that some of the lying is to cover their tracks and protect them selves from discovery or wrath....I think---especially in the latter stages---that a lot of it is CONFABULATION.....making up the "missing parts"....
Like...with very small children...when trying to flesh out a story when they really do no know certain things....
Or...like, after a stroke or some other brain pathology.....
The heavy drinking alcoholic DOES function with lots of blank spaces in their memory....and it does get worse over time....
so, I theorize that they make up the missing parts...and, throw in a little imagination, while they are at it.....
Example...I recently had a woman, that I have known for years, in my community, tell me...straight faced, that she and her ex were married for seven years...and she had known him for 13yrs. Actually, she was ;married for four years and had known him for a total of six!! (I was at the damn wedding and she come to my house and cried, loudly, on my shoulder about the divorce).
I happen to know that she is a closet drinker for many years....
I know another woman who was spiraling very fast into the latter stages...who went form telling about her father cooking turkeys for the whole community o n Thanksgiving....It went from two or three turkeys to about 12 tu rkeys, as she repeated the story over the years.....
It seems that they will take a grain of truth (possibly)....and make up the rest as they would like it to be.....
I , also, wonder if it might be, also, a regression in behavior.....After all, we teach children that they have to Learn to tell events ACCURATELY...and that, not to do so is wrong---in other words, a lie.
So, I theorize, as the brain function is progressively diminished in function, due to the effects of the alcohol (especially the frontal lobes)....the early learning to tell the accurate truth, falls to the wayside.....
In further support of this "dandylion theory"....they seem mistyfied and defensive when it has been pointed out that they seem to have a strange relationship with the TRUTH.......
In further support of the theory....this feature of "lying" seems to be sooo universal to all alcoholics as they progress in their drinking.....
In Summary--- alcoholic lying seems, to me, to be a haphazard mixture of
personal Protection, Confabulation, and Imagination......
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Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 685
I told him, I watched the game, it was over at 4:30. He told me that games are not televized live, and that I was watching the wrong game. The game I was watching was actually pre recorded days ago.
The xagf of a friend of mine, when caught with several empty wine bottles in her car, said they were left there by the dealership during recent repairs. Yeah that happens.
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 196
Oh my. This reminds me of the time my XAFIL told XAH and I about a Pete Rose signed baseball bat he had hanging up on the wall. He told us Pete Rose gave it to him. In reality, XAH and I gave it to him for Christmas a couple years earlier.
The sad thing is that I think he really believed it.
The sad thing is that I think he really believed it.
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Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: USA
Posts: 202
Originally Posted by letitend
My xABF lies about ME, all the 'things' i am. ...
I think A's lie to themselves to make them feel better about themselves. Lots of projection.
I think A's lie to themselves to make them feel better about themselves. Lots of projection.
Her best female friend actually contacted me to warn me that my ex was saying things about me to her best friend that clearly were not true.
Originally Posted by dandylion
Oh, Yes, I can relate to the lying thing! It seems that the farther the alcoholic gets into the disease....the worse the lying gets.....
This is my take on some aspects of the "lying"---While it seems obvious that some of the lying is to cover their tracks and protect them selves from discovery or wrath....I think---especially in the latter stages---that a lot of it is CONFABULATION.....making up the "missing parts"....
Like...with very small children...when trying to flesh out a story when they really do no know certain things....
Or...like, after a stroke or some other brain pathology.....
The heavy drinking alcoholic DOES function with lots of blank spaces in their memory....and it does get worse over time....
so, I theorize that they make up the missing parts...and, throw in a little imagination, while they are at it.....
This is my take on some aspects of the "lying"---While it seems obvious that some of the lying is to cover their tracks and protect them selves from discovery or wrath....I think---especially in the latter stages---that a lot of it is CONFABULATION.....making up the "missing parts"....
Like...with very small children...when trying to flesh out a story when they really do no know certain things....
Or...like, after a stroke or some other brain pathology.....
The heavy drinking alcoholic DOES function with lots of blank spaces in their memory....and it does get worse over time....
so, I theorize that they make up the missing parts...and, throw in a little imagination, while they are at it.....
One night my ex said she wanted takeout dinner from a local restaurant, and she asked me to drive so she could walk from the car into the restaurant and pick up dinner for us both, then I would drive us home and we would eat dinner at home. She seemed sober when we left home.
There is no parking near the restaurant, which is on a very busy street, so she jumps out of the car to get the food and I sat in the car in an alley behind the restaurant in a parking area where you can stop with the engine running but you can't leave the car there and get out of the car. I figured it would take her 10 minutes at the most to walk to the front door of the restaurant, wait for the food, then walk back to the car.
20 minutes or so later, there was no sign of her back at the car, so I drove past the front of the restaurant to see where she was.
I see her sitting at a table inside the restaurant, but there is no parking so I can't stop the car.
So I then spend 10 minutes or so trying to find somewhere to park and then I walk to the restaurant. So by now it is about half an hour or so since she got out of the car to grab our dinner.
When I walk into the restaurant, she is sitting at a table, has eaten her dinner and is drunk, and she hands me a bag with my dinner in it, which is now cold. It was like she had forgotten that I was waiting in the car for her and that we were going to go home and eat dinner together.
All I said to her was "what are you doing ?", quietly, when I first walked into the restaurant before I realised she was drunk - a pretty reasonable question. When I then realised she was drunk, I was disappointed that she was drunk yet again of course, but there was no argument, no disagreement ... there is no point in arguing with someone in that state.
I don't know if she drank quickly before we left home and then the alcohol's effect came over her - either that or she bought alcohol after getting out of the car and before going into the restaurant.
She was on prescription medication that should not be combined with alcohol, plus alcohol, so the effects of the alcohol would often happen very rapidly when she drank - one minute she would seem almost sober, 5 minutes later she could not walk.
She could not walk out of the restaurant on her own , so I help her to the car, drove home, had to help her out of the car, carry her into our house, and put her into bed to sleep it off.
A few days later my ex's best female friend calls me on the phone, and says that she is concerned and wants to talk to me, because my ex told her best friend about an incident in which I supposedly "yelled at" my ex.
So her best friend tells me my ex was complaining to her best friend that I had "yelled at her because she took too long to pick up our dinner". I had no idea what she was talking about, and then when I ask when this supposedly happened, I realise that my ex was talking about the same trip to the restaurant ... but with no mention from my ex of alcohol or any other details to her friend. Just "he yelled at me for taking too long to pick up our dinner". There was absolutely no yelling.
So my ex had concocted this ludicrous story to her best friend that she had simply gone to pickup dinner for us, and that I had then "yelled at her" for "taking too long", with no mention whatsoever of getting drunk.
I honestly think that she believed that was actually what happened and that my ex had convinced herself that there was no drinking that night, and that in fact it had happened just as she told her best friend.
This I see as the worst of denial, where not only does a drinker "edit out" the drinking, but they then remove all details of the madness of their behaviour and then add details which simply never happened, in order to smear / blame their spouse.
So it's not just making up things to fill in the blanks - key parts of an incident like "I got drunk" and "I was so drunk I could not walk" are completely edited out, then things that never happened get added in. It is like some kind of paranoia combined with denial.
So yet another crazy drunken incident during which (1) she got drunk, (2) she clearly forgot I was even waiting in the car for her, (3) she ate dinner on her own while waiting for her, and (4) she could not walk and I had to help her get to the car then carry her into our house ... gets twisted around into something that bears no resemblance to reality and which portrays me as a grossly unreasonable and impatient spouse, who verbally abuses his poor suffering spouse who was just trying to pick up some takeout dinner. Ta - da ! The wonders of the alcohol hijacked brain !
I told her best friend the whole story of course.
I hate to think the picture my ex was painting of me to her family of origin, given the gross distortion of that incident.
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Originally Posted by timetohealguy
So it's not just making up things to fill in the blanks - key parts of an incident like "I got drunk" and "I was so drunk I could not walk" are completely edited out, then things that never happened get added in. It is like some kind of paranoia combined with denial.
So yet another crazy drunken incident during which (1) she got drunk, (2) she clearly forgot I was even waiting in the car for her, (3) she ate dinner on her own while waiting for her, and (4) she could not walk and I had to help her get to the car then carry her into our house ... gets twisted around into something that bears no resemblance to reality and which portrays me as a grossly unreasonable and impatient spouse, who verbally abuses his poor suffering spouse who was just trying to pick up some takeout dinner. Ta - da ! The wonders of the alcohol hijacked brain !
So yet another crazy drunken incident during which (1) she got drunk, (2) she clearly forgot I was even waiting in the car for her, (3) she ate dinner on her own while waiting for her, and (4) she could not walk and I had to help her get to the car then carry her into our house ... gets twisted around into something that bears no resemblance to reality and which portrays me as a grossly unreasonable and impatient spouse, who verbally abuses his poor suffering spouse who was just trying to pick up some takeout dinner. Ta - da ! The wonders of the alcohol hijacked brain !
In that example above, all I did was get her home safely when she was drunk, and when that is put through the alcoholic brain filter, instead of "my spouse cares about me and got me home safely when I was so drunk that I could not walk - I should say thanks to him", it becomes "my spouse is verbally abusive, grossly unreasonable, and a horrible person, and I should complain to my best friend about this terrible mistreatment".
It is truly delusional, and that, right there (sadly), is a perfect example of how alcohol destroys relationships and marriages.
Multiply that kind of mechanism by however many times a week your drinker gets drunk, and it gives an insight into how delusions and paranoia about a spouse can develop.
If it wasn't for the fact that my ex's best friend told me what my ex had said about this incident, I would have had no idea that this was the distorted reality she had written to her memory of what happened that night. Who knows how many other nights she has in her "memory" that are gross distortions of reality.
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Originally Posted by Nata1980
Yes, absolutely. XAH also told lies about me constantly. To his family, how abusive, mean, and not supportive I was to him over the years. To me, how I was a terrible mother because I was working full time (I was the only one working full time, his employment was very "seasonal" and sparse at best).
He went as far as blaming me for marriage demise, not being affectionate. And 5 relapses over 7 years, constant family abandonment/rehabs, lack of employment, unwillingness to shower, and sleeping all day after a good helping of pain pills have absolutely nothing do do with it.
He also declared that "we were never right for each other". Whatever floats your boat, dude, whatever helps you sleep at night. Denial runs deep.
He went as far as blaming me for marriage demise, not being affectionate. And 5 relapses over 7 years, constant family abandonment/rehabs, lack of employment, unwillingness to shower, and sleeping all day after a good helping of pain pills have absolutely nothing do do with it.
He also declared that "we were never right for each other". Whatever floats your boat, dude, whatever helps you sleep at night. Denial runs deep.
He acts like he was a stellar father because he sat on his bum, watched the kid and mooched off me for 10 years almost. He played video games and gave the kid milk and food for a few years, changed some diapers. When I got home from work, I cooked/cleaned/bathed child/took care of him fully from the minute I walked in the door. He acts like he did me a favor taking care of OUR kid from the gaming chair.
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