Okay, so I got off the phone with a friend of mine an hour or so ago. She told me some really horrible news. Her cancer is back. It has spread to her bones. It is currently in her tailbone. Generally this means it will spread up her spine. Horrible. Now this is just awful news. It is hard to hear, to think of, and to deal with. What is even harder is that the words "if it's true" have to be added because (shockingly enough with the subject line of this thread) she is a compulsive liar. Yes, she has lied about things this drastic before. Her crowning glory of lying about serious things in very inappropriate situations was going up to my mother-in-law at my 17 yr old brother-in-law's funeral after he had lost his two year fight with cancer and telling my M-I-L "I just found out I have cancer too." Needless to say it did not go over well. This person was already known to be a liar and my M-I-L was not in the mood to deal with her crap that day of all days. I dearly hope for my friend's physical sake that she is lying because cancer up the spine does not sound like a thing anyone should have to go through. Prognosis is about two years without treatment and about two years with so not good no matter what. I dearly hope for her mental and emotional sake that she is not lying about something this dire. If she is then she is beyond even the level of crazy lying that she has been known for in the past. I really hate the fact that I cannot just take what she says, no matter what it is, and let it stand as truth but over a quarter of a century of knowing this person has taught me better than that. I know she is sick. I know she can't help the lying. I know she has real, and very serious, health problems. Right now I just don't know which is worse. If this is true it is awful. If this is not true it is awful. If it is true and I am doubting her I am awful. If this is not true can I stay her friend? It is crap like this that makes me keep pulling away from people. I have no tolerance for other people's b.s. but this one person keeps me sucked in no matter what. I have no idea how we have stayed friends for this many years because this is how every word she has spoken in over a decade and a half has been filtered in my mind. "If it is true" sucks as a friendship status. It really does.
One very obvious question comes to mind. Since authenticity is the basis of any real friendship, and this woman has none, why is she still your friend? Whether or not the current situation is true doesn't really matter. If you have good reason to question it, and if she lies compulsively, she isn't a real friend. There's no vulnerability and no authenticity. If it were me, I'd just be done. Totally and completely. No matter what heart wrenching story she comes up with. And simply say "I'm really sorry, I simply don't have the energy or time for this relationship any more." As Brené Brown puts it, "choose discomfort over resentment" and take an instant to tell her how you feel... and then be freed of this very toxic-sounding friendship.
It has taken me many years of dealing with someone who I knew was lying because his lips were moving to finally get over it. In my case he was my first crush which compounded the problem. In my case I just excused it, promises of all sorts of stuff over the years. Promises that were unnecessary and unwarranted. Trying to buy my friendship with "stuff". In the end, I got to a point where, like you, I didn't believe anything he said. I basically walked away from us being friends. I became distant and too busy to bother and over time he and I drifted apart. It was a good move for me for sure. Then we bought our house..... He literally lives two streets away from our place. He has tried on a few occasions to "have a private conversation with me". And I never seem to find the time to have it. It's likely to wrap up our relationship which ended on a sour note... Some people are ok to let go of. You can call her on it.... You can catch her in the lie. Or you can let her live her own life and remove yourself from it. Because calling a pathologic liar out doesn't affect any change on their parts. At least in my case it never did and I've know this guy for 25+years... Hang in there and go find some honest people to be friends with...Make yourself less and less available. If she does in fact have cancer then be supportive if you wish. But it sounds like even if she has the need for your friendship, you don't need hers....
That's kind of the problem. She always NEEDS me. She needs and needs and needs. When I have need of a friend she is occasionally there but often blows me off. I don't run to her with every little thing either. Every time I try to just let her slip away she seems to have a massive life changing "OH MY GOD!" event and NEEDS me. I want to just say the hell with it but (for quite obvious reasons) she does not have many people in her life who stick with her. I feel guilty because I know she has problems. I feel pissed because I know 99.9999% of them are self made. I feel tired because nothing has changed in about a billion years of knowing her. I am glad she is a few states away because I think I would have to go to jail for kicking the crap out of her if she was close and infected my life and my kid's life with her crazy. Since she is so far away she only drives me nuts when I answer the phone but when I do she drives me full on NUTS because it is always something insane. Right now I am really upset because she has basically Bugs Bunny mind-tricked me again. If she was just telling me more about her b.s. screwed up life then I could do what I have been doing for quite a while now and treat it like an episode of Cops. You watch it. You think "damn that's crazy." You can even laugh at the stupid people doing stupid stuff. Then you turn it off and go on with your day. Of course that's not what happened now. She is either full on Charles Manson level, living in a whole different world, crazy and making this very serious stuff up OR she is telling the truth and it is horrible truth. Either way it is so very, very sad. The really sad, funny, "oh my lord" thing is that she gets very upset when people don't believe her. She says "I have never lied to them" and I KNOW it's b.s. because she has told me about lies she told them. I know for a fact that she believes her own stories. For instance she has four kids by three or four fathers. Yes, three OR four. You have to filter the stories. In some it's three and in others it's four. BUT she really tries to pretend she was a virgin until she was married (when she was pregnant with baby #2) and that she NEVER cheated on her hubby (even through when I met her she was screwing around with at least three guys that I know of) and that she also never cheated on the father of baby #4 when I also was around to know the guys she was cheating with. She actually tries to tell me that she didn't do the things I witnessed her doing. She has retold her own life story so many times that in her own mind she has become a saint. It is sad. I wish my guilty, crazy brain could just let go. I certainly don't feel like I can right now on the chance that this new health thing MIGHT be true. uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhgggggggggggggggg - crazy train just left the station!
Sometimes you have to let the wolves feed. They can only cry wolf so many times... Compulsive liars will continue to lie, be it due to some mental illness or deficiency, or because they can get what they want, and have somebody else bail them out/take them back. This falls along the lines of a sociopath, or just someone who lacks any kind of self respect or confidence. Instead, they use quick attention grabbers to sort of "inject" a similar-enough sensation to acknowledgment or love. Each time, though, they wind up having to turn the lie up, more and more, because it becomes almost addicting -- almost necessary to them, in the way we are with food or water. If you have offered them help, but they do not take it. You've done all you can here. If you have been there for them, but they fail to see how this has impacted you or your relationship, then you need to fold your hand. You're trying to win with a horrible bluff. I had an aunt who was a compulsive liar. It was me who had to convince, with great difficulty, the family to severe ties with her. It took a while, and at first she ran around frantically, desperately, trying to find one -- just one -- person to get a fix off of. Eventually, she realized what she had done and, well, she was able to get some help. She had nobody to use, and if she wanted that accessibility back, she would have to do something, like seek help. Fast forward two years, and she's doing better. But she has a long way to go with trust, especially in terms of financial troubles (what she lied about most often before).
