A Decade Worth Of Lies?
“My entire life was a lie for an entire decade. It started in middle school when I wasn’t a popular kid at all. I was an anti-social, only child with an uninteresting life and really no friends at all. I had a mother who never liked me and I figured that if my own mother didn’t like me nobody would. So I starting lying to people about small things to make myself seem more interesting. It worked, I made a ton of friends, and everyone thought I was cool…so I continued lying, and the lies got bigger and bigger.
By the time I was a junior in high school, everything that I told anyone about myself was a lie. Where I was born, who my family was, what I liked to do, everything. I even had two long-term relationships (two years and four years) where my boyfriend didn’t know one single true thing about me. No one did. I thought that I would be able to keep up the lies until I was dead and I had every intention to.
Finally, this year, I had three close friends of mine confront me about it in front of my parents (my parents had no idea the entire 10 years, that I was lying about stuff). They told me that I needed to come clean to everyone and start loving myself. So I did. I told every one of my friends, in person, that I was a lie, and that I would understand if they didn’t want to be friends with me anymore. I lost almost all of my friends, but the friends that did stick with me are closer to me than ever. I also realized that I could actually like who I really am. Now I’m much happier, I feel much better, and I feel like a much different and better person. If you ever find yourself in a situation where your life seems like a lie and you want to change it, it’s probably one the hardest things you will ever have to do but the feeling of relief after it is worth it. I know now that the friends I have who stuck with me through it really do care about me, and really are my friends, more like my family.”
“I Find Deceit An Enjoyable Challenge”
“Almost my entire life as I have presented it to my friends is a lie. I claim I’ve traveled the world and lived in NYC, Colorado, and Arizona. Well, the truth is: I’ve never left the state I was born in. I claim I used to help my cousin make criminal runs in NYC and that I’ve stabbed and beaten multiple people. The truth is: I’ve only ever been in one fight.
I claim I am a magnificent hacker paying his way through college off ill-gotten gains; the truth is: I can barely crack wifi encryption while following a YouTube video.
But my biggest lie is that I have slept with two attractive girls who went to my high school, the same one most of my friends went to. I go to great lengths to protect this lie, including staging fake phone calls and text messages, taking long drives to nowhere claiming I’m visiting them for a booty call. I keep on telling my friends not to ask either of the girls about it because I’m not sure how serious the relationship is and I don’t want them to think I’m getting clingy. Truth: I’m a kissless celibate at 18. I have considered the possibility that I am a sociopath but I find deceit an enjoyable challenge.”
Her Past Gambling Addiction…
“My husband has no idea that I am a compulsive gambler; I’ve lost over $200k from college to my late 20’s.
I went to rehab for five weeks several years ago. I do not gamble nearly the way I used to but from time to time, if he’s out of town or being neglectful, I’ll play $50 online.
As someone who is supposed to be in recovery, I should not EVER do this. While I keep a grip on it now and seldom mess around with it, I have the potential to ruin us financially of things get out of control again.”
Known For Being The ‘Street Kid’
“I didn’t go to high school (though later got GED, BA, MA) and was a street kid, a traveler through those years. Just running away from a violent home, like most street kids.
Now I’m a professional, love my work that really benefits people, but never share my past with co-workers, the public, etc. I just know ‘street kid’ comes with a lot of assumptions and baggage in the mainstream/middle-class world. I know they’ll look at me differently, through their middle-class value tinted glasses, if they knew. So I don’t share my past, but also always feel like I’m covering up at work, not completely honest about who I am.
All my friends in my personal life know about me, though. They’re lovely people who’ve been on their own strange journeys. Hard to reconcile two completely different worlds.”
No Longer Wanting The Life He Has
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“I really don’t like where my life is. I hate my job. It pays very well and I have two young children, so I can’t just change careers and start again. I once wanted to work in a building like the one I am in now. But I now realize it is just full of workplace politics and soul destroying work.
I wish I had never ever become a parent. I hate being a parent. Please note that I do not hate my children. I would take a bullet for either of them and they live a life of being very loved and well taken care of. They are very good kids, too. I just don’t want the responsibility, cost, and lack of personal time and space.
I don’t like being married to my wife. She is a great person and a fantastic mother, but we are complete opposites and she has many annoying habits. We get along perfectly fine and as far as she is concerned, I do not think like this. I treat her kindly and am the best husband a man can be (housework, romance, all that nonsense) because she deserves it, but I would not be bothered in the slightest if she walked out tomorrow.
Yes, these are petty. Yes, I am selfish. Yes, I am a jerk. I hate myself for it and get intrusive suicidal thoughts sometimes because of it. I never would, of course, because that would be super terrible thing for me to do. But that’s the lie I live and the bed I have made.
I do not resent her or the kids anymore and I do my fair share to ensure they have happy lives. I still hate myself for feeling and thinking like this, but it makes me feel better that they feel good.”
His Bizarre Way Of Trying To Make His Friend Feel Better
“A female friend of mine confided in me a really big secret about her past that she was very ashamed of and was afraid to tell me. So to put her at ease, I thought I’d confide in her a secret of my own…except I had no deep, dark, terrible secrets. So I told her I have schizophrenia.
I went to a ridiculous amount of work to keep up the charade, including getting some of those sugar pills and found a doctor label template online and carried the bottle around with me all the time, ‘Just in case.’ When hanging out with her, I’d purposely stare at walls or things that weren’t there, just to keep her convinced.
She moved away this year for school but before she left, she told me that her older sister had killed herself because of the same condition and urged me to seek help or at the very least call her if I ever felt the same way. I haven’t spoken to her since and can’t bring myself to tell her I’ve been making all of it up to make her feel better about her issue years ago.”
That Can’t Be Good For His Karma
“I work retail and often I act like I am a mute or deaf. I know it’s messed up but I do it to remind people to treat each other better. Especially in food service and retail, customers act REALLY crazy and don’t have any remorse or respect for you or your job. They come by, tear stuff up, and act like a jerk which forces you to have to stay until 2 am cleaning and restocking stuff. Everything that was terrible about their day, they dump it on you.
The ONLY time I have EVER received an apology or empathy from a customer who was being a jerk is when they thought I had a disability. That particular person actually turned the heck around and apologized for acting like a brat when I simply waved hello to her. I’m not sure I would have gotten that reaction if she knew I wasn’t handicapped at all I don’t get why people are so rude. You say a simple hello and they act like you just asked them to do something terrible. People also don’t take compliments very well, I’ve noticed. They don’t say thank you, smile, and move on. They almost always turn it into some weird moment by doing this, ‘Oookaaaaaaaay?’ gesture and look away from you like you’re a psycho.
I guess it’s also curiosity. I am good friends with a deaf teammate and see that people are readily sympathetic to him and are so ready to compliment him on a good job when really he’s doing no better than the rest of us. We’re all good but customers compliment him first while the rest of us get treated like we’re just a body filling space to any them.
My BIGGEST lie is that I’ve told co-workers that I have a second job, own my car, and have my own apartment. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t get paid anywhere near enough to afford such things and getting a second job is proving to be futile since every freaking employer out there needs you at night.”
It’s Just Too Hard To Leave Her
“I don’t want to be with my girlfriend anymore and I hate how she’s ripped us apart when she was once my best friend. Two years down the drain for nothing, yet for some reason, I can’t leave her. I hate picturing her lying in bed, holding her doggies as she’s crying herself to sleep because she’d never see that she was the problem, that she started every single fight.
I hate that she couldn’t see that I was working so hard and so much for our future now so that later in life, I could spend time with our children and be in their lives too. But all that would be thrown away if I left her. I think about how she fights with me now; how will she act when we fight in front of the kids? How will she act when she’s upset at one of them? I’m literally the only person she has and yet all she does is push me away purposely.
Then I think about leaving her but her being with someone else, her being with another guy and loving him, caring for him and them getting married, and it tears me up inside.
I hate my girlfriend, I hate her so very much, yet I absolutely love her and somehow am unable to leave her for the way she treats me when things are not her way. That is the unfortunate lie that I live.”
Finding An Escape From Her Awful Marriage And Terrible Mother-In-Law
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“I was trapped in a very unhappy marriage. For months, I tried to impress upon him how dire the situation was, but he was childish and unwilling to fix it.
His mother was awful and I’m pretty sure had some not-very-motherly feelings for him (she had him when she was very young so they were only 14 years apart). The day I met her, she treated me like ‘the other woman’: snide, catty, underhanded, rude, usurping…she was a horrendous woman.
I made preparations to leave him, but the week I was set to escape from that life, the pregnancy test came back positive. I didn’t tell him. I left him all the same and aborted it three weeks later. I wasn’t ready for children. I was not going to raise a child by myself and I certainly wasn’t going to let that terrible excuse of an ex-mother-in-law touch any child of mine. I’d rather get rid of the baby than deal with a lifetime of being tied to that family. So I did and I don’t regret it.”
People Think He’s An Artist?
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“Most people think I’m an artist and that I make my living off the comics industry.
It’s actually a little side gig that doesn’t even pay enough for the monthly rent. However, I tell people that I do art full time and that it’s how I make my livelihood because I’d rather they focus on that for conversation instead of starting a conversation about my real day job.
Thing is, I can’t talk about my day job. NDA’s and all. So as far as most of my friends are concerned, I don’t go to an office 40 hours a week, I just get in ‘a zone,’ turn off my phone, and come out in the evenings.
For the curious, I won’t go into much detail, but I work a job in the entertainment industry and our intellectual property is a militantly guarded ordeal. While I appreciate their enthusiasm for our product, too many times have they tried to drag me down the ‘I won’t tell anybody, but…’ road, and all that sets me up for is jeopardizing my job and/or disappointing them with silence.
So I just don’t bother.
Nope, don’t work there during the days. I’m really drawing comics, yessiree.”
Extremely Unhappy On The Inside
“I am the friendly, nice person that is always happy and cheerful. I have no idea what these feelings are actually, I just learned how to mimic them at a young age.
For a very, very long time, I’ve suffered from extreme emotional detachment with a borderline personality disorder. I can honestly say I can’t remember what it feels like to be happy or sad, only anger. I have spikes in either direction, but they are suppressed quickly. My general state is numb/neutral and everything else is a complete lie. I learned to mimic what people expect or want. Also how to appear to be concerned and trustful for people to tell me their secrets. When the whole time I was getting their secrets so I could hold them over them if they ever found out mine.
Yes, I know what caused it and I’ve sourced treatment. I even had a ‘break’ where I actually reverted and started feeling emotions and feelings and all that. My girlfriend at the time, all my close friends, and my family knew about the incident and what caused me to revert to actually being able to feel emotions again.
Their response? They all complained that I wasn’t myself and that they wanted me to get back to ‘normal’ and stop acting out and start being there for them again. First time in 15 years I actually felt anything, only to be told no one liked me and I wasn’t as dependable to them anymore. Sadly that lead me to revert to my old ways. Numb is my way of life and only anger has always been there, always has been, and always will be.”
Cheating On Her Boyfriend?
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“I kissed one of my closest friends and now I’m afraid to tell my boyfriend. I don’t know what his grounds of cheating are and I’m terrified of asking.
Morally, I need to tell him, because I can’t stand keeping a secret from him. I love him so much. I want to marry him someday. I just feel tremendously guilty about the whole thing.
Realistically, I shouldn’t tell him because he is under too much stress. He works full time and has 18 credits.
We’re in a long distance relationship because he failed out of our university after freshman year. I’m so scared of losing him.”
The Wedding That Won’t Be Happening…
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“I’m currently engaged and we have a baby.
I’m going to college right now while he works full time (he graduated college a few years ago). We’re supposed to be getting married next spring.
I’ve been looking for a job and an apartment for about two months now. I’m leaving as soon as I have the money saved up.
Both our families constantly talk about the wedding and plans for our second child, etc. And so does he, even though we’ve discussed breaking up and even split custody. Not sure if he thinks I’m kidding or is just in denial.”
She Has A Few Dirty Little Secrets
“I’m a college freshman who moved across the country to attend college and had to leave my newborn son behind. There are multiple lies that I’m living/have lived within this story.
My aunt adopted him because she’s unable to have children (age and genetics), and we both agreed at the beginning of my pregnancy that because he would be two months old when I left, it would be best for him to grow up believing she was his actual mom. So the first lie that I had to live was not seeing any non-immediate family members during the pregnancy so they would believe that my aunt was the one pregnant, not me. I had to hide behind baggy clothing in high school to hide it from the people there, too.
In college now, I rarely acknowledge that I’ve had a kid. Basically, if they don’t ask, I don’t tell. And even at that, I still don’t tell most people. The biggest lie though is that I told my family members that knew and the doctor that I was wasted at a party and don’t remember who I slept with. I was actually taken advantage of by my aunt’s boyfriend…the same aunt who is now raising my son.
I trust them with my son and I purposefully made sure the adoption agreement was solitary to my aunt with my grandparents as my second choices, excluding her boyfriend from the whole ordeal. If need be, I can get a paternity test and put a restraining order on him. But I don’t feel that’s necessary, and would contradict the whole ‘it’s actually my aunt’s kid’ lie.”
His Non-Existent Social Life Caused Him No Concern
“I’m 25 and I lie to my parents about my social life. See, they’re both very outgoing people with tons of close friends and acquaintances and all of my siblings are very similar. I’m more of a loner. I have a few close friends I see once every couple of weeks, but that’s it.
So a few years ago, my parents sat me down and had a long talk with me about how they were worried that I was depressed because I didn’t really go out for anything besides work and didn’t seem to have any friends. No matter how much I tried to convince them that I was fine, they refused to believe me. So I said eff it. I started making up friends/dates/activities. I would make a point of getting dressed up on Friday/Saturday night and then just go do something by myself.
I don’t live with my parents anymore, but we speak on the phone and see each other frequently, so I’ve kept the charade up. I’ll drop by their house to say hi and mention that I’m on my way somewhere. Or feign being hungover at a family event so that I can spin a tale about a wild party I went to. Most of the time I’m either home or at the bookstore.
This has been going on for years and I’ve never gotten caught in a lie. They just don’t understand that I’m not as social as they are and I have no idea how to make them understand, so I lie.”
Reasons Why He’s Living Abroad
“I am lying to my parents (in America) that I am staying in Ireland to study for the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Examination) without distractions. I am actually staying here so that I can live with my girlfriend and they won’t cut off my financial support.
I am also planning on saying I got a job as a doctor in Ireland in January even if I do not for the same reason.
Both my psychiatrist and my therapist think this is the correct decision.”
Why He Really Doesn’t Want A Relationship…
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“My biggest lie is when I say that ‘I’m not interested in a relationship.’ I tell people that I have other things to think about right now or I make up an excuse about how I haven’t met a girl that’s right for me yet.
The reality is that I really want someone that I can share my life with, someone I can be intimate with, someone I can trust.
I’m just really scared about leaving myself so vulnerable to someone. Whenever I meet a girl I’m interested in, I never do anything about it because I feel that it won’t work out at all.”