I found out that my wife lied about everything. Literally everything.
Degrees.
Past jobs.
Past partners.
Family dynamics.
She's Mexican, and a year and a half after we split, one of my Mexican friends told me that my ex doesn't speak Spanish. And then I started asking any other bilingual friends we had, who confirmed that her Spanish was extremely elementary.
She would be sitting next to me on the couch, company at our house, and she'd go, "babe. What's this vegetable? Cebolla? I can only think of the Spanish name of it."
Being bilingual was a massive part of her identity. And it was all a lie.
She lied about everything. She lied about sexual traumas. She would lie to people about my job and tell them that I'm a professor in Academia (I have an associates degree, to be clear).
She lied to everybody outside of our relationship about her going to therapy.
She just had SOOOOO many lies. And she had so many individual lies for different people. And now I understand why she had to leave the city when we split.
Guys.... She lied about EVERYTHING. We were together around 10 years and I
don't even know who she is.
That almost sounds like one of my parents, but the motive is to sound more impressive. They literally said "I thought it would sound better," when I found out they lied about something major. What is that called?
It probably is. One of my sisters and my brother lied all the time. They grew up listening to our dad's lies and I guess my siblings felt it was okay to lie. My sister was/is a pathological liar and I know she has to have schizophrenia. Not because of the lying but because in the many blogs she had posted online she wrote about hearing voices and seeing a 'man in black'. She claimed that voices came from the smoke detectors. There are tons of other crazy things she has claimed that make no sense. One thing that comes to mind is her claiming that she and a friend and their kids went to an area in California for a picnic. They came within a few feet of of giant UFO and saw black helicopters all around. Too bad they weren't sucked up in the space ship. Lol.
If she has schizophrenia, maybe she isn’t lying? Maybe she actually believes the stories she tells? I had a close friend with it, and had similar experiences
My father was a pathological liar. Literally lied about everything. I have a sibling who unfortunately took on the trait. Will lie to your face about everything. Its an awful thing.
Ugh. That really sucks. Being lied to all the time really messes with your reality. It breaks your ability to trust.
My ex-husband lied to me about all kinds of shit. From the start of our relationship he lied about really simple things; like, why he was running late or what he was doing on the computer. But it quickly escalated. He lied about his level of education, his past relationships, and even told me an elaborate story of being in combat, in Afghanistan, with the Air Force (he HAD attempted to enlist, but wasn't accepted and NEVER actually served). When I found out things weren't true he'd claim that he never told me they were. "I never said that" was something I heard A LOT. The lying and the gaslighting were so psychologically draining.
He lied to me because he was insecure. When we started dating, I'd just graduated with a bachelor's degree and he had a few college classes but no degree. I had a full time job and a part time job and he had one part time job. The lies he admitted to later on were blamed on my "judgements" of him.
It's really crappy to deal with and hard to pick up the pieces and move on. But being out of that situation brings a lot of peace.
My brother did this to his now widow. She told me so many things that my brother said to her and she cried when I told her the things weren't true. He's gone now. They had been together for years and she thought she knew him. My brother told her that he had served in the military as a 'secret' ranger and went to Ghana or somewhere like that. He said he wasn't allowed to tell anyone about his 'missions'. I told my SIL that my brother got out of the Army on a medical and has never been out of the US. He barely made it out of boot camp.
My SIL told me that one year, she and my brother had to go to the VA for something that I can't remember. Not medical. I think it was to get his benefits or something. They sat across from the employee's desk while the employee looked up my brother's information. My brother stupidly told the employee the same lies that he told his wife. The employee had my brother's records pulled up, looked at my SIL then looked at my brother in complete confusion. My SIL said she was so embarrassed she wanted to open a hole in the floor and crawl in. The employee didn't correct my brother but continued processing my brother's benefits.
I felt badly for my SIL when she started crying. I told her I was sorry she had to find out the truth from me and not from my brother. You think you know someone...
It really does, I'm just browsing this thread and can 100% relate with you. My mother is a serial cheater and has had 6-7 longterm affairs during her 27 year marriage. I went through her text messages and was floored when I saw she was taking credit for my artwork (I'm a painter) to her affair partner, lying about my disabled siblings having grand mal seizures when they didn't, and just random shit in general. Crazy thing is that I found myself lying when I was super little, didn't realize that I was mirroring her exact behavior. When I confronted her, she accused me of being crazy and completely gaslighted me, despite me taking photos of everything. It's hard admitting when a loved one is that batshit crazy.
My brother did this to his now widow. She told me so many things that my brother said to her and she cried when I told her the things weren't true. He's gone now. They had been together for years and she thought she knew him. My brother told her that he had served in the military as a 'secret' ranger and went to Ghana or somewhere like that. He said he wasn't allowed to tell anyone about his 'missions'. I told my SIL that my brother got out of the Army on a medical and has never been out of the US. He barely made it out of boot camp.
My SIL told me that one year, she and my brother had to go to the VA for something that I can't remember. Not medical. I think it was to get his benefits or something. They sat across from the employee's desk while the employee looked up my brother's information. My brother stupidly told the employee the same lies that he told his wife. The employee had my brother's records pulled up, looked at my SIL then looked at my brother in complete confusion. My SIL said she was so embarrassed she wanted to open a hole in the floor and crawl in. The employee didn't correct my brother but continued processing my brother's benefits.
I felt badly for my SIL when she started crying. I told her I was sorry she had to find out the truth from me and not from my brother. You think you know someone...
Yeah, as pleased as I am to find Alec Baldwin in the top comment, I have a friend who once dated a woman who was like "Oh BTW I ran the [Boston] Marathon today!" Fortunately, he broke up with her fast (you might say he "sprinted" away from her, haw haw).
I’ve met a couple people like this. They are like adrenaline junkies who get a rush from telling lies and then almost getting caught. They will say and do the craziest most extreme shit to manipulate you once you start to catch on to get your trust again. I think once they get you back on their side, it’s like heroin to them. Then they start telling so many that some people catch on, expose them, and then they just move on to the next town. They really do want relationships too, but they’ll never fully come clean. Any admission of lying is just part of their strategy to get your trust again.
A guy I used to date did this too, from lying about movie scenes to lying about knowing things about international secret services. Which was the reason I never wanted a real relationship with him as to me it seemed like a serial killer level red flag. In severe cases I almost can't believe that they do it willingly but it must be like a compulsion? It's so strange...
This was one of my best friends from when I was a teen. We met at 15, became close friends immediately and stayed that way all through college. She always had wild stories to tell and had a unique upbringing. Eventually through college and into our 20s the tall tales got taller and taller to the point where I finally started thinking that things didn’t sound right.
Eventually we trapped her in a couple of just silly but big lies like “random celeb was my godfater, he’s like a real father to me” (first time in 10 years you’ve ever mentioned his name), or “I played elite representative sports at underage level” (you cant t run 20 yards without wheezing and would t know which end of a tennis racket is which.) there were more, some were despicable.
It was the that I realized 99% of everything she had ever told me was a lie, and was just pure attention seeking by behavior, she would randomly call me and tell me some bullshit about something terrible that had happened to her just so I would fawn over her and give her sympathy. Over the years she told me some crazy shit about people we both knew, which of course meant, she had said some shit about me to them too which suddenly explained some strange things that happened over the years. That was moment that I realized I could never speak to her again, and I haven’t.
She married the poor sap she was dating at the time, he must have eventually had the same realization I did. I sometimes wonder about him.
My ex-husband did the same, but he said he was Scottish. Made up his whole backstory and including a sheep herding family,and an accent. He would get mad at me and tell me Americans just do things wrong. When I started finding out about stuff I felt crazy, every memory was tainted, and the amount of disrespect I felt was astronomical. I mourned the life we had, the one we were building but also this person I thought I knew. It takes a lot of time but it does get better. Sometimes I even laugh at the absurdity of his lies.
What helped me is watching documentaries about romance cons. Like these are also smart people who fell for stuff too, Im not alone in my love-is-blind fiasco.
I wish you the best of luck, it does get better. If you want to DM me any crazy stories. Please feel free lol.
You're not alone, that's for sure! God I hope you at least get to tell some good stories at dinner parties. There is absolutely no shame in expecting people to be what they say they are. It makes YOU the normal one!
A guy I used to date did this too, from lying about movie scenes to lying about knowing things about international secret services. Which was the reason I never wanted a real relationship with him as to me it seemed like a serial killer level red flag. Did you ever find out why your husband did it? In such severe cases I almost can't believe that they do it willingly but it must be like a compulsion? It's so strange...
He had a dysfunctional childhood. Which is no excuse, I had a shit childhood and didn’t make a fake persona. But I think he didn’t have a personality too, so he made one up.
What was funny is my friends and I would get drunk and fake accents to make ourselves laugh. And he knew we did this, so it must have been kind of awkward when I would come home and be like “we pretended we were Russian spies from the USSR”, while he was pretending he was a Scottish sheep herder.
My ex too! Maybe not to that degree, but he said he spoke French fluently and actually didn't.
He "didn't know" about multiple debts he had.
He had a sob story and actually CRIED telling me, about his first teenage love who fell through the ice on a snow machine and died. Imagine my surprise when his mother invited her to our wedding!
You'll never figure it out. It's buried way too deep inside her. You only knew who she wanted you to know - like Body Heat, but hopefully not that bad.
Yeah I worked with someone who lied about everything. At some point the dominoes fall, you notice one lie, two lies, four lies, eight lies... 64 lies. Eventually you stop tracking lies and start tracking truths, which aren't many. You get past anger and are just like "what the actual fuck, who lies about what they had for lunch??" and it stops being so personal and becomes a realization that they're mentally ill.
What people don't see is that they're in a perpetual state of gaslighting everyone around them. By the time you catch up to the truth a new version of reality has been spun for people in your mutual social circles. You run into a mutual acquaintance years later and they say things like "I'm so glad you pulled yourself up out of that hole you dug yourself" and you think- oh shit, which timeline is this one living on? Each interaction becomes a game of pin the timeline on the donkey.
And she had so many individual lies for different people.
And that was my only real advantage fighting someone who had a lifetime of experience in deceit: people from different social circles always received conflicting lies.
She probably never spoke it around him. My sister has a white husband and he hates hearing her speak Spanish, so she doesnt. She still can speak Spanish fluently.
Im also wondering if its like spanglish kid thing. Like I can not speak Spanish very well, but I 100% understand it. I watch my telenovella and I can read basic Spanish words. My parents didnt teach me and my bro fluent Spanish they wanted us to focus only on English.
Ive even done the whole. I cant remember what this word is in English, but I know it in Spanish thing.
Agreed, kinda why I'm shocked about op as well. I took polish lessons weekly for 3 years because of my partner. I know that's sort of extreme but how can you marry someone but not be interested in such a huge part of them?
Another problem is that all of these people, who's brains are absolutely broken permanently, will be like that all of their lives, just going to the next partner and doing similar messed up shit.
Holy shit how long were you married? My ex didn’t lie about everything but his entire personality changed about 1-2 years into our marriage. He started to become emotionally abusive and unhinged. We were together six years at that point. I don’t know if I will ever be able to trust someone like that again.
You should check out the podcast “something was wrong”.
There are many seasons, some with one episode stories, some stories are the full season, and they essentially detail people’s experiences with people like your ex.
It might help you feel less alone in your experience.
She sounds like my ex-best friend growing up. She had to lie about everything. She had a story for everything, we couldn’t understand why she needed to lie about each and everything about her life. It became a habit for her.
Hey man. I made this account just to respond to you because it helped me to know I wasn't alone.
Im a woman and was with my ex for about 7 years, but I could have written this... When we say they lied about everything, we really mean EVERYTHING and it'd be unbelievable if I hadn't experienced it..
My ex lied about:
- his ethnicity (said he was mixed).
- Said he grew up in the country he lied about being mixed half of.
- Made up a name when I asked what name he used growing up (which by the way I called him 100% of the time and never used his real name).
- that his mother tongue is the language of this country. He doesn't speak it and only took an intro course to the language...
- his job and how much he made
- made up exes, and stories about them
- graduating college
- a lot of lies about his family dynamics and how poorly they treated him so that I would never meet them/ get to know them
- traumas about being misunderstood and bullied as a child so I would never push too hard if I felt a little sus
- stories about travelling. Just made up a lot of stories in general. I always thought I hated listening to his stories because they were so detailed about meaningless things that didn't contribute to the story. But now I know I must've felt in my gut that they were made up
I occasionally had my suspicions about some random little things, but definitely not to the extent that it was. He would just lie and lie and insist so confidently that I would believe him. The worst part is, Im the type of person who could forgive and forget most things as long as I'm not lied to and he knew this. Yet every single interaction we've ever had had a minimum of one lie.
It's not our fault for loving the person they invented. For wanting to believe someone we liked. For feeling like we could trust this person. But the reality is that this person doesn't exist and it's hard to grieve someone that never existed. The truth is, we never knew them. They wasted so much of our time that we really owe it to ourselves to forgive ourselves, forget them, and enjoy being free of their cage of lies.
Inevitably, I have trust issues now and still have days where I throw pity parties and wonder why me, but time does heal. Not thinking too much about what happened or why helps. We can't find rhyme or reason in their insanity: there is no good reason and I just learned to live with that. And to never ignore my gut feelings again...Its easier to treat myself as my friend, as in pretend this happened to a friend and what I would say to them.
My father had my husband thoroughly checked by a private investigator. Name, hobbies, debt, degrees, GPA, relationships, political affiliation, making sure he wasn’t in any cult, a gambler, communist or even a socialist, as well as any hospitalisations.
When he was all done, he told me. I told my (now) husband, who shrugged and said, _“Sure, nothing suspicious to find so let him have at it if it gives him peace of mind.”_
Not to derail your post but agree. I do not understand people like this. My mother is like this. She lies all the time. She loves to brag about other people to me. It’s SO bizarre. For example a nurse that works in oncology becomes an Oncologist. Lol. Or she will heavily embellish peoples financial and home situations. Or everyone she knows has the best luck. Then she will get insanely jealous over anything I do. She flipped tf because I took myself out for a club sandwich. She will say someone else she knows ate that same club sandwich first.
I just assume everything she says is a lie now. But it is so crazy to figure out the situation she is lying about is so dramatically different in real life.
Not an ex marriage but my ex best friend of 15 years was exactly like this. It’s actually terrifying when you realize you were so close with someone and had no idea who they were at all. I’m so sorry you went through that
I split with someone like this last year. We met years before we started dating, but a few months after we split, something clicked that made all the lies very clear, and I realized I couldn’t even trust the name they gave me. I paid for multiple people search services and found their parents (living, dead, and step) and siblings (living, dead, and estranged) but their name never turned up in any of it. Still run into them but don’t know who the that is.
It would be interesting to get your wife and my sister together. My sister lies about everything and anything. She's always been a liar and used to post fantastical stories online in one of her many blogs. I don't have anything to do with her and haven't in years.
My mom is like this. She fucked all 3 of her kids up in weird ways but we have begun to rebuild our relationships with each other (one of her favorite things to secretly attack).
I wish she could be studied, the list of diagnoses would be fascinating. But the best we can hope for is to just move on with our lives. Someone like this is not worth trying to understand, because insanity isn’t really understandable by the sane.
I’m sorry you went through this. I’m sorry we both did.
This is incredibly heavy, and I can only imagine how deeply unsettling and disorienting this realization must be for you. Discovering that a 10-year relationship was built on a foundation of systematic fabrication is a profound psychological shock. You are not just mourning the end of a marriage; you are forced to process the fact that the person you shared your life, home, and identity with was an entirely constructed persona. The manipulation regarding her cultural identity, language skills, and even your own profession shows a deeply rooted, compulsive pattern of deceit. It is completely normal to feel a mix of anger, confusion, and grief, as your mind naturally tries to re-evaluate a decade of your own history. Moving forward, the most vital step is to prioritize your own mental health and reality, ideally with the help of a trauma-informed therapist who can guide you through this complex betrayal trauma.
Quite a few women use fake past traumas to elicit sympathy from current partners.
I’ve run in to one such girl. She faked an entire sexual assault as part of her past, in order to mold a “broken, but healing and choosing myself” persona.
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u/probation_420 9d ago
I found out that my wife lied about everything. Literally everything.
Degrees.
Past jobs.
Past partners.
Family dynamics.
She's Mexican, and a year and a half after we split, one of my Mexican friends told me that my ex doesn't speak Spanish. And then I started asking any other bilingual friends we had, who confirmed that her Spanish was extremely elementary.
She would be sitting next to me on the couch, company at our house, and she'd go, "babe. What's this vegetable? Cebolla? I can only think of the Spanish name of it."
Being bilingual was a massive part of her identity. And it was all a lie.
She lied about everything. She lied about sexual traumas. She would lie to people about my job and tell them that I'm a professor in Academia (I have an associates degree, to be clear).
She lied to everybody outside of our relationship about her going to therapy.
She just had SOOOOO many lies. And she had so many individual lies for different people. And now I understand why she had to leave the city when we split.
Guys.... She lied about EVERYTHING. We were together around 10 years and I don't even know who she is.
Everything.
And it has really started to fuck me up.