There was a family in our neighborhood that that always told these exaggerated lies about the success of their Hardware store. The father seemed to lie about anything he did. He was always the best and most successful at everything he tried or touched.

They sometimes came over for dinner and after they left we would dissect the stories and speculate which were lies. Kind of sad really that these people thought they were fooling the world. They were so transparent.

Any of your friends or co-workers like this? Women claiming their husbands make tons of money, or I got this $3,000 Flat screen tv at a great deal for $900, "Let me hook you up too" or I don't like to brag, which is why I haven't mentioned my Nobel Prizes or talked about my experiences as a Navy Seal.

Is it a friendship breaker for you? Or do you let the bull slide off your back?

Why do people feel a need to lie or boast like this?

I can't stand that. One guy we know is so bad that you literally can't believe a thing he says. I have known several a few steps down from him who are exaggerators, and while that does bother me, it is not nearly as bad as someone who lies more than truths!

I have known so many people like this, it makes me despair.

I dated one guy, he never told things the way they were, just the way he wanted them to be. Since these 2 things never meshed, he lied literally all the time. The present, and he would rewrite the past the way he wished it was.

It makes me very nervous of people like that. My erstwhile niece-in-law is always talking about things that never happen. A great job she just got she will be starting soon, etc.

Back when VCRs were new, a guy said he would get me one cheap. I said heck yes! It was delay, delay, delay, then he needed more money, and I wound up paying what I would have, in the store.

I had a friend in high school who told some pretty outrageous lies just to get attention and look cool. She's then claim that she knew better than everyone because she'd experienced it. She told us that her sister was handicapped and had a feeding tube and it went in through the butt and don't we dare question her because she knew due to her sister. Wonder who her sister would feel knowing that she'd been described that way when there was nothing wrong with her. She told us she went nude bathing in Japan, which was also a lie. The list of lies went on and on.

Also worked with a compulsive liar who couldn't tell the truth if her life depended on it and I work in a middle school where many of the children lie. My kid I work with is a constant liar and then when you catch him, he says he didn't know or makes some excuse.

Of course I've know many people like that. I just think they like to hype themselves up to make themselves feel better. Hey, who am I to knock them? If you're just totally arrogant about it and I know you're lying on top of that......I'd bring you down to size quickfast.

I have known quite a few people who boasted for the sake of boasting, while their words were so exaggerated that it was basically cartoonish. That urge to feel, and look, important is a powerful chemical.

very few,

cheaps wrote:

very few,

DanaShelbyChancey wrote:

I have known so many people like this, it makes me despair.

I dated one guy, he never told things the way they were, just the way he wanted them to be. Since these 2 things never meshed, he lied literally all the time. The present, and he would rewrite the past the way he wished it was.

It makes me very nervous of people like that. My erstwhile niece-in-law is always talking about things that never happen. A great job she just got she will be starting soon, etc.

I don't recall such ppl, but if they did that I would likely have written them off and never hung out again. I live so far down on this peninsula that I don't even have to put up with any relatives like that.

"Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."
Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald – 1925

I once knew a girl who claimed the following things:

She was a lesbian.

Her parents refused to let her shower.

She was pregnant.

I was fathering her child, which she told her gang-leader boyfriend.

She fucked a policeman in his car repeatedly (nobody would hit that).

She had an abortion between 1st and 5th period (this was in high school).

...

I dated a girl in college who was a pathological liar. Her fibs were so OTT that after a while my friends and me would just laugh when she got going, because we all knew that what she was saying was a hoax.