The liar
Everyone lies at least occasionally. But some people lie as a matter of course. What makes someone a persistent liar?
Deception comes easily to highly narcissistic people because since childhood they have been deceiving themselves about who they are. Their external image, and internal grandiose self-image, are so important that they will resort to any deception to maintain them. He (or she) surrounds himself with a protective wall of pretense, role-playing, and misinformation. The more extreme the narcissist, the more he hides behind lies. Lies shield him from knowing, and prevent others from discovering, the fallible, vulnerable, imperfect individual he actually is but cannot admit to being.
He cannot be honest about the most basic thing—who he is. He is an impostor who misrepresents himself and uses deception as a weapon—for winning, for putting one over on others, for fooling them, and to prove his cleverness and superiority. His dishonesty is more than just everyday evasions or white lies; it is persistent, extensive and flagrant deceit. His lies are meant to induce others into believing his conjuring trick, to convince them that his view of the world and himself is the accurate one.
Yet, he can seem so trustworthy, so convincingly sincere. He can look you straight in the eye while he lies and not flinch. When asked a question, a lie may well be his first, automatic response. He makes promises, and may even mean them at the time, but he rarely keeps them. His excuses for not keeping them are works of art. A narcissist feels no guilt for lying, only a sense of failure if he is caught, and increased superiority when a lie is successful, because he has so easily fooled someone.
Lying serves several other purposes:
- it can conceal misbehaviour and faults.
- avoid punishment and disapproval.
- give freedom from conforming to others’ standards while seeming to.
- hide a lack of concern for others without alienating them.
- keeps up the appearance of co-operation and ethical behaviour.
- keeps others at a distance to limit their control or influence.
- is a source of power that negates the person lied to and gives the teller control.
Narcissists are rarely open. Even when not telling outright lies he confuses people with “spin”, doublespeak, muddled logic, contradictions, or he avoids certain issues and subjects, or pretends views and feelings that don’t exist. He is often a skilled arguer, a sophist, who uses false premises and quibbling, unsound, argument to rationalize his behaviour and hide the truth.
Sometimes his lies are not deliberate but just an instant response, the first thing that comes into his head with no conscious thought behind it. Often, he simply does not make sense. His communication is bound to be distorted because he doesn’t really know himself, what he feels, or what he wants. He may for example say that he wants something that he is expected to want (such as children) without every thinking much about the reality of it. And when he gets his wish and finds it is not really to his liking after all, he quickly loses interest. He is often therefore contradictory, confusing and impossible to really get to know.
When a narcissist has enough ambition and intelligence he is frequently successful and then his dishonesty may border on unscrupulousness. He may ruthlessly use others to advance himself, undermine competitors, cheat, steal, defraud or break laws in minor or major ways.
Loving a liar/narcissist is a confusing and often demoralizing experience. He uses words as a means to achieve his ends and they frequently bear no relationship to his feeling. So, he may tell people, and especially a partner, what they want to hear without flinching at his own blatant insincerity. His performance is often so polished that he fools not only a potential partner, but her friends and family as well, so that no one ever warns her that this guy is not what he seems. At first, he uses the “good guy” image to con his way into a woman’s affections but the relationship has an artificial basis. She does not love an authentic man, but a pretend one.
He is always trying to “put something over” on his partner, to keep her at a distance, to keep her from really knowing or understanding him, to keep himself in the “one-up” position in the relationship, and prove that he is smarter and the one in control. His philosophy is “what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her”. So, he will lie about the most trivial and inconsequential things, denying his partner the right to even the most basic information from him.
He lies about anything and everything to the point where his partner might doubt her perception, his sanity, or her own. His lies inflict a deliberate delusion on his partner, which he expects her to accept without question. And no matter how often he lies, he still expects her to trust and adore him.
Even if he doesn’t tell outright lies, he withholds information, which is usually harder to detect than outright lies. He has secrets and hides things, perhaps because he is afraid other people might use information against him. He assumes of course, that others have the same sort of motives that he does.
A partner might catch him in dozens of lies, deceptions, evasions and possibly even infidelity, but he is indignant and hurt if she doesn’t trust him. He will in fact most likely swear that he is honest to a fault, is open and trustworthy and never tells lies and if she thinks otherwise, then she must be paranoid, “twisted”, or mentally ill.
Trust and honesty are essential for healthy relationships. Being lied to feels like a double betrayal—the behaviour that was lied about and the lie itself. Being lied to makes us feel disrespected and vulnerable. To be intentionally told that something is other than what it is feels like an assault on our judgement, perception, and ability to assess our world. Lying is a hostile act, withholding the facts of reality to someone who has a right to them.
Lying contaminates any relationship but perhaps the cruelest deception is to lead someone on and deceive them about the depth and sincerity of a commitment to the relationship, which is why infidelity is triply painful (being fooled, betrayed, and denied ).
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