I dated a pathological liar
Since I’m back in the online dating game, it seems like there’s endless materials to write about. I’m sure many people have similar stories (or worse) to share, but it makes me wonder, how do you really know a person is who he claims he is?
People lie all the time, sometimes not even on purpose. When you ask your bf / husband, hey I feel really bloated today, do I look fat in this dress? The dumb ones might tell you the truth, but smarter people might tell little white lies and say, honey you look gorgeous. This doesn’t hurt a relationship.
Things get worse when you’re dating online, when you don’t even know if your dates’ names are real.
I have been chatting with this guy through an app for a couple of days, I believed in everything he said without a question at first. Let’s call him Mr Pathological Liar (PL). He had a pretty good-looking profile pic, and to be honest that was why I started talking to him because he did not put much on his profile. Soon after we started chatting he removed his picture, telling me he was getting too much unwanted attention. Fair enough, I thought. When we switched over to chat on whatsapp, he didn’t have a profile pic, and by that time we had set up a date to meet already so I asked, how am I supposed to know how you look like when we meet? He put up a pic for like a minute, which did not look like his pic in the app at all, and that was it. I thought, well maybe he’s not really confident with the way he looks. I let that slide.
PL always wanted to speak on the phone, the first time he called me, he said, hi this is M. And I was like, who is M? His name was S on the app and I just assumed that’s his real name. Then he told me he wasn’t using his real name. Fair enough, it’s not uncommon. I regret putting my real name up there actually. Second sign.
We chatted over the phone a few times before the first date. He seems nice. No dick pics yet, in fact, no pics at all. Good sign I guess.
The date was fine, but there was a certain level of evasiveness that I didn’t understand. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it but there were a few details he told me that I was skeptical about. Maybe the seed of doubt was planted when I couldn’t see any resemblance between his profile pic and the real person. I don’t want to sound like a hipster, but the vibe wasn’t very good.
We did make out at the end, I was a bit tipsy by then and I knew it was probably more out of loneliness, but I knew what I was doing and I have my first date rule, so we parted ways. The next day I grew more suspicious of things and I told him I’m not sure if I could trust him, as I felt he has been evasive about his past, I can’t even tell if his real name is what he told me. I asked him to send me his business card, strange request I know, it might sound like I was paranoid, but in the end I wasn’t.
PL said he was going to pick it up from his office and send it to me over the weekend, I said it’s fine I’m not in a rush. He insisted, but then later told me that he couldn’t because something happened in the office (on a Saturday!) Thing just got weirder and weirder, and it sounded to me like one excuse after another. When he finally did send a card on Sunday night, I couldn’t believe what I saw — it was this black and white card that looks like it’s just printed out of a home printer, and the sides weren’t even cut evenly.
I won’t go into the aftermath of that, but that got me thinking, is that what people do now? Go through such lengths just to lie? (But not even investing some money to print fake cards?)
People lie to get what they want because it’s convenient, and in many ways it’s easier. Yes it is manipulative, but if you can get away with it, you can get what you want without any emotional investment involved. What was funny to me though, in this case, was the fact that PL kept telling me what he “honestly” thought.
I didn’t respond to PL at all after he sent the card, I didn’t know what to say to a liar, and I wanted to see what else he’s got up his sleeve so I didn’t block him, but I stopped responding. He freaked out and kept texting and calling, so in the end I sent a message, and the last thing I said to him was:
You can lie to everyone else but not yourself, so good luck with that.
People who blatantly lie to manipulate others into getting what they want are of course despicable. But sometimes, there are people who don’t even realise they are lying to themselves and everyone around them, if they don’t know themselves well enough. People with low self-esteem might say yes to something, when what they really feel is no. I know how it is, I’ve been there. It’s like being invited to a party where everyone else is going, you’d say yes even if you actually don’t feel like it and pretend to be really excited about it, just because of the peer pressure. That doesn’t make it okay, but we’ve all been there.
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