Compulsive Lying - Your Online Source for Information on Lying
A Few Facts About Compulsive Lying
Compulsive lying is something that can end a relationship as quickly as it began. If your wife or husband is a compulsive liar, it sets up some serious roadblocks for an effective relationship. Dealing with a compulsive liar is a very difficult task to undertake.
The definition of compulsive lying is lying out of force of habit. It is your husband or wife's instinctive way of reacting when they are questioned. A compulsive liar will lie about everything, whether it's a small issue or a large one. A compulsive liar has so much difficulty telling the truth that lying actually feels like the right thing to do.
It is generally thought that compulsive lying develops in the early part of the affected person's childhood. It started when the person was put in a situation where they felt they needed to lie. Compulsive liars are not even trying to be cunning or manipulative. They lie because it's a habit for them. It's a response that's as automatic as breathing, and one that is difficult to break.
Generally speaking, most everyone lies at one time or another, but compulsive lying becomes a way of life for the person affected. It's a routine, a habit. It is second nature for a compulsive liar.
Any behavior that gives comfort to a person, or a way to get out of discomfort, can become hard to stop, and addictive. For the person who is affected by compulsive lying, lying actually feels safer than telling the truth, and then they feel the need to lie even more.
To complicate matters, compulsive lying may be just one symptom of a personality disorder that is larger than the lying. If it is, it makes the issue even more difficult to resolve. It may be just one sign that your husband or wife is affected by borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder.
Compulsive lying is hard for the person affected to see, and it hurts everyone around him or her. If you don't address the issue, or the underlying cause, it can end a relationship.
There is no reason readily apparent for the lying of someone who does it compulsively. They will lie about important things and small things with the same amount of non-concern. For liars who do it chronically, everything can be lied about.
If you confront someone who is a compulsive liar, you don't really gain much, because unless they are very receptive to your concerns, they will just continue the lying and your relationship, which is already strained, may end up even worse, before it gets better, if it gets better.
You can deal with compulsive lying through talk therapy or counseling. But getting someone with an addictive behavior to admit that they have a problem is difficult. By the time you can get most affected people to realize they have the problem, they have hit rock bottom.