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This is a tough topic for me and one I have struggled with since I was a child. My mother was, in many ways, an extraordinary woman. She was also mentally ill. One of the ways in which her illness manifested was that she was a pathological liar. I mean that in the clinical, diagnosable sense. For example, she spoke to others of her trips to Europe, especially to Paris, a place she dreamed of and longed, so longed, to visit. But in truth, while my mother had traveled extensively - she had never set foot outside of the U.S., except just slightly into Canada and slightly into Mexico.
Ironically, a few years after my mother had died, I did travel to Paris, where my son was attending university. I so clearly recall sitting on a bench somewhere In Paris, looking at the scenes and activity around me, and the thought I had was, "Mom, you would not have liked this city." I may even have softly said the words aloud. What an odd feeling that was; I had a degree of guilt for being in the Paris my mother had only dreamed of visiting.
But for some reason I knew that, although my mom loved cities and lived in NYC for nearly 20 years, she wouldn't have found Paris comfortable. I remember that I felt sad, sitting on that bench with my thoughts, sitting in the city my mother had spent her life hungering to visit, never had visited, but told so many people she had - never seeming to realize that most people knew (sooner or later) she was lying, so avoided her.
My point is that my mother told lies as easily as she breathed. And her lying was pathological because she believed her stories. She'd make them up in her mind, out of a desire to be the special person she wanted to be seen as - and by the time her words landed in the other person's ears, my mom had convinced herself that her story - her lie - was entirely true.
I hated that my mother told lies - yet I so pitied her. I would think of how inadequate she must have felt, of the desperation she had to be someone special - someone, as she saw it, more worthy of love because she had done "special things." And, my mother was a true romantic with an immense ability to imagine and create. She was wounded whenever someone confronted her about her lying. To my mother, her imaginings were a joy ride she so loved that she wanted others to ride along with her.
So, yes. I struggle with people who lie. I also have sympathy for people who lie. Yet, I admit that I do avoid people who compulsively lie.
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