Pathological

Elisa A. Escalante/ LCSW/ 07-25-2023

“Peace and content are not ways in which we settle. They are the goals after a life of horror and trauma. I don’t want to be high, I want to be steady.” -EaE

Now a days, I talk to my clients about ‘Tornado people”. The types of people that suck you in, beat you up, and then spit you out while you are all dazed, bleeding and confused. Narcissists, histrionic’s, pathological liars and/ or Antisocial (sociopaths) types. But, it’s not really about a disorder per say, it’s about intentions. If someone intends to lie to get their needs met, and they completely disregard someone else’s needs, they are the most dangerous people. When they lack empathy and the ability to care, they have the upper hand as far as being able to control another person’s emotions. It’s easy to ‘win’ when you have no remorse and no sense of accountability. And even if they do not win, it’s easy to walk away unscathed when you literally don’t care about anyone besides yourself. My first two long term relationships were much like this. A nine year relationship with a pathological liar and a 3 year relationship with a narcissist that was also a pathological liar. Sometimes I look back and wonder which one is scarier. The 9 year guy was never ‘mean’ on a surface level. He didn’t yell, he didn’t drug, he didn’t ‘party’ per say, he did not ‘control me’. He was this really ‘kind person’ on the outside that also happened to be a seriel cheater and liar. Then, the 3 year guy was a very overt narcissist. He was a very obvious asshole, and some of my friends even warned me.

I can at least say this for a fact: living under the same roof with pathological liars for 12 years in total destroyed my brain. After it was all said and done I had rage episodes. I could not tell right from wrong. I questioned my own sanity. I questioned myself and if I was, in fact, the bad one? I questioned what I did to deserve it. I believed I DID deserve it. I often questioned how in the world they can live with themselves in the aftermath, so much more carefree than I was. I am aware that these terms are getting used often. But let me give you the distinction. How do you know the difference between someone that is harmful and toxic vs someone that is more or less innocent? It’s all in the intentions. Was I perfect? Absolutely NOT. I am a human and I made mistakes. But, my intentions were good. I never in my life set on a path to purposely hurt a soul. In my path, I accidently hurt people. But, a toxic abusive person is on a path to intentionally harm and bull doze others while pretending to be ‘perfectly innocent’ and taking zero accountability. That’s the true difference.

They Lie, lie and lie again. And when you catch them, they lie some more

Everyone’s first go to is to shove the ‘red flags’ in your face and make you feel like a clown. I would have to guess that this could be a defense mechanism on everyones part. It’s easy to believe ‘you cannot be the victim because you see red flags better’. But, a true pathological liar will Never sport their red flags. They paint them GREEN with sparkly glitter on top. They have no issue’s lying to get their way. And a naive person that RARELY lies, like myself, would believe the lie. Why? Because, ‘Why would they LIE???” If you are someone that values honesty and truth telling and you live by that practice, then you cannot fathom why someone would be a liar. You just can’t relate to it. You will never get it. Most of the people I have had in depth conversations with, clients and friends, that admitted to me about their lying habits told me it was typically one of 2 reasons. “They had nothing growing up, and they needed to lie to pretend they were something.” Or, “they got in trouble regardless of their behavior (from their parents), so they figured they might as well lie to get the better option” (less punishment). Hence, pathological lying typically starts out as a psychological defense mechanism. How does this look in a real life situation? I’ll use my 3 year recent ex as an example first. When I first got with him, he had a ’35 dollar an hour job, with a 10K savings bond.’ Then, 3 weeks after we committed to moving in together, that same job ‘cut his hours’ out of no where. Then weeks later, they stopped giving him hours all together and he was broke, and no access to the ‘savings bond’. When he was broke, his “Baby Mom must have robbed him”. Not just lie after lie, but sob stories as well.

When they truly cannot lie anymore because they are truly caught, ‘it’s your fault‘.

(3 yr ex) It was my fault for ‘catching him’. It was my fault for having ‘high standards that made him feel like he had to lie to get with me’. It was my fault for pressuring him or making him insecure to a point he ‘had to lie’ to save face. It was my fault for making him work a job he hates because I needed help with bills and he needed to pay his damn child support anyways. He did not shove me to the ground, he just touched me “and I fell over” and it was because I ‘made him angry’. With my ex ex of 9 years, it was the fact that ‘he didn’t want me to feel bad’. “I lied because I didn’t want to hurt you”. (Never mind the fact that the truth along with the lie is more painful than ‘just the truth itself’.) “I lie because you will just over react, like you did before”. Meaning, the time I over reacted the last time I caught him in a lie where it appeared he was probably cheating early on in the relationship. But, ‘he wasn’t cheating, he was just being nice to this girl and took her out on a date because he also ‘felt bad for her’. No matter what the rhyme or reason is, they are ‘never lying and cheating’ because of their own charactoer flaws. They will always project it back onto you. You you you. Accountability is not a part of a pathological liars toolbox. Why? Because accountability requires truth telling. They have no capacity for it…or they refuse to learn to try. Like the concept of an old dog trying new tricks. They would rather stick with the old.

It’s not just you. It’s a Pattern that stemmed before you, and will continue after you

With the nine year ex, I saw the pattern continue unintentionally for the longest time. Women would DM me. Random women, asking about his character because they had their suspicions. The first time it happened was just several weeks after our break up actually. His new girlfriend (We opened our relationship in the last 1.5 yrs of the relationship, so I wasn’t surprised there was someone else, I was just surprised she didn’t know about me) asked me if ‘it was true me and him were broken up for two years? Why? Because they had been dating for months, and that is what he told her. She was heartbroken to know that her ‘new boyfriend’ who she assumed she was exclusively monogomous with, had only just been dumped by me two weeks ago. She even showed me screen shots of his lies: “No he wasn’t living with me, he was living with a ‘male room mate’ and they simply had a falling out over ‘how messy he was’. I read her messages a bit in disbelief. I was surprised, but I also wasn’t. I was ashamed to know I dated someone like that for nine years. Someone who could take me to his Mom’s Xmas eve party, and then the very next day on Xmas take his other GF (who had zero knowledge about me) to his Squadron Xmas party. Outside of that incident, I was hit up by his two more recent exes. Same same same. The most aggravating thing about it is that he simply never grows up. It’s still cheating after cheating, lying after lying, and excuses of “I felt bad” when he is caught. Even when people open relationships or practice ‘polyamory’, there are still rules/ ethics that require honesty. Here’s a lesson: If you are opening your relationship to save it because ‘he or she always cheats & lies’ and this change can make it ‘not cheating and not lying anymore’, the relationship has already failed.

And my 3 year narcisstic ex? Well, three babies from three baby mom’s? He had crafted some pretty creative stories that made him out to ‘always be the victim’ in every situation. My naive ears wanted to believe him, even though it doesn’t truly add up. At the end of the day, regardless of what truly happened between him and three Baby Mothers… you willingly left behind three women with your three children. And, if you can abandon the mother of your children along with your children, then what made me the most idiotic person on the planet was the delusional belief that I thought I could be any different. This relationship was monogomous on my end, all the way. I assumed he was too, as he always insisted he was. But, if he could lie about Baby mom stories, lie about his intentions toward his children, lie about his income and jobs, and even lie about ‘serving in the military’, (he never did), after the relationship ended when I found out he was a cheater, I wasn’t too shocked. I was more so shocked about who it was. A girl we trained/ coached martial arts for six months. Honestly after finding out that I was quite convinced that he literally hated me by the end of the relationship and wanted to destroy my life and spirit. It became clear he had ulterior motives because as I look back, he bounces from women to women to women. When one situation doesn’t work out, he monkey bars onto the next with the same sob stories and tactics. I can’t help but wonder, what type of ‘evil woman’ am I in his new book of lies to his new GF?”

When it’s all said and done, there is no more capacity to Trust

Needless to say, when I got back into the casual dating world, I had zero capacity to trust. So, I chose not to trust anyone. I chose casual situationships instead. And in doing so, it was like I was playing out my own game of trauma reenactment. I spotted the lies and the ‘player tendancies’ in many men that I talked to. Lies about where they were at when and if they ghosted for days to weeks at a time. Lies about their intentions when they showed evidence of opposing intentions. And you better believe that if a man told me he was serving in the military, or had served in the military, I was asking for proof; either a DD 214 or a military ID please and thank you. I refused to forgive anything. I was hurt, and when they lied to me I was not very forgiving. It’s always going to be a trigger. It almost always feels like a ‘mind game’ that people are playing. I had to also have a lot of space for myself, to heal. I knew I was jaded. I knew that love cannot be nurtered if I continued to sit in pain. The one silver lining I can say about living with pathological liars? They gave me a hell of a ‘Bullshit detector”. I have always had a kind heart, but what I didn’t have was boundaries. A kind heart needs boundaries, otherwise, it shatters into a million pieces. I know now that trust can only get built with time, patience, and most importantly, an honest relationship. And you will not know it’s honest unless you see visible proof over time. And if you do spot too many lies, you need to have the self worth/ love/ capability to be able to end it. Otherwise you will always be susceptible to the same crap treatment.

I still Choose Honesty

The crazy thing though? Despite all of my trauma, I still told the TRUTH. I never became a liar to punish others simply because I was lied to. It’s evil, it goes against my moral code. And I do not understand how anyone can live a double life. It’s exhausting. Even my ex ex admitted to me recently that it is quite exhausting balancing multiple girls that do not know about each other. In fact, my female friends often tell me ‘that I am too honest for my own good’. My honesty has gotten me in trouble with many men. My honesty forced (during my online dating ventures) me to tell people that “I am not ready to be monogomous or exclusive” while most people would instead say that ‘they are single’ and leave it at that. My brutal honesty has gotten me in situations where men (that I actually really liked) have lashed out with revenge tactics due to jealousy and hurt. Because again, I’m not going to feed you a fantasy, I’m going to give you the reality. Take it or leave it. A lie get’s you what you want in a moment, a Truth will chase away what you do not need.