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Pants On Fire
If there is one pet peeve I can place above all else- it when someone lies to me. To me, honesty is paramount. I would prefer the worst truth to the sweetest lie any given day of the week. Knowing this, it's not hard to guess that the kind of person that could potentially drive me insane would be someone who is perpetually dishonest. A pathological liar, if you will. This is the type of person you would normally not find in my life simply because I leave no room for them. Toleration is not an option.
And, next to a liar, the other type of person that can potentially drive me mad is someone who manipulates- someone who appears to be sincere, but is plotting and scheming and trying to control situations so that all of their personal needs are fulfilled at other people's expense. These people, I pay no mind to. I simply walk away. I refuse to play victim or accomplice.
So, as you might imagine, a person who is both a pathological liar and a rather masterful manipulator would be the last person on earth I would want to be stuck with for even a short period of time. And yet, this has become my day to day life- regular encounters with someone who is integrity-challenged. I am put in situations with them in which I cannot readily flee without messy circumstances. I am beginning to think there is a message here. A lesson for myself in it. At least, I hope there is something to be gained from the experience.
I, myself, can be honest to a fault, as are some of my favorite people. People who are so honest they can be offensive to some, are refreshing to me because there is no guessing. If they are unhappy, they let you know. If they compliment you, it carries more weight because you know they really mean it. If they want something from you, they just ask. They tend to be somewhat over-confident people, which can be a turnoff to some, but as long as they're honest, it's no big deal to me.
In trying to make some sense of the fact that I'm stuck with the liar/manipulator type of person so much, I have started trying to find ways to justify this person's actions. Insecurity. I can understand that. Overall, I am a pretty secure person, however, there are at least two areas of my life where I feel pretty insecure and this does cause me to be less than myself sometimes. But a liar? Uh..no. Why does someone feel the need to be this way? I think it's pretty pathetic. I try to use a sympathetic approach when dealing with them- as if they are handicapped and I am the enviable, able-bodied person they have to interact with everyday. But then another side kicks in, and reminds me that this person is stepping on a lot of people to feed their needs-- and they are very needy. They want to be liked, just like everybody else...accepted, but really only by people who can do something for them. I start to think that the view of them as handicapped would be offensive to handicapped people. People don't choose to be handicapped. (Well, except in rare cases of that one psychological condition where people do anything to amputate their own limb because they feel better not having it...but that's a strange exception I saw on Dateline or something.) But people have to choose to lie or tell the truth in a given situation. There is always that moment where you decide the path. Angel or demon? Which advice should you follow. And while I know human beings are often inherantly selfish, I also know we at least have the capacity to have compassion for others. I just can't find a way to like the person that deceives people to meet their own needs. Someone whose everyday dialogue is so peppered with fiction, that they lose track of what is really true themselves. At first, you wonder if they are covering up for their own ignorance and it's all a sad attempt to save face, but then they do something so calculating you can't help but see that it's all carefully orchestrated. Pre-meditated. Insecurity or not, they know exactly what they are doing and no one's gonna stop them.
I've even called this person out on stuff on more than one occasion and they have a million excuses that make them a victim of life, not a liar. It exhausts me. It infuriates me. It makes me a crabby person, which is unfair to others.
I am looking for way out.
