Of Lies and Turning Over a New Leaf

It has always intrigued me why people lie. Or have to lie. I can tell when I'm being lied to, and I don't like it. And neither would most people, I suspect.

Life is so much simpler when you just tell the truth ~ because there is only one truth but when you weave a web of lies, especially when they are not self-consistent (and by definition lies are never consistent with the truth, and most likely not with other lies as well) it becomes a terrible, horrible mess, whatever your intentions may be to the contrary.

The past three weeks has been a very instructive time for me, in understanding the psychology of a compulsive liar, a pathological liar, perhaps. My interest in writing this article is to explore why people resort to lies, and in doing so, to get to the truth of the matter.

On a Sunday evening in mid-September this year, I met one such compulsive liar. One can tell almost immediately she was someone who had a lot to hide. Don't ask me me how I could tell ~ let's just call it in Six Thinking Hats jargon, a red feeling.

There is a fine line between non-disclosure and omission of the truth and actually fabricating an untruth. You can decline to disclose information about yourself, that's fine and people will respect that decision and leave it at that.

But when you start telling white lies, there is a tendency for these to be inconsistent with each other and there comes a point when a bigger lie has to be constructed so as to make the inconsistencies plausible. As her stories became more and more incredulous, I was determined to seek out the truth.

It would not be necessary to detail every single disgusting fact here, but a few of the more important facts that I have discovered would serve to illustrate the point. And what I found out was a past so shameful, so horrifyingly full of mistakes that I just immediately understood why she had to re-invent her past. It was the only way to be acceptable, for any rational person would never have anything to do with someone with such a sordid, horridly tainted and unpalatable past.

I, for one, have zero tolerance for people who consistently lie to me. In my last communication to her at about 6 pm on Saturday, September 22, 2007 I wrote in my last ever sms to her (reconstructed from memory):

"And you're a compulsive liar. There was a time I would have given you the benefit of doubt, but no longer. You are not worthy of my trust, friendship or affection. I pray that you have a long life so that you have sufficient time to reflect upon and atone and repent for your many sins."

I received one last sms from her, a parting shot, I suppose, and have never had any communication from or with her since. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.

Its okay to make mistakes. Nobody's perfect, everybody makes mistakes. After all, the past is the past, we cannot go back to correct our mistakes. Boy, don't we all wish we could do that? I'm sure all of us have our favourite "if only" story. "If only I hadn't done this" or "if only I had done that" and our lives would be so radically different now. The critical thing is for us to learn from our mistakes or else we are be eternally doomed to repeat them.

There were clues in her "stories" that tripped her up. The most obvious was her address, or rather, where she purportedly lived. She told me that she lived with her parents in Damansara Heights. Although she has declined to give the street address, that was simple enough to ascertain. After all, I lived in Damansara Heights for a quarter of a century and regularly take my dogs for walks in the neighbourhood, making a mental note of people, places and parked cars. A quick phone call to the house got her mother on the line who all but said "Why are you calling this number, she doesn't live here!"

So where does she actually live, then? A search on her car registration number gave an address in Shah Alam; and sure enough a drive pass the house confirmed the car in the porch. But the car wasn't registered in her name, but in a man's name. And it wasn't her ex-husband's name, either. An sms asking her if the registered owner was her ex brought such a deluge of threats, that I knew I was on to something. There was something big hiding behind all those threats.

Was he her sugar daddy? Did he give her the car to use while paying for it? Then it becomes known that the house is her mother's. But the intriguing thing is, she hardly spends time at this Shah Alam house either, only "a few days a month," according to an informant. The car is often seen at a condo behind Eastin Hotel in Petaling Jaya. What is it doing there? Does she have a love nest there? All these are things we can only speculate upon unless she is prepared to tell us the truth. For now, they remain nothing but unanswered questions.

She had admitted that she had a lover for five years until they broke up in November 2006, when he had pointedly asked her to pack her bags and leave, over some disagreement. From this, it is self-evident that she was living with him. But she had categorically denied ever living with him ~ that had just met occasionally. Another inconsistency.

She had also let on that she has been divorced for at least five years, from before she got involved with this lover. But the public records show that the divorce was only granted last year. No wonder she had so much to hide.

She has just broken up with yet another lover when I had met her that fateful Sunday evening. She showed me an sms from him ~ he had refused to be treated the way she had treated him. He explained that a relationship was a partnership, but that she was not committed, or, at least, not as committed as he was. He had given her the handphone as a birthday present ~ together with a camera and a Sony Vaio notebook computer. She said he had spent almost RM200,000 on her birthday party alone, turning a whole floor of a hotel into a spa, with free flow of champagne and whatever alcoholic beverage you care to name. She said he had lavished RM400,000 in total on courting her.

And to summarily dump him at the drop of a hat beggars disbelief. Apparently, they had planned to get married in London in December, or so that was what she had told all her friends and relations.

I suppose she wasn't prepared to tell him the whole truth about herself. Like how she had all but disowned her autistic son soon after birth, who is now, aged ten, being cared for by her maternal aunt at her parent's house in Damansara Heights. Looking back, this rejection of her first-borne son reflects her own birth and childhood. She had told me that she was the second of three siblings, with an elder sister and a younger brother. Her mother was so much expecting a boy that when she was born, and turned out to be a girl, her mother rejected her ~ and she was then brought up by her grandparents in another state. She even has a given name that is a boy's name.

Another unsavoury skeleton in her cupboard is what was probably a long string of extra-marital affairs she had while her husband was working abroad. To be fair, on his part, he had secretly married a foreign wife whilst away.

They say a leopard doesn't change its spots. But don't you think people deserve the chance to start on a clean slate? To be able to turn over a new leaf?

She can tell the truth to the next man in her life and say "that's me, warts and all. You make the choice, despite all that about me and my past, if you can accept me, I'm yours."

"If you can't, no matter how much I want you; I can forsake my feelings for you and move on."

But what she had chosen, instead, was to paint a different story of her past ~ as George Kelly would say ~ create an Alternative Construct, one more palatable, more acceptable to her suitor. But this means that the whole basis of their relationship, the whole foundation of their intimacy, is based on a lie.

And what kind of marriage would that make?

Copyright 2003-2007 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice