Narcissistic Lies Are Like Rats

I met the narcissist on Tinder. He posted his age as 59, and I as I was 53 at the time, this seemed fine — I wasn’t interested in dating someone very much older than me. He looked young, and I had no reason to doubt this. Fast forward a couple of weeks when I asked him what his birthdate was so I could play with a little numerology.

His response was “Oh, here we go!” as he rolled his eyes.

“What?” I innocently replied.

“The age thing,” he said, and told me his birthdate, which made him ten years older than the 59 he had claimed. When I asked him why he had lied, he said “Well, you wouldn’t have dated me if I put my real age on my profile.”

Well, there is a reason for that, I thought, but at that point I was already smitten (see my note about oxytocin below) and it was too late. I didn’t realize the truth of the adage that lies are like rats or cockroaches: for every one you see, there are 100 you don’t see. And boy oh hoy, did this turn out to be true. As it is with so many of his type.

Narcissists and other toxic personalities are classically good at lying, which brings up a couple of questions. One, why do they lie, and two, how are they so skilled at it?

Why do narcissists lie?

Simple answer, because they often need to construct an identity based on smoke and mirrors since they have little core of their own. True accomplishment that has been worked for and is well-deserved? Not the typical narcissist’s modus operandi. They tend to lack the focus, discipline and motivation for hard work, feeling they are somehow simply entitled to the glory and benefits without putting in the effort.

There are, of course, exceptions to this, but your classic garden variety narcissist is all too comfortable lying about who they are and what they’ve done — or are doing. And if and when they don’t outright lie, you will often find them fudging the truth, hiding the ball, or lying by omission.

The classic lack of empathy that is part of what defines narcissism also contributes to why they lie — they don’t tend to care that the lies may negatively impact other people, but are only interested in what enhances their image, traps someone in their toxic web, or gets them out of potential trouble. The types of lies often include gaslighting and future faking (see vocabulary for more on these) as well as justifying and diminishing their own responsibility. This you hear a lot from the cheating narcissist — she seduced me, I didn’t want to, I only kissed him, I didn’t sleep with him, etc. etc. Lies, lies lies.

How are they so skilled at it?

Well, anything we practice, whether it is playing the piano or lying, we tend to become good at. Lies repeated and fine tuned over many retellings become smooth and ready-to-hand. Additionally, if the false reality is presented enough, the person may begin to believe it themselves. This is the most powerful way they are skilled liars, in my opinion. If they believe what they are telling you, it has a powerful ring of truth.

Many highly empathic people caught in a narcissist’s web begin to doubt their well-developed “spidey sense.” They wonder why their strong intuition didn’t alert them to the BS of the toxic person. I think it is often because when someone deeply believes a lie they are telling you, the normal subtle “tells” are not there. We are not as much attuned to truth as we are to internal alignment.

In other words, when someone says something that they know to be untrue, it generally creates an internal misalignment that we can sense. The lier is a bit stressed, hoping their lie is not discovered. This elevates hormones that we can even literally smell. And even if we aren’t generally cognitively aware of “smelling a lie,” we’ll have a response to the information — part of our complex intuition system.

But if the lie doesn’t feel misaligned to the liar, we don’t get this information. In other words, the more they believe it themselves, the more likely we are to accept it as truth. Another reason we tend to believe the lies is that close relationships tend to elevate our oxytocin. Oxytocin helps us bond, and is often referred to as the trust hormone. As our oxytocin goes up, our discernment does down — we are more likely to take what they tell us at face value. So if you are a typically intuitive person with good people reading skills, don’t be too hard on yourself if you are taken in by a narcissist. The combination of their belief in their own lies and the elevated oxytocin can really disrupt your spidey sense.

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In my own case, I heard claims ranging from that he had been CIO of a major international advertising agency (this with no degree or real background in IT), to that he had built major buildings around the world. His whole background was a crazy mosaic of truth, half-truth, and lies. But in all the time I knew him, I only saw him flustered when caught in an obvious lie once. The rest of what he told me? Smooth as silk. To this day, I honestly have no idea what was real and what was not.

I did do a background check after leaving him (a bit later than I should have!) and nothing he had told me in terms of jobs and positions he’d claimed was validated. But because omission is not necessarily proof, I couldn’t be 100% certain what he lied about, so at some point I just had to accept that I do not and will not ever know what was in fact real and what was not. But if the rat theory is true, it’s probable the lies were thick on the ground.

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This post was previously published on But Now I Know Your Name and is republished on Medium.

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