Oh, that works in reverse for me.
My parents would slip up or just forget some lie they’d been telling me for 20, 30 years.
Always thought it was strange they never actually told me what day their anniversiary is.
The answer is: Surprise, subtract 9 months and… you’re unplanned and we had a shotgun wedding!
Doesn’t bother me that I’m an accident, bothers me that they lied, that they spent decades giving me a totally different story.
There’s a lot more than that, but I don’t want to make myself potentially identifiable lol.
Boomer solution to having a child out of wedlock: lies and shame.
Millennial solution to having a child out of wedlock: who gives a shit and why was that even a thing?
My older siblings remember seeing photos of my parents getting married around the house growing up. I don’t because one of my siblings noticed my oldest sibling in the photos and started asking questions. Rather than explain anything, they just took down all the wedding photos.
Shame is a powerfully dumb emotion sometimes.
pretty common to be honest. I was about 10 years old when I realized three months of my brothers gestation was missing from my parents marriage. I brought it up and my mom just chuckled and told me I’m a smart boy…too smart for my own good.
they weren’t lying for your sake. probably for their friends/family.
It’s no concern of mine if it’s turned his life upside-down face
Your parents remember stuff? Every time I bring up an old story from when I was younger, my mom has no recollection of it whatsoever. She doesn’t even remember what my first word was. Even if I went to her and admitted everything bad I’d ever done as a kid, she’d have no idea what I’m even talking about.
Even better is when the parents do it. I wasn’t present, but the conversation was about my parents’ marriage, my sister-in-law did the mathing and realized my birth date (I’m the first child) and their marriage date were less than 9 months apart. In my family and social circle, sex out of wedlock is quite looked down on. When she vocalized this, the subject was changed very quickly and brushed aside.
better than you being someone else’s biological son, which is not uncommon.
Now remember, first babies cook fast. they might only take six or seven months. the rest all take 9.
that’s what we tell everyone with a wink if we ever figure that math out for someone
Wild to me to have this much lying going on in a parental relationship
wild to me you don’t?
I don’t know about you, but my parents were very stupid people and basically everything in their life was a lie, so it made no sense to every tell them the truth about anything. Any remotely truthful thing said to them would result in them freaking out and screaming. so eventually I just learned lie to them all the time and it was just easier and our relationship was a lot more chill. I figured this out probably around 15/16 and kept it up until they died. I never had a honest conversation with my parents my entire life since I was like 14.
and a lot of people live their lives that way. not everyone, sure. I’m truthful to people who aren’t my family, but even then it often doesn’t go over well because well, most folks only want to hear comforting lies, and they adore people that lie to them far more than they adore people who are truthful. I’ve also been on the flipside in a ‘good’ relationship, that was all built on the other person constantly lying to me.
Not everyone can hear people’s critical/negative opinions of them are not take it personally. Like, the among of people I’ve had that kind of relationship with is probably less than 10. But people I have known who require you to lie to them (or other people) to maintain a relationship with them or there is never going to be a relationship? 100s. Like most of my friendships/relationships have ended because I told them the truth or found out they were lying to me about something major, and every single time do you think the other person thinks they were the problem? No. I was the problem.
Most social relationships are entirely built on lies and could not function without them, including intimate ones between friends and family.
The amount of people in this thread who enjoy lying is concerning.
I don’t think people necessarily enjoy lying as much as they enjoy the peace that is earned by telling the lie. People, especially those who grew up with strict parents, are conditioned to lie early on. If you are caught lying about something bad you did, you are going to get punished. If you tell the truth about the bad thing you did, you get punished. If you will be punished either way, why not lie? A rational person quickly learns that lying is almost always preferable to the truth, because sometimes you get away with it.
If you are good at it, and you lie convincingly enough, it becomes second nature to manage people’s perceptions through a web of misinformation, feigned ignorance, half-truths, and strategic omissions.
Lying is socially expedient.
It’s easier on every front and makes everyone happier. That’s why people do it.
The negative consequences of it are often far off and in the future. In that way it’s sort of like having poor life habits… you don’t pay the consequences till much later.
And the negative social consequences for being truthful are usually immediate.
I don’t make a habit of lying. In fact, I avoid it where possible; I have for most of my life and was honest to a fault as a kid. I can remember two times I lied to my parents: once I took a dollar off the top of my brother’s allowance. The other time I was speeding and crashed through a fence, then told my parents I swerved to avoid a deer.
I told both of those to my dad one year and he said “I don’t think I want to hear any more confessions.” Which is good, because I had none.
When you spin a web of lies you need to know every strand.
nah, you just need to go on the offensive when the lies fall apart and never admit fault.
works all the time.
There’s a statute of limitations on the lies. Usually after a few years I’m like “yeah, I did that, the house didn’t burn down and no one died, so it doesn’t much matter now”
yup. After five years i admitted to my parents “hey remember the time i came home late from blahblahblah in high school and said i got ice cream? it’s because i got the car stuck on a really big rock and we had to pry it off. it would have gone easy if DAD HADN’T STOLEN MY CAR’S JACK OUT OF MY CAR. that’s why i was grumpy about the jack after ice cream. but we got a good video out of it”
we ended up having to move the rock like 40 feet to get my car out from on top of it, and it has not moved to this day. big ol’ rock, size of a desk.
After I moved out I told my dad about all the shit I got away with as a kid with a giant smile on my face. What is he going to do about it now, Ground me retroactively? Fuck off.
BTW he found all of it fucking hilarious and commended me on my tact and situational awareness.
The only thing that bothered him was the big ass dent I put in the tailgate of his new truck. He was under the impression that the dealer sold it to him that way and had concealed it so he went back and ripped them a new asshole until they fixed it and now he realizes he was the asshole and not them.
I had a brief period as a child where I pissed in the vents. My logic was its a hole so therefore the pee is gone.
My parents got a good laugh when I told them. Apparently my dad was trying to find the source of that smell for a bit
Omg, your poor dad!
My kid was chatting in game on speaker phone for some reason. I was standing behind him watching, and his friend blurts out, “Like that time you flushed the bar of soap and it clogged the toilet?”
My kid says “Shut up, he doesn’t know it was me!”
Sometimes, my kid isn’t the brightest.
I knew it was him, I blamed him for it when it happened. He, and the friend on the phone, were the only two in the house when it happened. And, I know his friend wouldn’t do it.
So you merely deduced it was most likely him? If only your son understood you didn’t know and said “Shut up, he doesn’t know whether it was me” instead.
“I knew it was you because your eyes change color when you lie.”
covers his eyes
I learned early on not to fabricate stories that I’ll lose track of. I love lying by omission, though, as you can tell half the story and it’s easier to keep track of that way.
Granted, I generally didn’t do things I needed to lie about and have always been upfront with questionable actions, like selling pirated anime CDs in high school and stuff. My parents are way worse than I’ll ever be, though, and when I got kicked out of the house, it was usually because my dad was drunk and delusional, not because I did anything wrong.
Hmm. I might be outside of my demography here
