A person who is a chronic liar will usually display these 13 habits

Chronic liars aren’t always obvious, but they do have some habits that they just can’t seem to shake, no matter how hard they try.

A little too much

Try asking them a simple question. You won’t get a simple answer because they’ll overexplain the situation way too much. You get information about how busy the place was and some details about a random person who was there, all the stuff that doesn’t matter.

You might tell yourself that they’re just chatty and, sure, maybe they are, but chronic liars are a little different. They overexplain stuff that doesn’t matter because it helps a fake story sound a little more believable.

The tiny prop

It’s weird how the useless details are the ones that they seem to remember the most. You know the ones, they’re the details that don’t really matter, but chronic liars feel the need to tell you them anyway. 

Why? Because they’re trying to make the story seem more real. They’re hoping that the little irrelevant detail will make you believe in the rest of the story, so they tuck the lie inside normal details. 

A quick scan first

Listen to what they say before they answer a question, and you might notice something. They’ll ask you, ‘What exactly did you hear?’ and ‘What did I tell you?’ Sure, they could be confused, but chances are, they’re doing it to understand how much they can get away with telling you.

They want to know exactly what you remember so they can tell a version of events that doesn’t contradict it. At least, not too much.

The small trade

A lot of chronic liars try to use small confessions to get you to trust them. They’ll admit they shouldn’t have ignored your call, for example, but then completely ignore the big thing you were asking about. The point is to give the conversation something that’s honest.

You stop paying as much attention to the rest of the story. They’ve admitted one thing, so pushing harder on them feels wrong. It’s exactly what they’re hoping for. You still get some kind of truth from them, but probably not the one you wanted.

The blurry listener

Everyone else is bad at listening when it comes to chronic liars, apparently. They never said it that way. You’re adding things. Someone twisted their words, didn’t you know? It’s natural to mishear things sometimes, but chronic liars make it seem like it happens all the time.

They’re trying to bury the real conversation under these misunderstandings. Now, the argument’s about how you heard it wrong, how you used the wrong tone, and other problems. They might even blame your memory. Because that makes sense.

Somewhere around then

One of their most frequent habits involves how they treat timelines. Namely, they try to make it confusing on purpose by mixing up the details. They remember random details, sure, but they’re unsure whether the event happened today, yesterday, or last week.

It might not seem like a big deal. It is. Playing fast and loose with the timing means the liar has space to change things later and make the timeline fit the narrative they want to tell you.

The easier doorway

Pay attention to how they answer questions, or really, how they don’t answer them. You could ask them, ‘Did you tell him what I said?’ and they’ll reply with something like, ‘I barely even talk to him.’ They’re deliberately choosing to avoid your question.

What makes it such a sneaky tactic is the fact that their reply sounds close enough. It’s roughly around the same topic and same ideas, so you think they’re answering you. They’re not. They’re misdirecting you into believing that they’ve told the truth when they haven’t.

The sudden insult

The fastest way of getting out of a question is by pretending that you’ve been hurt by it. Chronic liars know this. That’s why they’ll pretend they’re offended that you could ever do something like asking them for basic details. Oh, the horror.

Your lack of trust and your attitude are the issues now, along with how you supposedly interrogate people. Nobody likes being questioned, fair enough, but there’s no reason to make a big deal of simple questions.

The late arrival

You might notice that they start adding new details to their story, although it’s only once you’ve challenged some of the older ones. You called them out on something, and then there are extra parts of the story that you didn’t know about, and people involved you weren’t aware of.

It’s completely possible that they remembered something later. That’s not the issue here. The problem is the fact that each forgotten detail only seems to appear after another problem, so it doesn’t seem so accidental anymore.

The convenient gap

‘I don’t remember.’ Seems like a normal enough sentence, right? It is. Except when a chronic liar says it, because they often use that line whenever they’re talking about something that could make them look bad. 

They remember the details that make them look reasonable perfectly well. Their memories that make someone else look bad are crystal clear, too. However, the parts involving their own sense of responsibility are somehow blurry. How convenient.

The angle

Chronic liars are experts at controlling a whole story and deciding exactly where the story begins, as well as which part matters. Who gets blamed? Which questions aren’t the point of the story? 

That’s all up to them to figure out. Ask them a question about something, and they’ll start explaining something completely different, like the background or the mood. Anything but what you asked them about. 

The missing hand

You should listen carefully to the words they use to describe how things happened. You might notice that they use the passive voice quite a lot. For example, instead of saying, ‘I broke it,’ they say ‘it broke,’ and rather than saying ‘I changed the plan,’ they say, ‘The plan changed.’

That doesn’t mean everyone who uses the passive voice is lying because, yes, truth-tellers do it, too. The difference is that chronic liars use the passive voice whenever it’s an issue of blame. The action and result still exist. But the person who did it? Somehow, they’re invisible.

The echo before the answer

They’ve also got a habit of repeating your question in a way that doesn’t seem natural. You ask them, ‘Did you text her?’ and they repeat, ‘Did I text her?’ If you were asking them a confusing question, then repeating it would make sense. But not for simple questions.

They’re only repeating the simple questions because they want to give themselves some time to think of an answer. They have an extra second or two to choose an answer that fits the best. The truth of what happened isn’t important.

Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.

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