Speaker 1: Do you think you're smart enough to figure out if
Speaker 1: someone's lying turns out if you're a due smart that
Speaker 1: may work against you. Lying is a consistent element we
Speaker 1: see in narcissistic relationships, and it drives the betrayal and
Speaker 1: the lack of trust that festers in narcissistic relationships. So
Speaker 1: let's meet Abby Ellen and her experience of a bottomless
Speaker 1: pit of lies that she encountered with the pathological liar
Speaker 1: she almost married and who ended up going to jail.
Speaker 1: He lied about everything from the Brussels sprouts at dinner
Speaker 1: to having another fiancee in another city. Abby is a journalist,
Speaker 1: the author of Duped, Double Lives, False Identities, and The
Speaker 1: con Man I Almost Married, and host of the podcast
Speaker 1: Imposters The Commander. Abby's experience in this relationship led her
Speaker 1: to do a deep dive into lying and deceit. Today,
Speaker 1: we get to hear Abbey's story, as well as some
Speaker 1: of the truths she's heard about lying. We break down
Speaker 1: why people lie, explore the idea of self deception, and
Speaker 1: the steps you can take to protect yourself in a
Speaker 1: world where trust is often in short supply. All survivors
Speaker 1: of narcissistic relationships, know what it feels like to be
Speaker 1: lied to. Today we're going to learn about the anatomy
Speaker 1: of a liar. This podcast should not be used as
Speaker 1: a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are
Speaker 1: advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy
Speaker 1: from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition,
Speaker 1: mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on
Speaker 1: this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering
Speaker 1: to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely
Speaker 1: those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: or their employees. Abby Welcome. It is so nice to
Speaker 1: finally meet you in person. Thank you. I'm so happy
Speaker 1: to be here. You know. When I read your book
Speaker 1: Duped and of course I'm double fisting it. I thought
Speaker 1: I was going to read a memoir of lying, and
Speaker 1: I really got a masterclass online? Are you the master? No? No,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, no, thank you for that. But lying
Speaker 1: in deceit is a very specific area and it's something
Speaker 1: that hurts people in so many ways. And so today
Speaker 1: I'm navigating narcissism. Lying is very much a part of narcissism,
Speaker 1: but it goes way deeper than that. And so can
Speaker 1: you tell us your experience of being duped? Yes, I can.
Speaker 1: The short version is that I was engaged to a
Speaker 1: who was a pathological liar and went to jail. That's
Speaker 1: a short version. The longer version is that I am
Speaker 1: a journalist and I was writing an article for the
Speaker 1: New York Times that I needed to quote a doctor.
Speaker 1: It had to do with detox diets and I needed
Speaker 1: an expert, and I found this guy who worked at
Speaker 1: Cedars Sign I actually here in Los Angeles, and he
Speaker 1: was lovely and smart, and we had a conversation and
Speaker 1: that was the end of it, and I quoted him.
Speaker 1: And then the story didn't run for about a year.
Speaker 1: So I fact checked with him a year later and
Speaker 1: he said, I'm not in LA anymore. I'm in Jacksonville
Speaker 1: at the Naval Hospital. And I said, okay. And he
Speaker 1: said I joined the Navy. I rejoined the Navy as
Speaker 1: a Navy doc. I had been years ago. I said okay.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm opening up a hospital for kids with
Speaker 1: cancer in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I said fantastic, keep
Speaker 1: me posted on that, because that's a story. And so
Speaker 1: he said, okay, and every so often he would write
Speaker 1: me these notes. They were very strange. They were just
Speaker 1: filled with medical jargon. I didn't understand them. That was
Speaker 1: the end of it. Until the end of whatever year
Speaker 1: it was, he started writing to me more and it
Speaker 1: soon became clear that he had interest. So we met,
Speaker 1: and you know, it moved quickly. At the time, I
Speaker 1: was forty two and he was fifty eight. I thought
Speaker 1: he was ancient. Yeah right, right. As I get older,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem so old. But he would tell me
Speaker 1: stories that I couldn't verify. Like he told me he
Speaker 1: had met his ex wife when he rescued her when
Speaker 1: she was held hostage in Iran, and I was like,
Speaker 1: when were we in Ran, Like nineteen seventy that wouldn't
Speaker 1: have made any sense or seventy nine, sorry, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a secret mission. You wouldn't heard about it.
Speaker 1: And so then he told me that he was held
Speaker 1: hostage in China and secret mission wouldn't heard about it,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what, this is insane. But he
Speaker 1: had a kid, and his kid who was twelve at
Speaker 1: the time, seemed to know all of his father's stories,
Speaker 1: like he knew him, and I thought to myself, well,
Speaker 1: if he's lying to his kid about that, that's like
Speaker 1: child abuse. Like one day, his kid looked out the
Speaker 1: window and said, Oh, there's a black sedan outside. Is
Speaker 1: that one of your guys following us? Because he had
Speaker 1: told his kid that, like the bad guys hated him
Speaker 1: so much that he had secret service following him to
Speaker 1: make sure that all of his people were okay. So
Speaker 1: his son knew this, and I would overhear these conversations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I thought it's weird. But you know what, why
Speaker 1: do I know? I am from the suburbs of Boston.
Speaker 1: This is not my beat. Because he told me he'd
Speaker 1: been to the CIA and all the stuff, I could
Speaker 1: not verify it. Yeah, but it drove me mad because
Speaker 1: I need to get answers and I don't like not
Speaker 1: having information. And I remember friends of mine said, you know,
Speaker 1: this is the lesson you're going to have to learn,
Speaker 1: that there's so much information and you can't know everything,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, but that doesn't work for me.
Speaker 1: I gotta know everything. I need to know how everything
Speaker 1: lines up. So I would ask him questions and he
Speaker 1: would yell at me. He would say, you interrogate me.
Speaker 1: You have to trust, and you're mistrusting and that's your
Speaker 1: problem and that's why you have had bad relationships in
Speaker 1: the past. And so I really thought there was something
Speaker 1: wrong with me, and so he proposed within six months
Speaker 1: and I said, okay, sure, And I was going to
Speaker 1: school at Johns Hopkins at the time to get it
Speaker 1: green international relations one. He was working at the Pentagon
Speaker 1: for Real, opening up this hospital for kids with cancer.
Speaker 1: And we lived in the Watergate, which makes me very
Speaker 1: happy because that's like round zero for deception. So I
Speaker 1: just love that. Yeah, I mean, it really makes me happy.
Speaker 1: But eventually I left him because I couldn't verify things.
Speaker 1: And the final straw, we went out with my parents
Speaker 1: and he talked with the Brussels sprouts and he said
Speaker 1: they were like the best Brussel spreads ever. And then
Speaker 1: we left the restaurant and my parents were gone. He said, God,
Speaker 1: that was the worst meal I've ever eaten. I said,
Speaker 1: why did you lie? Like nobody cared they didn't cook it.
Speaker 1: He said, I didn't want to hurt their feelings. And
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, he's lying about that. He can
Speaker 1: lie about anything. And I said, you know what, I'm out.
Speaker 1: I'm done. So it was within a year I left.
Speaker 1: I said some things were on hear him out. A
Speaker 1: year later, I got a phone call from NCIS, which
Speaker 1: is Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and they're real, who knew,
Speaker 1: not my garment, but they're real, and they said, there's
Speaker 1: a doctor who's writing prescriptions for narcotics and he's using
Speaker 1: all these people's names and you're one of them. Do
Speaker 1: you have a prescription for Vikadin percoset and do you
Speaker 1: know this doctor? And I said, well, I know this doctor,
Speaker 1: but no because I prefer valium. And so they said, okay,
Speaker 1: well come down and make a statement, and so that's
Speaker 1: what I did. And then I kicked into journalist mode
Speaker 1: and began investigating him and found out that the majority
Speaker 1: of stuff he told me wasn't not true. But what
Speaker 1: he did, which was so brilliant, is he mixed fact
Speaker 1: with fiction. And that's what they do. So you really
Speaker 1: don't know what's up, but good liars are going to
Speaker 1: do that because if they can root it in something
Speaker 1: that sounds factual, especially if it's not verifiable, then you know.
Speaker 1: So he went to jail. I wrote a book, and
Speaker 1: so I found out he had proposed to another woman
Speaker 1: when he proposed to me, like he had been engaged
Speaker 1: to this other woman, and told her I have to
Speaker 1: go off on a secret mission. I'll see when I
Speaker 1: come back. And the secret mission was operational Abbey. She
Speaker 1: didn't know what happened to her. He was lying to
Speaker 1: his son, he was lying to his daughter, he was
Speaker 1: lying to his actual, he was lying to his family,
Speaker 1: all of these people. He was lying to people he
Speaker 1: worked with at the Pentagon, because he really did work there.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was very weird, and he went to jail.
Speaker 1: I have not spoken to him since since and twenty
Speaker 1: and ten my book has come out. I did a
Speaker 1: podcast about it called Imposters the Commander because I called
Speaker 1: him the Commander as a nickname. Once it became clear
Speaker 1: the depth and the breath of the lies with the Commander,
Speaker 1: how did you feel initially elated after ncis called. I
Speaker 1: was elated. I was excited because it was like, I'm
Speaker 1: not crazy. I knew something was off because I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, you know, forty two years old, it's not
Speaker 1: old anymore. I mean, it's the end of really when
Speaker 1: you want to think about having kids, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: and I had wanted to adopt, and I really was
Speaker 1: interested in that idea. So at that point I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: I just found somebody in the nick of time. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't madly in love with him. It wasn't one
Speaker 1: of those passionate, youthful you know, you want to go
Speaker 1: off together into the sunset and have sex all day long.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that. It was. It was really I thought
Speaker 1: it was a good dude. So in a way it
Speaker 1: was worse. It was a worse betrayal because I can't
Speaker 1: blame my hormones, you know. Well, so I really felt
Speaker 1: elated when Special Agent pulled me up. I was really happy.
Speaker 1: And my mother kept saying to me, investigate this guy.
Speaker 1: He had been in private practice in Beverly Hills. The
Speaker 1: whole time is with him, she said, who gives up
Speaker 1: a lucrative position in Beverly Hills in private practice. I
Speaker 1: wish you could call them, And I thought, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I can't. That's not like a loving way to go
Speaker 1: into relationship. As soon as I got the call from NCA, Yes,
Speaker 1: I was like calling Beverly Hill I mean, I was thrilled,
Speaker 1: So that was how I felt at first. I was
Speaker 1: really really happy. And it makes sense because in a way,
Speaker 1: you felt whole again. That's what I'm hearing right that
Speaker 1: in these narcissistic relationships or deceitful, betraying relationships, people feel
Speaker 1: chopped up into pieces, right, and anything that helps that integration.
Speaker 1: People will say, my heart was devastated by an affair
Speaker 1: they had, But when I realized that they'd had multiple affairs,
Speaker 1: I actually started to feel a little better and that
Speaker 1: it wasn't me. Well, that's it. And when I found
Speaker 1: out that he had this other woman with whom he
Speaker 1: was living in Jacksonville. When we moved into the Watergate,
Speaker 1: he still had bags that he needed to move from
Speaker 1: Jacksonville to Washington, and I said, let's drive down and
Speaker 1: pick them up, but he said, now I'm going to
Speaker 1: have them shipped. Reason was because he had been living
Speaker 1: with a woman whom he had proposed to, so he
Speaker 1: didn't want me to find that out. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to parse out the person and the
Speaker 1: woman and the journalist in me because I knew there
Speaker 1: was a story there. On some level, there was going
Speaker 1: to be a story, and I knew I was going
Speaker 1: to uncover it on some level. And I think in retrospect,
Speaker 1: and this is a whole other issue, but I think
Speaker 1: I wanted a career more than I wanted the guy.
Speaker 1: And this is looking back on it, you know, it
Speaker 1: kind of makes me wonder what my own agenda was.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to run with that. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: you were saying that I wanted the career more than
Speaker 1: the guy. Are you saying that because you stuck in
Speaker 1: the relationship. You know, he promised these big things. I
Speaker 1: wanted to change my life at the time, so I
Speaker 1: went back to school for this what I call my
Speaker 1: second useless masters, you know, in international relations at Johns Hopkins.
Speaker 1: I wanted to really cover different kinds of things that
Speaker 1: I was writing about. I had written a book at
Speaker 1: that point about childhood obesity, and I didn't want to
Speaker 1: do that kind of health stuff anymore. And he promised
Speaker 1: me a big life, and you know, we were going
Speaker 1: to go to the embassies and we were gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: do all of these big things in Washington, and of
Speaker 1: course the White House was always calling for his expertise,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're going to go there soon the
Speaker 1: Obamas are going to have us over. Of course, they
Speaker 1: weren't going to have us over because they didn't know
Speaker 1: who the guy was. I mean, you know, and in
Speaker 1: my head, I always thought, you're lying. I know you're
Speaker 1: lying to me. I mean, I told friends, this guy's
Speaker 1: mastering with me, but I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: So I wanted a bigger life. And the truth is
Speaker 1: I didn't want a guy to give me a bigger life.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get the bigger life myself. And I
Speaker 1: got the bigger life on the back of a guy
Speaker 1: because I got to tell this story that has resonated
Speaker 1: with so many people and happened to be very timely.
Speaker 1: And how do you feel about that that you got
Speaker 1: the bigger life on the back of a guy. How
Speaker 1: does that affect you. I'm happy about that. I wanted that,
Speaker 1: you know, I get to meet you. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what my next career move was going to be at
Speaker 1: the time, so this is going back ten years already
Speaker 1: twelve years, so it really gave me what I wanted.
Speaker 1: It opened up many doors in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: I did a podcast, I did a documentary about other things.
Speaker 1: I'm working in other spaces, so I'm happy about that.
Speaker 1: Would I like to have a pride that life. Would
Speaker 1: I like to have a partner who I really adored
Speaker 1: and Doug? Yeah sure, Okay, that hasn't happened. Okay, that
Speaker 1: hasn't happened. That hasn't happened. What I think an existentialist
Speaker 1: might argue that you turned your pain into opportunity growth,
Speaker 1: monetized suffering. And I joke, that's not like I got
Speaker 1: rich in the slightest, but I mean, that's my joke.
Speaker 1: It's just like when life gives you lemons, you make
Speaker 1: lemon ring pie. Right, that's much more aspiration, much more emanation.
Speaker 1: Yeah I like that. Yeah, I like that. So yes,
Speaker 1: I want to take a step backwards. So, because we
Speaker 1: talked about how you felt when you found out from
Speaker 1: NCIS contacts you, which I didn't even know that was
Speaker 1: the thing. I thought that was a TV show to
Speaker 1: abimal investigative service totally, the real NCIS calls you, you're okay, this,
Speaker 1: I see, this is what I suspected. There's an elation
Speaker 1: you have. How did you feel while you were in
Speaker 1: the relationship and all these lies in this gas lighting
Speaker 1: were happened. I didn't know which way was up. I
Speaker 1: had written a birthday cart to my friend's kid. I
Speaker 1: asked the commander if he would mail it. He said sure,
Speaker 1: my friends never got it. And I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't understand you didn't. He said, you said you did it.
Speaker 1: You said you did it, Like, why are you lying
Speaker 1: to me? He said, I really did it, And it
Speaker 1: turned out I had forgotten to put a stamp on it,
Speaker 1: so but I was couldn't. I was like, not knowing
Speaker 1: if I could trust him about anything. I didn't know
Speaker 1: if I could trust myself. I didn't know. I was
Speaker 1: really felt like I was Ingrid Bergman, you know. In Gaslight,
Speaker 1: I felt like somebody was flickering the lights on me,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling me I was making him up. Just
Speaker 1: to clarify on why nobody would want to be ingrid
Speaker 1: Bergman in a relationship. Ingrid Bergman played the role of Paula,
Speaker 1: who was gaslighted in the film that Started It All, Gaslight.
Speaker 1: She is the og survivor of narcissistic abuse. The film
Speaker 1: gets its name from the flickering gaslights that Paula kept noticing,
Speaker 1: but that her gaslighting partner told her weren't flickering and
Speaker 1: that she was paranoid and unstable, and I thought this
Speaker 1: might be my last chance at finding a partner, at
Speaker 1: doing that thing, you know. And he's a good guy,
Speaker 1: and I thought I was blowing it by being so suspicious.
Speaker 1: So right there, right took that that's my gift. So
Speaker 1: but that's the narcissistic relationship right there? What is it
Speaker 1: about me? I've got it's all here, And the problem
Speaker 1: is in these relationships the above the line, stuff looks great, doctor, Jewish,
Speaker 1: successful embassies, white house like it all looks good. It's
Speaker 1: the below the line that teaches us the narcissism of
Speaker 1: it all. We feel it. I don't know which your
Speaker 1: ways up. I don't feel comfortable. Those are the things
Speaker 1: you're saying, Ingrid Bergman. Yeah right, No one should ever
Speaker 1: feel like Ingrid Bergman in a relationship. Well maybe because yes, right,
Speaker 1: maybe because of all But even then that didn't quite
Speaker 1: didn't Well, so all of that's happen best below the line.
Speaker 1: Above the line is this looks great, and so you
Speaker 1: call yourself suspicious? Yeah, I thought I was suspicious. And
Speaker 1: again what he would always do is malign his ex wife.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's always the ex wife's problem. I didn't
Speaker 1: know he had been married twice before I found the
Speaker 1: XX wife, you know, and then I found out, of
Speaker 1: course he never met the second ex wife in Iran.
Speaker 1: He'd never been to Iran, she had never been to Iran.
Speaker 1: They met in medical school, and he left his first
Speaker 1: wife for this. You know. So all these things an
Speaker 1: NCIS contacts you. So now you're feeling a good more whole.
Speaker 1: You talked about feeling happy, okay, and elated. What other
Speaker 1: feelings where you have relief? Okay? Relief I believed. I
Speaker 1: was just like, Okay, I'm not crazy, I'm not imagining things.
Speaker 1: I didn't just blow the best thing that ever happened
Speaker 1: to me. Because this is not a reliable person. This
Speaker 1: is not a reliable narrator. This is really screwed up individual.
Speaker 1: In that way, you got a gift that a lot
Speaker 1: of survivors of these relationships don't get into. That they
Speaker 1: live in regret for years. Did I make a mistake?
Speaker 1: Is this new person getting the better version of it?
Speaker 1: Did I give up on whatever was? In your case?
Speaker 1: It might have been embas seasons someone else is just
Speaker 1: did I give up on the secure home? To this?
Speaker 1: To that? And so they don't get the NCIS moment.
Speaker 1: I know they don't, and I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that I was able to write a book.
Speaker 1: And I don't feel like a victim. I don't even
Speaker 1: feel like a survivor, you know, And I feel like
Speaker 1: a sufferer. I feel like I suffered something. I don't
Speaker 1: use the words survivor just my own pet thing, and
Speaker 1: I certainly don't use victim. I suffered through this experience,
Speaker 1: and then I stopped suffering about it because I learned
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, the way to deal with it
Speaker 1: was I had to learn about this and what struck me.
Speaker 1: With so many people who had been in these kind
Speaker 1: of relationships, nobody wanted to talk about it, or at
Speaker 1: least certainly not publicly. And I was telling my Gammy,
Speaker 1: I was telling everybody because it was a story, it
Speaker 1: was a good story, but everybody felt so ashamed, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, what's the worst thing you did? You
Speaker 1: trust it and somebody lied to you, Like that's not
Speaker 1: a crime. That sound stupid. That's actually the way the
Speaker 1: world works. We have to trust because if we don't trust,
Speaker 1: the society will not function. What do you think is
Speaker 1: holding survivors back? What's the source of shame. They think
Speaker 1: that they missed something. They think, why was I so gullible?
Speaker 1: They you know, they think that they should have been
Speaker 1: able to see something in advance. I mean studies have
Speaker 1: been done actually that the smarter you are, the more
Speaker 1: likely you are to have been duped or to be
Speaker 1: duped because you think that you'll spot it. So you
Speaker 1: are your vulnerable to your vulnerability. You have no idea,
Speaker 1: you know just how susceptible you are. And in my instance,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you something else. He told me he had
Speaker 1: been held hostage. I told you, in a lot of hostage,
Speaker 1: a lot of hostage kaship. And actually he was taking
Speaker 1: other women hostage, right at least mentally. How's that for
Speaker 1: nice theraps? But he would sleep with the lights on,
Speaker 1: and he would sleep with the TV on, and in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night he had nightmares, screaming nightmares.
Speaker 1: And this is all for real. I was next to him,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, well, there's our evidence right there.
Speaker 1: You don't scream bloody murder in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night unless something bad happened, you know. I still don't
Speaker 1: know his ex wife and I who became friendly the
Speaker 1: second one. She said, what was that, Like, what do
Speaker 1: you think happened? And she said, I guess he just
Speaker 1: had nightmares. You know, I don't know why. I don't
Speaker 1: know what his background was. I don't know, but it
Speaker 1: was really interesting. And so that again people think, I
Speaker 1: don't know, if you watch the Tinder Swindler. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they thought they had evidence this guy they met. I
Speaker 1: mean so when you so, then you do your due
Speaker 1: diligence and you think, okay, I'm looking at all the
Speaker 1: ducks and they're all seeming to be lined up, and
Speaker 1: then you realize they're not. You think, well, well, how
Speaker 1: do I trust anything? You know? But in a way
Speaker 1: that makes it much easier for you, doesn't it, Because
Speaker 1: if the ducks line up, you're looking around, you're seeing
Speaker 1: everything seems to make sense, then you're absolutely absolved. It's
Speaker 1: really not your fault, right, And I'm going to make
Speaker 1: the argument it never was your fault in the first place.
Speaker 1: You know that that's you know, I think that that
Speaker 1: the challenges is that people are looking for that fault
Speaker 1: to get lifted well, and I think there's also people,
Speaker 1: you know, why people feel such shame because nobody wants
Speaker 1: to be taken for a ride. No, I didn't lose
Speaker 1: any money. In fact, we're living for free, so you
Speaker 1: know I did. Okay, people who've lost a lot of money, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's really heartbreaking. But what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: the people I know who've been emotionally betrayed and didn't
Speaker 1: lose money in a way feel worse because you understand
Speaker 1: somebody doing it for money, but you don't understand somebody
Speaker 1: messing with you for absolutely no reason, just because they're
Speaker 1: playing chess with your life. It doesn't make sense. You know,
Speaker 1: what did this guy get from me? If I was
Speaker 1: going to try and to see if somebody, I mean
Speaker 1: I could go to like some heiress, I could go
Speaker 1: to like some supermodel, Not that he would have gotten one,
Speaker 1: but you know, I mean there was other people than like,
Speaker 1: you know, a loud mouth journalist who is going to
Speaker 1: research the hell out of you. So it was not
Speaker 1: smart on his part. What do you think he got?
Speaker 1: He got something he didn't know. I think I can
Speaker 1: be fun I can be funny. I think I think
Speaker 1: there's a part of him that was intrigued by me.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I think I'm pathologically independent. Maybe he
Speaker 1: was felt that was a challenge to try and rein
Speaker 1: that in Who knows. Did you ever stop to think
Speaker 1: though that you are a journalist, you are an investigator,
Speaker 1: that you are a bigger fish to land if he
Speaker 1: could deceive you. Yes, I think that's right. I think
Speaker 1: that's right. What happened when you were in the relationship
Speaker 1: and you called him out on a lie? He would
Speaker 1: attack me. You don't trust he would you interrogate me.
Speaker 1: In fact, I once called his brother in law and said,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to talk to him. He said,
Speaker 1: you gotta go easy on him. You know, he's got
Speaker 1: a really important job. He's doing really important things. So
Speaker 1: it's my fault. It gets us into this tricky territory
Speaker 1: of a lie versus a gaslight, right, because that's one
Speaker 1: of the big debates out there. What's the difference? And
Speaker 1: you had both right, So the lie is sort of
Speaker 1: how the person walks in the door for anything, from
Speaker 1: jobs he had to CIA to hostage situations. Right, that's
Speaker 1: a lie. It is a twist of fact. It's completely untrue.
Speaker 1: You're suspicious, you don't trust. What's wrong with you? That's
Speaker 1: a gaslight? Right, that's right. And I think that people
Speaker 1: get confused by that, And I think it's a really
Speaker 1: important distinction, because a liar caught in a lie, when
Speaker 1: they're given an evidence space, they will gaslight you or no,
Speaker 1: a liar when caught in a lie, who's not a gaslighter?
Speaker 1: What might cop to it? Like the right? Right? But
Speaker 1: it's the conversion to gas lighting is when you give
Speaker 1: them the evidence you're the paranoid, untrusting, suspicious, whatever you
Speaker 1: were being called. Then now the conversation shifted away from
Speaker 1: the evidence onto you. Right, you're the problem. That's right. Well,
Speaker 1: it's what Lance Armstrong did, wasn't it. Everybody else has
Speaker 1: a problem. All you people investigate me? You know you're
Speaker 1: at fault. That's right, exactly what it was. And that
Speaker 1: deflection is every one of these liar slash gas sliders.
Speaker 1: So I think that that's an important element here. And
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people are are so confused.
Speaker 1: When he was with you, I just wanted to be
Speaker 1: clear he was engaged to someone else. He was engaged.
Speaker 1: It's just someone else whom he left. They were living
Speaker 1: together in Jacksonville. He actually left a bunch of his
Speaker 1: belongings there. She sold them. He never came back for him. Okay,
Speaker 1: she didn't know what happened to him. He's living with
Speaker 1: his brother and sister in law in Georgetown. I then
Speaker 1: moved to DC and we moved into the Watergate and
Speaker 1: ostensibly were going to get married in November. And it
Speaker 1: was very quick. I mean, at that point, it would
Speaker 1: have been maybe eight months that we were seeing each other.
Speaker 1: But again, I was forty two, he was fifty eight.
Speaker 1: My parents met, you know, at the Catskills at Grossingers,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're like sixty years later, they're still together.
Speaker 1: They were married within three months. So I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that's a relationship, love them both, not saying
Speaker 1: it's a relationship I want to emulate, ever, But you know,
Speaker 1: it's possible. It's possible to have it again when you're older.
Speaker 1: And you know when people say when you know, you know.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't a kid, like I said. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like this hormonal response. It was I thought he was
Speaker 1: a good person, he was solid, you know. And then
Speaker 1: once I start hearing him screaming at the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, and all these things don't make sense to me,
Speaker 1: and I don't understand why. Is when I began thinking,
Speaker 1: did you ever ask him why he screamed in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night. Yeah, he was so tortured. He
Speaker 1: was tortured. He had nightmares about being tortured in China. Duh,
Speaker 1: he would they would beat him in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night. And thank God that he had been a runner,
Speaker 1: long distance runner in college, because that's how he escaped. Okay,
Speaker 1: So something happened to this dude. Clear screaming tantrums, Clearly
Speaker 1: an adult male. That's not an unusual post traumatic stress. Clearly,
Speaker 1: So I'm not crazy. Okay, So that tracks and compartmentalization
Speaker 1: is associated with trauma. He was compartmentalizing having relationships multiple
Speaker 1: simultaneous like keeping not only simultaneous relationships going, but hundreds
Speaker 1: of simultaneous lies going. And while he was with me,
Speaker 1: just so you know, after I kind of left him,
Speaker 1: I guess he had reached out to an old girlfriend
Speaker 1: from thirty years ago, and after he and I officially
Speaker 1: broke up, he started hanging out with her. She had cancer.
Speaker 1: She died of cancer, but he was actually there for
Speaker 1: the last year of her life. And I talked to
Speaker 1: her after I found it all out about you know,
Speaker 1: what had gone on, and ants called me and she
Speaker 1: actually helped nail him. She helped nail him because he
Speaker 1: lied to her so badly and about so many things,
Speaker 1: and she ended up wearing a wire And it's all
Speaker 1: on my podcast Imbosters the Commander. But anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: to me, that was like he was predatory. You're praying
Speaker 1: on a woman who's dying of breast cancer. I mean
Speaker 1: that to me is criminal. You've now talked to all
Speaker 1: these people because you did your research for your book.
Speaker 1: What I'm hearing is he lied to every single one,
Speaker 1: every single one, every single one his ex wife's kids,
Speaker 1: girlfriends in laws. How did this relationship affect you in
Speaker 1: the long term, you know, in a good way? Okay.
Speaker 1: I have always been told you're too fast, you think
Speaker 1: too quickly, you speak too quickly, you do things too quickly,
Speaker 1: you're spontaneous and impulsive, and I am. And it really
Speaker 1: made me slow down with relationships. That made me slow
Speaker 1: down with what I was kind of really had to
Speaker 1: stop and look at what my own responsibility was here.
Speaker 1: So as six years after that, after him, I met
Speaker 1: another guy who told me that he was separated from
Speaker 1: his wife. And the joke is that they were separated
Speaker 1: the way you and I are separated like by a microphone.
Speaker 1: They were not separated. They were just living together. And
Speaker 1: you know, but like technically I'm in the bathroom, she's
Speaker 1: in the badroom. We're separate. And it was awful. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was such a cliche. It was like, I'm lying
Speaker 1: to you about being married. That's not that's not psychopathic.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's you know, that's just being an asshole, right.
Speaker 1: The clinical diagnosis is asshole. But I understood why that happened.
Speaker 1: I get it, like he wanted to hang out with me,
Speaker 1: and I get it. The other one I didn't get.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand that. And again, why not an eirass?
Speaker 1: Why do you have to give me a ring? I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a shitty ring, But why do you have
Speaker 1: to do that? You know, why do you have to
Speaker 1: propose that? It didn't make sense to me? And what
Speaker 1: I realize is that, you know what, as I get older,
Speaker 1: there are things that I might not understand and I
Speaker 1: think that's okay. And the other thing it made me realize,
Speaker 1: in addition to slowing down, was that I don't say this.
Speaker 1: People don't know themselves. I used to think people understood themselves.
Speaker 1: I used to think people really knew why they did things,
Speaker 1: and they don't. I'd be out of a job if
Speaker 1: they did well, right right right, you would, you would.
Speaker 1: But I really thought people had much more self awareness
Speaker 1: because I have a pretty good self since that, and
Speaker 1: they don't. And I also thought people are really one thing,
Speaker 1: and they're not at all. They're very complicated. And that's
Speaker 1: a good thing to know because it actually has helped
Speaker 1: me like hypocrites. I understand. I used to really I
Speaker 1: don't like hypocrites. I think most people don't, but I
Speaker 1: actually have a little bit more tolerance because I understand
Speaker 1: why people that does some degree we tell them. I mean,
Speaker 1: actually I don't think they know. I think I think
Speaker 1: there's because of this lack of awareness. I think one
Speaker 1: part of the brain doesn't really know what or they
Speaker 1: compartmentalize so much, you know that they just part A
Speaker 1: is not talking to part BE in the you know,
Speaker 1: So that's what I think. I don't know, you're the expert.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? It does make sense, It absolutely
Speaker 1: does make sense. I think that's it gets into complicated
Speaker 1: place right. This idea of self awareness is if anything
Speaker 1: we could use self awareness is sort of the antidote
Speaker 1: to these antagonistic personality styles like narcissism. Right by definition,
Speaker 1: these are not self aware styles. There's no self awareness
Speaker 1: of how is my behavior affecting someone else? What is
Speaker 1: the downstream effect of my behavior that's gone, and very
Speaker 1: little awareness of how what I'm doing could be hurting
Speaker 1: and affecting another person. That's the core conflict. So, which
Speaker 1: is to say when someone lies about being not married
Speaker 1: and they have a wife at home, or they're leading
Speaker 1: a double life, or your spouse or whatever, that's narcissistic behavior,
Speaker 1: is it not? There are people out there who have
Speaker 1: double lives for lots of reasons. Some people have double lives. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be unusual to see in a post traumatic
Speaker 1: presentation that person is that successful at compartmentalizing to such
Speaker 1: a level that they're doing these things and are just
Speaker 1: not thinking about like they've locked these things up separately
Speaker 1: with a little regard for how this would be found out.
Speaker 1: I think narcissism is definitely high on the list of
Speaker 1: differentials because there's a real lack of empathy. If his
Speaker 1: wife found out that he was walking around saying he
Speaker 1: wasn't married, there's a complete you know, no empathic awareness
Speaker 1: or a tunement to what his wife would want. Psychopathies
Speaker 1: in the mix because they can outlie a narcissism all day,
Speaker 1: all night. Well at narcissist. I think the other thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't lie to the mistress. That's just stupid.
Speaker 1: The reason you're the mistress is so you don't get
Speaker 1: lied to. By definition, I'd say the mistress does get
Speaker 1: lied to a lot, because already this is a person
Speaker 1: who has entered the deceit club. That's right. So now
Speaker 1: from that point forward, it's all lies all the time,
Speaker 1: because this lie is working, and you've done more research
Speaker 1: on this than I have. Does lying beget lying on?
Speaker 1: You know, because you have to keep all the stories straight.
Speaker 1: And then when you get caught on something, it's it's like,
Speaker 1: but I don't this doesn't make sense. Why? Well, and
Speaker 1: then you tell another lie. You know. For example, I
Speaker 1: was driving by the Watergate one night and I see
Speaker 1: the light on and so I called him. I was like,
Speaker 1: and he had said, oh, I have to move out
Speaker 1: of the water Gate because the Navy needs the apartment,
Speaker 1: and the Navy was paying for the apartment, and he
Speaker 1: really was a Navy dock, I mean for real, but
Speaker 1: he said, so I'm going to move out. That's why
Speaker 1: I'm sending all your stuff away. And so the light
Speaker 1: was on and I emailed him and I said, are
Speaker 1: you back in the apartment. He said yeah. It was
Speaker 1: a comedy errors he said. I packed everything and I
Speaker 1: moved it out into storage and then the Navy said,
Speaker 1: you know what, you gotta come back. I said really,
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know what, My cookbooks are there
Speaker 1: and I'd like to pick them up, which is the
Speaker 1: biggest lie of all because I don't cook and I
Speaker 1: don't like to cook. But I did have these cookbooks
Speaker 1: because I thought, you know, well i'm going to be
Speaker 1: in this relationship, maybe we'll cook and you know, that's
Speaker 1: what we'll do on winter nights, will make soup, you know.
Speaker 1: So he's like all right. And so I went one
Speaker 1: afternoon just just poke around at the watergate and I said,
Speaker 1: I want to go up to the apartment. I did
Speaker 1: not have a key, and the guy at the front
Speaker 1: desk said, you're not allowed up. Specifically, you are not
Speaker 1: allowed up. Abbiellen is not allowed up. So I said why,
Speaker 1: he said, I don't know. That's all I had here.
Speaker 1: So I called the guy up, the commander. I said,
Speaker 1: what's up with that? He said, oh, there was an
Speaker 1: attack in the building and they're cracking down on who
Speaker 1: they will let up. Okay, so this speaks about lying
Speaker 1: be getting lying, And I thought what so I said, okay, fine, right,
Speaker 1: So he finally lets me into the apartment so I
Speaker 1: can pick up the cookbooks, and I go there and
Speaker 1: everything is exactly as it was when I left, down
Speaker 1: to a slaver of soap in the soap dish. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was exactly The dude didn't move out. He didn't,
Speaker 1: I mean, he didn't even wash it, you know. And
Speaker 1: I said, you never moved out, and he looked at
Speaker 1: me straight in the eye and he said, oh, yes
Speaker 1: I did. And that's when I thought, there is no discussion. So, yes,
Speaker 1: this line begets lying. It is. This is my story,
Speaker 1: and I'm sticking to it. Except when I heard the
Speaker 1: left and I make something else up. It was just confounding. Okay.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say one thing here though, because I
Speaker 1: want people to understand, is that you said something really
Speaker 1: interesting in your book. A line that jumped out at
Speaker 1: me is what no one realized. What I didn't realize
Speaker 1: then was that I was in an abusive relationship, was
Speaker 1: not physically but emotionally. For there was one hundreds abusive
Speaker 1: and I think those relationships can be harder on some
Speaker 1: level because, at least to other people, they see when
Speaker 1: you have a black eye, nobody understands. And let's be
Speaker 1: clear about something we were talking about, shame and why
Speaker 1: people feel such shame. The rest of the world condemns you.
Speaker 1: If you've been duped? What did you do? How could
Speaker 1: you be such an idio? How could you have not
Speaker 1: known that? How did you not know? Why would you
Speaker 1: believe that they were held hostage in China? Why would
Speaker 1: you know? Why didn't you know that they had another
Speaker 1: family around the corner. I mean all of these things
Speaker 1: in story after story to that point, when we've had
Speaker 1: people who have been in these sort of con situations
Speaker 1: on this podcast, that came up over and over again,
Speaker 1: and as we'd researched the stories, it was always so
Speaker 1: striking to me was it wasn't even like a few
Speaker 1: people were blaming them. I'm almost going with majority they do.
Speaker 1: We're saying, well, I wouldn't have been played like that,
Speaker 1: And I want to say you know that means you
Speaker 1: are going to be That's what I'm saying. The smarter
Speaker 1: you are, the more convinced you are that you can
Speaker 1: be taken for a ride, the more likely you will be.
Speaker 1: And that was why I didn't. You know, so many
Speaker 1: people want to know about their psychology. That's where you
Speaker 1: come in, and that's what we're going to talk about next.
Speaker 1: My session with Abby will continue after this break. The
Speaker 1: psychology of lying, well, the psychology of lying again. I
Speaker 1: was more interested in the victims, but the liars are fascinating.
Speaker 1: This is what I know. They lie because they have
Speaker 1: bad self esteem. They lie because there's something wrong with
Speaker 1: their brain. They lie because they like stories. They lie
Speaker 1: because they think they can get away with it. They
Speaker 1: lie because they can get away with it. Here's a question.
Speaker 1: Do you think lying to that degree is a symptom
Speaker 1: or its own diagnosis? You know how I approached this.
Speaker 1: To me, When I look at lying, I come at
Speaker 1: it as a behaviorist wood. Human beings do things because
Speaker 1: they're rewarded. They're rewarded for the lie, and the more
Speaker 1: popular kids are the kids who tell lies. And that's
Speaker 1: something you wrote about. Could you talk about that, because
Speaker 1: actually that was actually a killer fascinating, right, because they're
Speaker 1: fun and they have good stories and people like to
Speaker 1: be around them, and they know how to charm people. Right.
Speaker 1: These people are charming. I mean the guy who was
Speaker 1: with was not really good looking, but he was charming
Speaker 1: and fun and he knew what interested people, and he
Speaker 1: knew how to talk to them. I think there's also
Speaker 1: something else, which is that these people believe it themselves eventually,
Speaker 1: which is why there's you know, I always talk to
Speaker 1: people about polygraphs. There's no such thing as a lie
Speaker 1: detector's and it measures anxiety, It measures the way your heartbeats.
Speaker 1: It measures that. So if you don't believe you've lied,
Speaker 1: you're going to pass a test. And this is where
Speaker 1: we get into the reasons people lie. I felt like
Speaker 1: your story of the commander. I don't know him, I've
Speaker 1: never seen him. I could not render a meaningful clinical opinion.
Speaker 1: But the patterns you laid out in your story of
Speaker 1: the commander, that depth and breath and consistency and sweep
Speaker 1: of lying feels more like it's in the psychopathy neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I thought he was a psychopath. His wife, his ex wife,
Speaker 1: thought he was a narcissist. Narcissistic people lie, but like
Speaker 1: I said, they cannot lie as well psychopathic people. Here's
Speaker 1: why you did something in your book. You wrote down
Speaker 1: every lie you told for six months. Okay, talk about
Speaker 1: that for a minutes, and I'm going to bring it
Speaker 1: back to what we're talking about. I created a lie
Speaker 1: log because I wanted to see just how much I lied,
Speaker 1: and I found that I tell lies. I mean mostly
Speaker 1: they're white lies, though, and research shows that women lie
Speaker 1: to make other people feel good and men lie to
Speaker 1: make themselves feel good and look good. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what mi I did. I mean, he was, you know,
Speaker 1: James Bonstein. But I have lied to make people feel
Speaker 1: good and I don't have a problem with that. What
Speaker 1: do you think of that? I want you to tell
Speaker 1: me this was the boat's fascinating interview you've ever done. Yea,
Speaker 1: I will believe you. I won't, but I'll like it.
Speaker 1: And I don't want you to tell me this is
Speaker 1: my color. So yes, So I completely agree with you.
Speaker 1: And I think that one thing is that lies, like narcissism,
Speaker 1: like everything in the world, is on a continue on
Speaker 1: correct right. And if I told everyone what I honestly
Speaker 1: thought of their dress, what they look like, and who
Speaker 1: they are. Nobody had left in my life. You have
Speaker 1: no friends. I know that we've had movies about that.
Speaker 1: There was that Jim Carrey movie, right, and then it
Speaker 1: wasn't liar, liar? What was the Ricky Gervais one? He
Speaker 1: did one? I don't remember the name of it, but
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about, the theory of I
Speaker 1: don't know. You cannot tell people to truth all the time,
Speaker 1: but yet we have to trust the car is gonna
Speaker 1: stop at the red light and not bash into us.
Speaker 1: And I actually have been thinking about more and more.
Speaker 1: I'm a terrible jaywalker in New York. Not in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I know it's legal, but in New York, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm stupid. Why do I assume these cars are going
Speaker 1: to stop for me? Again, going back to yes, we
Speaker 1: need to be able to trust, but why do people lie?
Speaker 1: And psychopathic lying, narcissistic lying, and then the lying we
Speaker 1: all do the commander situation, depth breath, all of it.
Speaker 1: That felt more like psychopathy, right, And I think he
Speaker 1: really really had terrible self esteem. I really believe that, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he did, and he needed to pup himself okay, which
Speaker 1: is a very obvious response, but I think it's true,
Speaker 1: and the self esteem issue now pulls me back more
Speaker 1: into a narcissistic place. Right. So psychopathy is interesting because
Speaker 1: it has a really strong biological piece to it. It's
Speaker 1: a downregulated, autonomic nervous system. So when I tell a lie,
Speaker 1: it is so clear my face turns red, I sweat.
Speaker 1: I couldn't even play poker if I wanted to. And
Speaker 1: if you hooked a lie detector up to me now,
Speaker 1: it would just go off like it was the fourth
Speaker 1: of July. Because I can't lie, you know, I can like,
Speaker 1: I can tell you can tell me, I can tell
Speaker 1: me that this is my color. Well, I wasn't like,
Speaker 1: but I did tell a friend the other day like
Speaker 1: I liked the dress and I thought the dress absolute hideous.
Speaker 1: So I can tell those pro social lies right right right,
Speaker 1: which made the world go around. Correct. But what you're
Speaker 1: talking about this is a different animal. Narcissistic people will
Speaker 1: often lie to save face, to look good, to get validation,
Speaker 1: to get supply. Psychopathic people don't need supply, They need
Speaker 1: power and dominance, so the lie allows them to maintain control,
Speaker 1: but they go together. Can you be a psychopathic narcissist?
Speaker 1: Sure you can. No, No, No, I mean I do
Speaker 1: think that they're separate entities. I really do. Appy. I
Speaker 1: think that psychopathy is a very rarefied space. It is
Speaker 1: heaven above, thank you that it is rare, because it's
Speaker 1: dangerous because when a person's not getting that kind of hmm,
Speaker 1: this doesn't feel good to do this, it's a disincentive
Speaker 1: to do something bad. For a narcissistic person, they do
Speaker 1: actually think that, I don't want to be a bad person,
Speaker 1: and they'll often look guilty and sweaty and all of that.
Speaker 1: They'll still lie to be able to cheat on a spouse.
Speaker 1: They may still lie to cook the books. But the
Speaker 1: psychopathic liar is a much more successful liar because they
Speaker 1: don't have a tell and they don't have empathy, and
Speaker 1: they don't have empathy, but nor do the narcissi. And well,
Speaker 1: and then the question from everything I've read is that
Speaker 1: psychopaths really cannot be treated. I think that what we've
Speaker 1: seen is that you know, I'm not going to give
Speaker 1: the long academic version here, is that it's not convincing. Hey,
Speaker 1: they're not going to go into therapy unless they're court ordered.
Speaker 1: If they are court ordered, they're often going to outwit
Speaker 1: the therapist. Right. There has been some interesting work where
Speaker 1: they've attempted to simulate empathy, like want you to imagine
Speaker 1: someone La La la and going through a sad situation,
Speaker 1: And some imaging studies have shown that when you can
Speaker 1: force empathy by them reacting to a situation, areas of
Speaker 1: the brain will light up. That are empathy areas of
Speaker 1: the brain, which ordinarily don't automatically light up the way
Speaker 1: they would for someone else. And what about with narcissists,
Speaker 1: they have actually more of a capacity for empathy. It's
Speaker 1: not fair to say a narcissistic person doesn't have empathy.
Speaker 1: They use it transactionally. It's quite performative. It tends to
Speaker 1: be more cognitive. So I understand why you're sad versus
Speaker 1: having that Oh my gosh, my friend is sad. I
Speaker 1: want to be with her. I need to sit with
Speaker 1: that person and hold that space with them. There's a
Speaker 1: different game. And when the narcissistic person feel safe, well regulated,
Speaker 1: secure in a good place, actually they can be quite empathic.
Speaker 1: It's almost like they're not hungry. You know, they're good.
Speaker 1: And when they're in that place. They're not missing the chip,
Speaker 1: and psychopathy you're talking about something missing a chip. But
Speaker 1: in narcissism, the chip is just an old, slow processor
Speaker 1: and it's a selfish processor, and so everything in their
Speaker 1: life has to be perfect, and then they can bring empathy.
Speaker 1: But that can actually meant narcissistic people lie. They're just
Speaker 1: not as successful. So we were talking about George Santos,
Speaker 1: Is he a psychopath? I would say that Again, I've
Speaker 1: never met and treated Jarge Santos giving that, but I'd
Speaker 1: say somebody who's able to successfully pursue a political office,
Speaker 1: a political office, and not some local small town council.
Speaker 1: We're talking a federal political office, successfully run a campaign, fundraise,
Speaker 1: win the race, and go in despite all of this
Speaker 1: being found out and never breaking gays. I know it's
Speaker 1: I know, that's definitely more in this advanced you know,
Speaker 1: like we'd think of it more in the psychopathy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then some people say, are all these states delusional?
Speaker 1: I mean, do they believe their own hype? But the
Speaker 1: fact is they're able to pull this off. George Santos
Speaker 1: was sworn in officially as a member of Congress in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, but on the back of multiple fabrications,
Speaker 1: which he met with quote, my sins here are embellishing
Speaker 1: my resume. I'm sorry. Embellishing is an under a statement.
Speaker 1: His exaggerations include not being truthful about working at two
Speaker 1: prominent Wall Street banks, that he had obtained degrees in
Speaker 1: finance and economics from two New York colleges, that he
Speaker 1: was Jewish, and that four employees of his company were
Speaker 1: killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in
Speaker 1: June of twenty sixteen, and even more lies. None of
Speaker 1: these things were true, and yet that did not stop
Speaker 1: him from being elected to higher office. I think it
Speaker 1: is delusional. I think it is psychopathic, and I think
Speaker 1: it's were they born this way? Where they made? I
Speaker 1: don't know the answer. Nobody seems to know the end.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a point where people were distinguishing
Speaker 1: between sesiopaths and psychopaths. Everything I had read said that,
Speaker 1: actually some people seem to use them interchangeably. Other people
Speaker 1: said not the same. So some people say the sasiopaths
Speaker 1: were made and the psychopaths were born that way. I
Speaker 1: don't know which is which. What we see is that
Speaker 1: psychopathy does have it. There appears to be something in
Speaker 1: that autonomic nervous system thing. There seems to be something
Speaker 1: genetic there. So work in progress, right, we're figuring this out.
Speaker 1: The fact is a person who might have the genetics
Speaker 1: may also be coming into a home where there's a
Speaker 1: psychopathic parent. So how much of this is modeled, how
Speaker 1: much it is the chaos that can ensue. There's definitely
Speaker 1: a stronger evidence space for psychopathy and genetics, narcissism not
Speaker 1: nearly as much. Narcissism definitely seems to be a social
Speaker 1: and developmental kind of an issue around attachment and early
Speaker 1: relationships and all of that. So theopathy an entirely different beasts.
Speaker 1: Psychopathic people cool, calm collected. Sociopathic people not so calm
Speaker 1: and collected. They tend to be a bit more reactive,
Speaker 1: and that speaks then to probably more of a traumatic origin. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Interesting because that's I don't know what page, but somewhere
Speaker 1: in there I talked about how it was used interchangeably,
Speaker 1: because that's they're not interchanged. You're interesting, Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: don't think correct. So in terms of another thing that
Speaker 1: you talked about in your book, and I think it's
Speaker 1: really worth mentioning, um, I'm going to read. I'm going
Speaker 1: to read to you, and it's interesting you talk Harold Sackheim,
Speaker 1: which talk about a little bit of Jungni and synchronicity.
Speaker 1: Harold Sackheim was one of my professors when I started
Speaker 1: a PhD program at NYU fifty two million years ago
Speaker 1: and dinosaurs still around the earth, and I ended up
Speaker 1: transferring from NYU to UCLA, and Harold Sackheim also worked
Speaker 1: up at New York State Psychiatric Institute, where I had
Speaker 1: done some of my research internships. So it was like
Speaker 1: this whole Harold Sackheim universe. So when you interviewed, my
Speaker 1: tremendous respect for his work, and you talk here about
Speaker 1: self deception and this piece from Harold Szackheim's work, the
Speaker 1: people who were the happiest were the ones who were
Speaker 1: lying to themselves more. And then someone else talks about
Speaker 1: the realists. According to Joanna Staric, a clinical psychologist, said
Speaker 1: the realists tend to be slightly more depressed than others,
Speaker 1: and Zackheim says they see how horrible people are, what
Speaker 1: their weaknesses are, and the problem is they're right. I
Speaker 1: remember reading this and laughing. I'm like oh yeah, as
Speaker 1: a miserable realist, I got you so talk about self deceptions.
Speaker 1: I thought that was really interesting. Who do we deceive
Speaker 1: the most? And again I believe that we have to
Speaker 1: deceive ourselves. Unfortunately. I have this favorite story, which is
Speaker 1: that I was walking by a window in New York
Speaker 1: City and I saw my reflection and I thought, damn,
Speaker 1: I look good. Then I realized I was looking at
Speaker 1: someone else, and I thought, you know, this is good.
Speaker 1: I should I wish I hadn't realized that, because it
Speaker 1: would be nice. It's like when you go and you
Speaker 1: look in the mirror and it's one of those tall,
Speaker 1: skinny mirrors, and you think, I really look hot. You
Speaker 1: don't need to know that. So I wish I was
Speaker 1: able to be fooled more. I really do. Had I
Speaker 1: not open my mouth, I could have been married to
Speaker 1: this guy. I really could have been. Thank god I
Speaker 1: opened my mouth, but I could have really gone, you know,
Speaker 1: a long way. And I remember I remember actually right
Speaker 1: after I got engaged to him, I own my apartment
Speaker 1: in New York and I called a lawyer and I said,
Speaker 1: can this guy get his hands on my apartment? And
Speaker 1: they said, no, not unless you give it over to him.
Speaker 1: I said, what about debt? What if he has debt?
Speaker 1: Do I incurred that. They said, whatever he comes into
Speaker 1: the marriage with you don't, but whatever after it's yours,
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking that's gonna be a problem. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think people who live in the state of denial
Speaker 1: are a lot happier. Yes, and yeah, However you could
Speaker 1: also see the danger for entering and staying in a
Speaker 1: narcissistic relationship or the psychopathic or toxic relationship. Okay, so
Speaker 1: figure this out. Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power, right, Okay, Okay, yeah, great,
Speaker 1: so let's break that down. Okay, ignorance is bliss and
Speaker 1: knowledge is power. So the question is do you what
Speaker 1: do you want more bliss or power? I think that
Speaker 1: change is depending on where you are in your life.
Speaker 1: And I don't actually think that ignorance is bliss because
Speaker 1: I look at survivors and I do use the word
Speaker 1: survivor because I actually think you are a survived I
Speaker 1: don't think you're a sufferer. I think you suffer. I
Speaker 1: don't think myself as a sufferer. Now I was a sufferer. However,
Speaker 1: you suffered and you came out of it. I suffered.
Speaker 1: I suffered, You did suffer and ship. Yes, people in
Speaker 1: these relationships suffer, Okay, I think that the narrative is
Speaker 1: and then people say, and now I'm broken, right, and
Speaker 1: so they stay and suffer and might not. You got
Speaker 1: out of this. You survived it, right, as much as
Speaker 1: one could survive graduate school, one could survive recession. You know,
Speaker 1: you're still standing on the other side. Right. So that
Speaker 1: language said ignorance wasn't bliss for them, and they tried.
Speaker 1: They tried, ignorance was bliss until it became known. You
Speaker 1: don't know what you don't know. I'm going to push
Speaker 1: back on that, Okay, it's not that you don't know
Speaker 1: what you don't know. They're suffering. In your case, it
Speaker 1: was deceit, gas, sliding, manipulation, heavy relationship. I hear that
Speaker 1: for other people, it's a push pull between really good
Speaker 1: days and really bad days and blaming themselves for that.
Speaker 1: It's the being compared to other people. It's dealing with
Speaker 1: the angel at the dinner party and the monster in
Speaker 1: the car and the ride home. It could be betrayals,
Speaker 1: it could be infidelities. All of that they're suffering. Okay.
Speaker 1: They're often trivialized, their goals are laughed at, they're mocked,
Speaker 1: they're held in contempt. It's suffering, right, And so this
Speaker 1: is all happening to them, and they are suffering, but
Speaker 1: they don't have a name for the suffering, and they
Speaker 1: don't know what, they don't know why. All they know
Speaker 1: is I am so unhappy. I'm not supposed to be.
Speaker 1: Everyone said, we looked really good at the dinner party.
Speaker 1: I am miserable. Maybe, And this is how I hear
Speaker 1: this from survivors every time I talk to them. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, what am I complaining about? There's people who
Speaker 1: are homeless, there are people are suffering, where there are
Speaker 1: people getting beaten up? What am I complaining about? When
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, you're being emotionally devastated on the daily, you're
Speaker 1: being emotionally manipulated and betrayed. And yeah, So the ignorance
Speaker 1: in that case is that they're actually having an experience,
Speaker 1: a physical psychological experience that doesn't happen name. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: What about the people who live in these marriages and
Speaker 1: they're totally happy and they do not suspect their husband
Speaker 1: has another family around the corner, like a Stepford kind
Speaker 1: of a thing or just really yeah, just like really
Speaker 1: so ignorant. They're they're living their best life, They're doing
Speaker 1: what they do and they have no idea. I guess
Speaker 1: there that's actually a really really good questioning. Is that
Speaker 1: somebody that somebody would be And we've all known people
Speaker 1: like that. I've had friends who were in relationships that
Speaker 1: were just riddled with deceit and then there was the
Speaker 1: moment somehow something got found out. And I think with
Speaker 1: Internet and the digital Adrian, it's a lot harder to
Speaker 1: keep alike covered up right, But then I have to
Speaker 1: say that the devastation at that point, it's a different
Speaker 1: like in other words, now the blast site, the blast
Speaker 1: phone is going to be that much larger. And folks
Speaker 1: in those situations where they manage to not see it
Speaker 1: sometimes feel when it's all when after it all blows up,
Speaker 1: that they're complicit. Well sure, because and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they're like, what did I miss? What did
Speaker 1: I not see? What did I willingly not see? Right? Yes? Right?
Speaker 1: And it wasn't even willingly like maybe I mean again,
Speaker 1: unconscious processes aren't willing processes. And then we start getting
Speaker 1: we curve into interesting territory around things like culture abbey
Speaker 1: that when there's no option, divorce is simply not an option.
Speaker 1: Breaking up a family is simply not an option. That
Speaker 1: kind of denial on seeing this is survival and safety,
Speaker 1: because to see it and have to stay in it
Speaker 1: is a very specific kind of hell on earth. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I do think that those things are all
Speaker 1: operating in terms of how people get stuck. When we
Speaker 1: have had guests on here. We had one guests in particular,
Speaker 1: gen vas On from Betrayed, who perfect life and the
Speaker 1: one day comes home to a search warrant on her
Speaker 1: door and they watched her husband be taken away and
Speaker 1: that was the last time she ever saw. I did
Speaker 1: a piece about white collar wives and it ran in
Speaker 1: the Times, and it was about these women whose husbands
Speaker 1: were white collar offenders. And the women had no idea,
Speaker 1: they say, and yet then you uncover the layers a
Speaker 1: little bit and they're like, well, I had a reason
Speaker 1: not to know. And the reason I had to not
Speaker 1: know or ask questions was because I liked the life
Speaker 1: we lived, Yes, and I liked the money made, and
Speaker 1: I liked the car I had. And you know, there
Speaker 1: was and I think in that sense, there's a sense
Speaker 1: of complicity because they were I hear that, and I
Speaker 1: think that they still don't think it's a sense of
Speaker 1: complicity because ultimately they weren't committing the wrongdoings, right, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: they weren't committing the wrongdoing. It's so it's so interesting
Speaker 1: because Bernie Madoff's wife, Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think she knew maybe something was not kosher, but
Speaker 1: she didn't listen. I can barely add. So if I
Speaker 1: had been married to Bernie Madoff, I wouldn't know what
Speaker 1: he was doing. But I might say something might not
Speaker 1: be right here. But I don't really want to know.
Speaker 1: What I don't know doesn't hurt me. So am I complicit?
Speaker 1: I mean that's like a question for the rabbis. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, maybe maybe it's a tough one, you know.
Speaker 1: I An analogy I've often used is around magic tricks
Speaker 1: and magicians, right, because even adults like going to magicians,
Speaker 1: it's not kids. And I hate going to magicians because
Speaker 1: I need to know how they do it. Bingo. On course,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. A lot of people go to a
Speaker 1: magician and they're content to not know how the trick
Speaker 1: was done, because once you show how the trick is done,
Speaker 1: it's not magic anymore. It's right, And I think that
Speaker 1: we're complicit, right, are you complicite? I refuse to believe
Speaker 1: I was complicit with the guy at Magic Castle. I
Speaker 1: think you were. That's the contract between the audience. The
Speaker 1: audience has to be willing to be disputed, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to believe there everybody was closed about you. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I mean, but the emperor has no clothes. The audience
Speaker 1: is complicit, then the city whatever it was, the village, right, right.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting one because then once we know how
Speaker 1: the trick is done again, the magic is gone. The
Speaker 1: charade is over, and that's tricky, and you become the
Speaker 1: miserable depressive who is no longer living in denial. Harold
Speaker 1: Sackeim's realist, right, and so that that's tricky. We will
Speaker 1: be right back with my conversation with Abby. When we
Speaker 1: talk about narcissism and toxic relationships, we often don't deconstruct
Speaker 1: like we are right now, because we're really focusing on
Speaker 1: a pattern that characterizes the relationships. But it's not all
Speaker 1: of it. And yet you see it kind of is
Speaker 1: all of it because if you lie systemically, lie not
Speaker 1: you look good in that dress. Lie systematically lie. You're
Speaker 1: entitled because you feel like you can hold the monopoly
Speaker 1: on truth. You lack empathy because you don't care about
Speaker 1: what your deceit is doing to the other person. You're
Speaker 1: arrogant because you think you're above all of us. You're
Speaker 1: grandiose because at some level you must believe your own
Speaker 1: hype that you are the great trickster of our time
Speaker 1: and you hold the power. That's right. So all of that,
Speaker 1: even though we're talking about a behavior that all of
Speaker 1: that behavior pings into all of these elements of the
Speaker 1: bigger pictures antagonism. But then we could boil that down
Speaker 1: to narcissism and psychopathy. When you were in the relationship,
Speaker 1: did you ever stop to think, I'm in a relationship
Speaker 1: with the narcissist, I'm in a relationship with the psychopath.
Speaker 1: You did, he said to me at one point, I'm
Speaker 1: not a psychopath. I said, yeah, you are, Okay, I did,
Speaker 1: and that, you know, for whatever reason, and that's a
Speaker 1: whole other podcast. I was never in this thing one
Speaker 1: hundred percent and always had to foot out the door.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been freelanced my whole life as as okay,
Speaker 1: so there's definitely there's a connection there. So I think
Speaker 1: I kept a foot out because I knew it wasn't
Speaker 1: going to work out on some level in my gut.
Speaker 1: I just knew it. And that's why I say I
Speaker 1: wanted the career, I wanted the story. I had to
Speaker 1: stick it out until I had concrete, concrete proof this
Speaker 1: person was a liar instead of these fantastical things I
Speaker 1: couldn't verify. I had to get out for my self esteem.
Speaker 1: But it was just like I knew there was going
Speaker 1: to be some story there, so you know, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: My shrink accused me of the same thing once. She's like,
Speaker 1: I think you keep getting into narcissistic relationships for a
Speaker 1: material like that's insensitive, and I'm like maybe, but it's well,
Speaker 1: it's true. Everything is copy, you know, But if you're
Speaker 1: not doing anything, if you're not in with anybody, you're
Speaker 1: just hanging out by yourself eating bonbonds, what's the copy?
Speaker 1: You know? I ate a bad bombon, right or not
Speaker 1: that interesting to teach me how to live a bonbon
Speaker 1: life because I'd actually been interesting antidote tell Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. There's that you do talk about, though, and
Speaker 1: I'd imagine this was a quality that might have been
Speaker 1: quite attractive in the commander is that intelligent people tend
Speaker 1: to lie more, and we value intelligence, and I think
Speaker 1: there's something else. We don't want to be the one
Speaker 1: person who's that kids says the Emperor's naked. Everybody thinks
Speaker 1: we're talking about complicity. Everybody, all those people in that
Speaker 1: village said, God, the guy looks naked. But maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it right, Maybe I'm making a mistake. Nobody
Speaker 1: wants to be the one person who says, you know,
Speaker 1: called it out. And in your research, did you figure
Speaker 1: out why nobody wants to be the person who wants
Speaker 1: to call it Because I think it's what I call
Speaker 1: the Lemming effect. Nobody wants to be the odd person out,
Speaker 1: because nobody wants to look wrong. And to bring it
Speaker 1: all full circle, no one wants to look stupid, right,
Speaker 1: And we also are shaped by other people. If you
Speaker 1: look at Solomon Ash's work, if you remember that, you
Speaker 1: might have learned that anyone listening in psychology, there would
Speaker 1: be three lines. One was clearly longer than the rest
Speaker 1: of them, and there would be a group of nine people.
Speaker 1: They were confederates. People working alongside the researchers were sort
Speaker 1: of like liars, stuck in the group. And then a
Speaker 1: person would say I think line B is the longest,
Speaker 1: line B, and then the confederate saying line A, and
Speaker 1: then other people they would start responding the clearly shorter
Speaker 1: line was the longest because they were affected by other people.
Speaker 1: A lot of this research actually came out of post
Speaker 1: World War two and people are trying to understand what happened.
Speaker 1: How could such horrors happen? How could people just have
Speaker 1: gone along like that? Do you remember The Wave? That
Speaker 1: was an after school special, The Wave? It was about,
Speaker 1: you know, the kids in the school and it was
Speaker 1: based on a real experiment. Some were guards, some were prisoners. Wow,
Speaker 1: you mean the it wasn't it wasn't no, not the
Speaker 1: Zimbardo Zimbardo expects, right, And they did a show called
Speaker 1: The Wave, and it was all about basically following the crowd, right.
Speaker 1: Other people were doing this. I mean, that wasn't the
Speaker 1: whole point of that. But the guards were abusing the prisoners,
Speaker 1: and everybody was doing it, and so everybody continued to
Speaker 1: do it. The Sara for prison experiments actually interesting because
Speaker 1: it really speaks to once we're placed into a role,
Speaker 1: how we take on that role. Because I remember it
Speaker 1: was Zimbardo randomly assigned. Yes, he listeners and guards, so
Speaker 1: they I think he shifted it and then and so
Speaker 1: what happened was though he had to end experiment early
Speaker 1: because the guards became so abusive. But they were He's
Speaker 1: just a coin flip on which group you were assigned
Speaker 1: to be, right, that's right. But when we get to
Speaker 1: this stuff on conformity, they were all doing it because
Speaker 1: even though some people thought Guard A is doing it,
Speaker 1: GUARDB is doing it, guards said, why that's really bad.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't do it, but amb are doing it, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it too. Yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: but see all of this relates again to Solomon Ash's
Speaker 1: work on conformity. And we are a tribal species, right,
Speaker 1: so the human beings live in small social groups, and
Speaker 1: so to be ostracized for a human being is actually
Speaker 1: to die. If you go to our primal sort of
Speaker 1: state as human beings. You can't make it alone. We
Speaker 1: can now because of the Internet, but that's pretty ray,
Speaker 1: but it's also made it that much easier to get caught.
Speaker 1: It's made it hard. Or Two, I think we've always lied.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're lying more. I think that what
Speaker 1: we're seeing is there's more evidence of the line because
Speaker 1: because there's a public e trail. Yeah, there's an e trail,
Speaker 1: and the public is the media now a right. So
Speaker 1: now we're seeing the person in another country is lying,
Speaker 1: like we'll caught you out in that lie. It makes
Speaker 1: it seem ubiquitous. I'm not convinced in your research, did
Speaker 1: it seem like rates of lying have gone up? People
Speaker 1: were talking about it more, and the reason was because
Speaker 1: back in the old days, to have your double lives,
Speaker 1: you'd have to walk to the farm twenty miles away. Ye.
Speaker 1: Now you click on the button on the internet, you know,
Speaker 1: or you have a burner phone, or you can call
Speaker 1: up a website to get a person who will pretend
Speaker 1: to be your boss. You know. You can pay them
Speaker 1: to and they will give you a recommendation for a
Speaker 1: job you never had. You can get the sounds of
Speaker 1: airplanes taking off, you can. I mean, there's so much
Speaker 1: opportunity for deception. There is so much opportunity for deception.
Speaker 1: There's not much opportunity to get caught. But that's why
Speaker 1: I think we're talking about it more. But I think
Speaker 1: that you know, if George Santa stays in office and
Speaker 1: nothing happened to him, it's really going to be interesting
Speaker 1: to see what happens in the world because people are
Speaker 1: going to say, well, why should I bother telling the truth?
Speaker 1: If this guy is being rewarded for lyne we know
Speaker 1: he's making shit up and yet and my counterpoint to
Speaker 1: that is going to be because most of us are
Speaker 1: wired to tell the truth? Are we? I believe? So
Speaker 1: it's the red light you said, if if we don't
Speaker 1: follow these rules on red lights and honesty creates tighter
Speaker 1: social bonds, which is still the name of the game. Okay,
Speaker 1: but do you think I used to think about this
Speaker 1: a lot the Holocaust, World War Two, people had to
Speaker 1: lie to save their lives, Stissy did so. Is everybody
Speaker 1: capable of that? Are there some people who are? Not?
Speaker 1: Everybody's capable of it? To a point, I think some
Speaker 1: people though they maintaining the lie would become too much
Speaker 1: of a mental stretch for that to sur They needed
Speaker 1: to to survive. Not everyone was able to do then survived, right,
Speaker 1: So I think that under survival circumstances, human beings can
Speaker 1: do things right. But in general people prefer or the
Speaker 1: truth because they don't have that commander like capacity to
Speaker 1: compartmentalize and keep it all straight. Well, it's just it's
Speaker 1: easier to tell the truth. It is easier to tell
Speaker 1: the truth. It is, but there's consequences, and I think
Speaker 1: that's that's the other piece. Do you think after the
Speaker 1: experience you've been through, and even some dating experiences you
Speaker 1: said that you went through years later and still were deceived,
Speaker 1: and everything you've learned about lying, do you feel that
Speaker 1: the only way forward is that everyone just has to
Speaker 1: keep their guard up all the time. You know, I
Speaker 1: say this all the time, Reagan, trust, verify, right, trust
Speaker 1: but verify, and I go trust but verify, but still
Speaker 1: don't trust. I don't know how I could be involved
Speaker 1: with somebody very seriously without really checking into their past
Speaker 1: and really like, you know, hiring a private eye. And
Speaker 1: I say that half facetiously, but really have not. I
Speaker 1: don't know that I could. I don't know that I could,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if that's so bad. I don't
Speaker 1: even know if I want to be involved with anybody seriously.
Speaker 1: I feel like, God, what an emotional, exhausting experience, mostly
Speaker 1: exhausting experience that would be to go through somebody's Michigans.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. Do you trust other people in
Speaker 1: your life? Oh? Well, who? Friends? Yes, family members? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: But it's very different when there's romance involved. It's very
Speaker 1: different when there's love involved, very different when there's hormones involved.
Speaker 1: It's very different when there's DNA involved. It's very different
Speaker 1: when there's you know, there's so much there. It's different
Speaker 1: from a friendship. It is different. I have a lot
Speaker 1: of really good friends, and I take those relationships seriously.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't have to live with them, right,
Speaker 1: And have you had the experience with being significantly lied
Speaker 1: to in anything outside of an intimate relationship? I have,
Speaker 1: And it's very easy to say, you're nuts, I'm out
Speaker 1: of here. Okay. So it's a different buy in. It's
Speaker 1: a different buy in. It's a different buy in. Your
Speaker 1: I got no reason, you know. Yeah, And I tell
Speaker 1: folks your stories that my stories, that your relationship with
Speaker 1: trust will change. That's exactly right. And I think I
Speaker 1: said this earlier. I don't necessarily need to know everything, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't need to know if it's all what it is,
Speaker 1: but I also need to know what I can accept
Speaker 1: and what untrusts I cannot accept. YEA, you know, I
Speaker 1: totally agree, and I think that it gets very, very complicated.
Speaker 1: So now that you've done what you've done, what steps
Speaker 1: do you suggest that people could take to protect themselves
Speaker 1: from being deceived in romance if you're really serious about
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a problem in hiring somebody to
Speaker 1: check out the records, and you know, is this person
Speaker 1: lying about their income or they're lying about their position.
Speaker 1: I get a story a day, mostly women, but from
Speaker 1: men too. I didn't know they were lying about it.
Speaker 1: You know, their income, they were lying about their position,
Speaker 1: they were lying about where they were from. They were
Speaker 1: lying with this their research that. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: websites you can do online, right, there's like what is
Speaker 1: it dark verify whatever they have to trustify Verify, what's
Speaker 1: it called. I don't know one of those things you
Speaker 1: can go online. But yeah, I would think if you
Speaker 1: need to get hard facts, you hire somebody to do
Speaker 1: it for you. I think that's smart. I think that's savvy.
Speaker 1: I think you also need to know what your tolerance
Speaker 1: level is and what you're happy to be. You know
Speaker 1: what you're okay being misled about and what you're okay
Speaker 1: not being missing. You know. The unsophisticated version of what
Speaker 1: you're saying, if check someone out is to google them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm saying taking a step from take it from
Speaker 1: because I was seeing a guy last year and he
Speaker 1: didn't have a Google profile, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: can't do this. I mean, and I did all the things,
Speaker 1: I got background records from whatever that website is that
Speaker 1: I can't remember, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it. And he wouldn't quite tell me
Speaker 1: what his story was, and I thought, I can't do this.
Speaker 1: So in essence, what you're really in telling he was
Speaker 1: do some homework before, especially here, and this is in
Speaker 1: an intimate relational space. Let's expand this out. Okay, friends,
Speaker 1: what place other people you're going to run into? Would
Speaker 1: you give the same guidance? Yes? You would? Okay, do
Speaker 1: you know that? What is it? Like? Fifty five percent
Speaker 1: of people line in the resume? Wow? Wow, they santos it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna use them as a verb. I mean, they
Speaker 1: you know, but there were people in the book that
Speaker 1: I talked about who you know they were. Let go
Speaker 1: for making things I'm making if they degrees making of
Speaker 1: all the stuff. You know, part of the problem that
Speaker 1: I have with them is that they're stupid because they
Speaker 1: realize they can be checked. Except the complicity piece is
Speaker 1: that people don't often do they don't check right? How
Speaker 1: much can fear of consequences do you think keep a
Speaker 1: liar in line? It depends what the consequences are, because
Speaker 1: here we are looking at this country, we have had liars,
Speaker 1: and for better for worse. If you are a Democrat,
Speaker 1: you will think that Joe Biden hiding up his documents
Speaker 1: or forgetting his documents is not a big deal. If
Speaker 1: you like Trump, you're gonna say it's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: Same thing. But if we see somebody we clearly know
Speaker 1: fabricated like at George Santos, and nothing happens to them,
Speaker 1: what is that going to do? What consequences are there?
Speaker 1: Why should anybody then tell the truth other than the
Speaker 1: hard wired other than the hard wiredness, which actually goes
Speaker 1: farther than you possibly think. In your book, you focus
Speaker 1: on the lying what happens to people, and we read it.
Speaker 1: We understand what the motivations around lying are, but what
Speaker 1: we are often our tendency is and there's a proverb
Speaker 1: I've used on this podcast before is you know, the
Speaker 1: tale of the hunt is always told by the hunter,
Speaker 1: not the lion. You know, So, which is we're so
Speaker 1: focused on the perpetrator, on the wrong doer, right, So
Speaker 1: then we try to come up with interventions like how
Speaker 1: can we change them? How can we make people not lie?
Speaker 1: And you're saying, that's the wrong tree to bark up.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's what you're saying to you. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. And that's what your book is doing,
Speaker 1: is saying, let's talk about what happens when a person
Speaker 1: is lied to. That's right. I never confronted this guy,
Speaker 1: I told you in the beginning. I didn't. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen him in twelve and I thought about it because
Speaker 1: I thought, well, it would be a good copy, you know,
Speaker 1: it could have been tier for a book. And I thought,
Speaker 1: what's he gonna say. He's gonna say I didn't do
Speaker 1: anything wrong, or else he's gonna say I don't know
Speaker 1: why you know, or you're crazy, you're a bitch, whatever,
Speaker 1: he's gonna say, and I thought, what is the point here?
Speaker 1: So I never got a response because I didn't need
Speaker 1: that closure. It wasn't going to do anything right. And
Speaker 1: I think there's something very valid in that. And that
Speaker 1: was also something that I because everybody said, wow, you're
Speaker 1: going to talk to him, there was no need. And
Speaker 1: that's a good place to get to because you have
Speaker 1: to realize again you're taking care of yourself. You're putting
Speaker 1: on not your own oxygen mask, but your own pandemic mask.
Speaker 1: You are protecting yourself. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: that's who has to protect you. And that's so important.
Speaker 1: It's unsettling too because people said, I want to be
Speaker 1: taken care of. It's the child and all of us
Speaker 1: that is saying, can't someone like make it so I
Speaker 1: don't always have to be on it. But unfortunately part
Speaker 1: of the work is to say I need to, in
Speaker 1: whatever form, need to do my due diligence, whatever that
Speaker 1: looks like. The fact is people are going to do
Speaker 1: that in different ways. But this is about you. And
Speaker 1: because you're never ever going to make a liar, stop lying.
Speaker 1: And the very last thing I would say is if
Speaker 1: anybody is asking you for money, especially someone you've never met,
Speaker 1: are you met on the internet and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they tell you they're your boyfriend or whatever. Don't
Speaker 1: give them any money. Seriously. Yeah, and that's something. It's sad,
Speaker 1: but it needs to be said. No, it does need
Speaker 1: to be said. And I think that when we look
Speaker 1: at the various ms out there, they do prey upon
Speaker 1: the lonely people. Lonely people and a very very human need, yes,
Speaker 1: to want to be loved, to want to be loved.
Speaker 1: That's it, Abby, Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: Just as we wrap up here, Where can people find
Speaker 1: you and connect with your work? They can find me.
Speaker 1: They can go to my website abbe Ellen dot com.
Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram vaguely at Abbey Underscore Ellen Underscore author.
Speaker 1: You know you can buy my book on all your
Speaker 1: local wherever you buy your books. Duped, Double Lives, False Identities,
Speaker 1: and the con Men I Almost Married, And you can
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast I did based on the book
Speaker 1: called Impostors The Commander Season two and that is on Spotify.
Speaker 1: In my first takeaway, many survivors feel foolish for getting duped,
Speaker 1: and this can happen whether it is a long term,
Speaker 1: committed relationship, or even a short term relationship that ends
Speaker 1: in a scam. None of us want to believe we
Speaker 1: fell for a con or we're taken for a ride.
Speaker 1: But there is a danger to this mindset because it
Speaker 1: can leave survivors isolated, less likely to get help, and
Speaker 1: more likely to get lost in self blame and shame.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel good, but seeking out help and talking
Speaker 1: it out when you are caught in a confusing place
Speaker 1: of deceit can be absolutely crucial to healing. In this
Speaker 1: next takeaway, all liars are not narcissistic, but all narcissistic
Speaker 1: people are liars. People lie for lots of different reasons,
Speaker 1: as we have learned, and even narcissistic people tell lies
Speaker 1: for a wide range of reasons. We are often wanting
Speaker 1: simple black and white tools to be able to organize
Speaker 1: the people in our lives. Sadly, lying is a little
Speaker 1: bit too complicated to allow us to do that. Odds
Speaker 1: are that most of us don't really want people to
Speaker 1: tell us the truth about how we look in this dress,
Speaker 1: but we don't want to be lied to about big
Speaker 1: ticket issues. For our next takeaway, while Abbey raised the
Speaker 1: issue of people being complicit and how they may engage
Speaker 1: with a lie or other deceit. I take a slightly
Speaker 1: different stance. Denial often plays a role, but it is
Speaker 1: an unconscious process and it is designed to protect us
Speaker 1: from information we don't feel able to hear. Complicity implies
Speaker 1: something more active, of being an aware player in someone
Speaker 1: else's deceit. For many survivors of toxic relationships, I don't
Speaker 1: see this complicity, but rather as a complex mix of denial, confusion,
Speaker 1: and hope to see what is happening clearly in these relationships.
Speaker 1: To be neither in denial or complicit means jumping into
Speaker 1: the unknown, and that can feel very unsettling. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: don't see things right away that may simply be self
Speaker 1: protective at a primitive level. So in this takeaway, when
Speaker 1: Abby finally understood the depth of the lies and got confirmation,
Speaker 1: although she was elated, she also learned that there is
Speaker 1: no such thing as a clean slate. These relationships do
Speaker 1: change us. Our slates have some marks on them that
Speaker 1: just don't disappear. After someone you love and trust perpetrates
Speaker 1: repeated and elaborate lies that reflect no empathy or awareness
Speaker 1: of the pain caused by these lies, your relationship with
Speaker 1: trust changes forever. While there is no clean slate, perhaps
Speaker 1: those marks that linger our teachers that may make us
Speaker 1: more circumspect and yeah suspicious in the future. A little
Speaker 1: suspicion can go a long way. And in our last
Speaker 1: takeaway for Abby, I ask, and she asked, why do
Speaker 1: we do what we do? Abby was surprised as she
Speaker 1: went through her process and her research on lying that
Speaker 1: people are not that self aware. Lack of self awareness
Speaker 1: is a hallmark of narcissistic personalities, but it's not just
Speaker 1: antagonistic folks that lack self awareness. Most of us could
Speaker 1: do with a deeper dive into ourselves, and when we
Speaker 1: do this, we become clearer not only on our own motivations,
Speaker 1: but also become more aware of how our words and
Speaker 1: our actions affect other people. Self awareness connects us into
Speaker 1: our worlds more profoundly, and that not only connects us
Speaker 1: to other people, but it also allows us to keep
Speaker 1: our eyes more clear and wide open to what is
Speaker 1: happening around us, good, bad, or indifferent.