Weeding Out the Jerks: The Pinocchio Syndrome

The liar is the hardest trait to see. I, like most adults, was raised in a home where we were taught that telling a lie is wrong. Because of this upbringing, I am likely one of the most gullible ones, as it totally shocks me daily to find out that there are adults out in this world that have never learned this lesson. Obviously their parents didn’t believe in the “soap in the mouth” trick. Life usually has to hit me with a brick upside the head for me to grasp the concept that some adults do lie. We all want to believe that people will tell the truth, and when someone lies to your face, we usually believe them. Unfortunately the nose only grows in fairy tales.

There are signs that jerks lie, but this cannot always be seen very well in the screening process. One sign that stands out is when asked personal questions, he stammers and him-halls around with the answer, and darts his eyes every direction except at you. This can mean one of two things or both. He has trouble communicating, or as I like to call it, a teenage mutant, which we don’t really want either, or he lies and is just not all that good at it.

Here are some common lies that we hear up front that should send our little love troops to the hills for cover.

“I never really loved her.” It just isn’t so, dear….

“We are getting a divorce. I am still staying there, but we sleep in separate beds.” Pleeeeaseee………

“I have never cheated before you.” Chances are slim this is true, and even if it is, run…..

“We are just friends. I slept on the couch” Another Pleeeeaseee…………

“Let me give you my office number, as I am never home.” There is a hidden lie here, girls. Does it spell married?

“Trust me……” If these two words appear in any part of a sentence, worry a lot. A trustworthy person doesn’t need to say this.

“I fell asleep on Joe’s couch and no one woke me.” Right!

And the most hurtful of all

“I love you.”

There are some men out there that are so good at lies that they can look you strait in the face and you never doubt for a minute that they are telling the truth. This is the hardest one to catch, but eventually we do. Unfortunately, when we do, we are already in love with the lies. I say this, because we cannot possibly be in love with the man, because we have never really seen him. This is what we need to remember. The pain we feel is not for the man in front of us, it is for the imaginary man he created.

I dated a liar once, for a very long time. I was in love with the man I thought he was, the man he created. After the breakup, I mourned a very long time over the loss of the man I thought he was. It was very hard to separate the man I loved from the man he really was. The signs were there, bigger than life, that he lied to me, but I chose to ignore them. He was what I like to call a combination-jerk. He lied, he had the maturity of a very small child, and his communication skills were that of a brick talking to a wall, non-existent. Why do you ask, was I with him? It beats the hell out of me. My heart said he was worth something, even though my mind told me numerous times that he was not. Sometimes the heart wants what it wants, and does not listen to the logic of the brain.

The signs were so blatant, that I will just call this time period of my life “four years of stupid”. These signs I can now recognize and avoid. When he tells you something, and you repeat it to him later, and he says, “That’s not what I said.” Trust your instincts. You are not deaf and dumb. Most likely you did hear it right the first time, but he needed to tweak his lie a little, because he simply got busted on the first story, so the story had to change.

Some men lie to avoid confrontation. Some men lie about the simplest things, just because. Some men lie so that they look better to whomever they are talking to. Some men lie to avoid conversation. Some men lie as to not hurt our feelings, like “No honey, you don’t look fat.” So some lies are somewhat ok, right girls? You can see, though, that some other jerk traits may be present in the liar.

Say Something Damnit

Omission of the truth is also a form of lying. One woman I know lived with a recently divorced man with grown up children that lived out of town, that were not all that happy about the divorce. Mr. D Luder refused to tell his children about her, even though he told her that he loved her. After hiding her from his children for well over two years, she finally concluded that things were not going to change and left him. This liar by omission was not willing to deal with the confrontation from his children. Although she did finally leave him, the pain was still very real especially when she heard he jumped, as some men do, into a new live in relationship shortly after their breakup. Rumor has it that she has not met his children either.

Another dear friend of mine was in a relationship with a man who constantly lied about how he felt. She could see that something was wrong, but every time she asked him he replied “nothing.” He refused to talk with her about his feelings, so he lied instead to avoid discussing them. After a year or so, he told her he wanted out, that he was just not happy. There were things that she did that he just didn’t like. If he had taken the time to tell her the truth about how he felt, things may have been different. Who knows?

I have another friend who is still dating this jerk, about six years now. He has strung her along for this entire time. He bought her an engagement ring and moved her into his house. Now he has an ex-wife who did live out of town and he has custody of their small child. His ex-wife lost her job, so he moved her into his home, after asking my friend to move out. He explained that it is for his daughter. He claims that nothing is going on between his ex and him, and asked that she still see him. She said yes. Something is fishy in Denmark here, but the jury is still out on the truth! This is another case of “I have a jerk, but I don’t care!”

Some men use the words “I love you” but what they really mean is “I am happy with you right this moment.” A jerk has a hard time with the difference between love and having fun. I often ask men I know how many times they have used the words “I love you.” Some can answer right away, the number, and even the woman’s name and time in their life. Some, the jerks I suspect, can’t remember how many times or how many women. Be careful of this. Jerks can use this line to get what they want at the moment, but really have no use for the feelings at all.

I have a niece that dated a young man in high school for a few months. They went to a school dance together for their very last date. At the dance, Junior Sophomoric kept disappearing for about 10-20 minutes at a time. She noticed that when he returned, he would act sillier and sillier. He started to hang on her too. She confronted him and asked him if he had been drinking. She being only fifteen was a little naïve about this sort of thing. He looked her strait in the face and said “No”. She looked him back in the face and called him a liar. He stopped talking to her that night; in fact, he had a friend of hers call her to break up with her. He said she was trying to control him. She told her friend that she was not as upset with the drinking as she was with the lying. He didn’t understand that. It makes me wonder if he is destined for jerkdome in the future.

One thing we must remember, that although I call this “The Pinocchio syndrome”, nothing of importance ever grows from it, if you get my drift.

more to come.......

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