Lying with an ASD

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^^^ what they said. i think the fact that we have no expressions or speak in a monotone helps. how will the other person know, if we dont show signs or alter our typical behaviour, that we are lying?

Lying is easy.

I'm able to lie if it's for a good cause, like a surprise party. Otherwise, I really suck at lying. I don't even think I've tried to lie in years.

People have told me to lie for job interviews, but I can't do it. I can't stand the thought of being hired for a lie of myself rather than my true self, and potentially working for/with people who are equally as dishonest.

Same here, Im a fairly good liar when I need to be, but I need a while beforehand (to come up with the lie itself, along with fake answers to any possible question that would be affected by the previous lie, to avoid being caught, etc). If I dont have that time first, and get an unexpected question, I will either blurt out the truth before even thinking about it, or come up with a lie quickly but it wont be very good, so I will most likely get caught.

On a related topic, how do those on the spectrum who are normally good at lying do on a polygraph? Ive never taken one myself, but Im a bit curious.

No I am not good at lying and do not like to do it since a lot of guilt comes over me if I dare to lie. A white lie or fib is maybe ok if needed or sometimes stretching the truth just a bit. For example, does this dress or pants or whatever make me look fat, bad etc? Saying no and fibbing a little I can maybe do. Or someone asking if I like the dinner they made and really it was bad or just ok,. I can say yes I liked the dinner they made.

I am able to lie but I'm not good at it and generally don't lie. If I haven't brushed my teeth and am asked if I've brushed them I will be truthful and say I haven't even if I want to lie and say otherwise.

I hate being lied to so that may factor into why I'm so bad at lying and don't like to lie.

Up until my teens I really couldn't lie. It wasn't because I thought it was wrong, I just couldn't. I was obvious.

By the time I was a teenager and had friends, my mother was also even more overprotective so if I wanted to get out of the house I had to learn how to lie. One of my friends gave me actual lying lessons.

Here is what he told me. Keep it as simple as possible and as close to the truth as possible. Remember that you are going to have to remember the lie later so you don't want to have to remember some big complicated thing, because you probably wont.

If you pretend to be in a very bad mood about something, people usually won't question you too much so you can avoid having to go into detail.

The words you say aren't the only important parts of a lie. The most important part is selling it. If you aren't convincing, people won't even believe the truth. Sell the lie.

He told me a lot more, but I can't remember it right now. It comes in handy from time to time. Lying to bill collectors, etc.

Speaking truth is hard. Very troublesome and tiresome. That's because there is only one truth.

On the other hands, there are many lies. Speaking lies is easy and more interesting. That's why I lie all the time.

I agree with this. I can lie very well, but I have to make up the lie beforehand. If I lie on the spot every one can tell.

When I was young, I couldn't lie, or at least, when suddenly confronted, I was unable to come up with anything but the truth. My mind "froze" so that all I could think of was the truth, even if I knew I was going to get in trouble. I also considered the truth important, and still do. But... I was accused of lying, many times, when I was not. I was publicly punished for lying when I had not. (In third grade, my principal paddled my butt in front of the entire school and told them I was a little liar - this was in the 1960s - when in fact I had told her the truth.)

After enough of that sort of thing, something more or less broke inside me. So many people insisted I was lying, I still knew what was true, but it was almost as if they managed to convince me lying was something completely different. I started to lie, and I got caught up in a lot of those lies over time. I even managed to get away with them, or at least for a long time. I had an easier time getting away with lying than I did telling the truth. (This didn't help me come back to sanity, by the way.)

But I lied enough that I suffered myself and also learned firsthand all about the "tangled webs" we can "weave" when we "deceive". I do retain an ability to lie, and there are cases where I would. If I lived in Nazi Germany, for example, it would be "Jews? I haven't seen any Jews. I'll be sure to let you know if I do see anyone like that around." even while I was hiding fifty Jews wherever I could stash them and would never let them know even if I saw a Jew sneaking up to slit their filthy Nazi throat. In a case like that, truth is a lot less important than keeping people alive. I'd be proud of a lie like that, even now - and even as it scared the wits out of me, because as I say, I've seen that lies have this way of growing and causing unintended consequences. But I normally try to avoid it, because it warps the truth in my own head, and that's a cost I prefer not to pay except in the most extreme of cases.

And, to address another point, I can make up lies "on the fly". I grew to be pretty good a piling one lie on top of another to keep anyone from catching me out when I'd lied. But then, I am a fiction writer, and even as a kid, I did a fair amount of writing, so that probably helped.

I cannot lie. Everyone tells me I am so open and honest I am more likely to tell you what I did wrong and what the person said when I got into trouble like a little kid even though I do not fully understand and confused what the person standing in front of me looking so mad at me and raising their voice is going on about and I get told all the time why are you looking at me so confused with a blank face.

I have tried to lie and imitate my friends who can lie naturally, but it did not work, my friends found it funny and could not stop laughing at me my friends say that I am a really bad liar and they say I do not even express the right facial expressions and body gestures to even get away with being convincing enough to lie.

There was a situation a few years back where one of my neighbours who was having a barbeque with friends which mind you I did not mind and the food smelt good I love steak cooking on a barbeque, it was what they were speaking about that I was not very happy about, its fine just speaking about everyday issues, family, work and going on trips but all they were speaking about at the top of their voices for 6 hours straight was me they were down grading me to a piece of dirt, calling me names, putting down my family and friends and my landlord at first I just ignored it and went about doing my own thing but because I ignored them they decided to amplify their voices by using a karoke machine and continue to speak nasty about me. After awhile I just could not take it anymore and I ended up having a meltdown I took all the plates and cups out of the cupboard and threw them all straight down at my neighbours house all you could hear was smashing of plates and cups in front of my neighbours house eventually one of the other neighbours rang the police because all they could hear was smashing of plates and cups and then the police turned up in the street because the neighbour could not pin point who or where the plates and cups were coming from when they rang the police the police walked up and down the street trying to find who it was by this stage I was still having a meltdown I ended up sitting in the dark in my garage shaking, with my hands over my ears, rocking back and forth screaming and crying. The police then left and I did eventually calm down when I was able to think straight I felt so horrible that I threw the plates and cups down at the neighbours that I rang the police and told them what I did and why I did it the police officer said thankyou for being so honest and said that they do not get many people ringing up and admitting what they did wrong and being honest and open about it and asked me whether I had a disability or mental illness I said yes I have Aspergers Syndrome the police officer said that explains how honest and truthful I was and that I had to clean up the broken plates and cups from out the front of the neighbours house which I did.

Another time was when I was sitting out the back patio with a friend who is also AS we were sitting quietly talking minding our own business when the neighbour in the upstairs unit decided to have a party and invite alot of people and try and fit them all in a one bedroom unit they all ended up sitting out the back patio and being very noisy which was upsetting my friend we ended up going inside and shutting the back sliding door but you could still hear them clearly, my friend by this stage was having a meltdown and I was close to having a meltdown too, my friend ended up going out the back and just sitting there and I ended up going out the back as well, these guys really were not at this stage doing anything wrong but talking and enjoying the party until 4 hours into the party and consuming lots of beers that they started putting people down in the units especially my friend and I that is when I had a meltdown I ended up walking upto the guys front door and kicked a hole in their front door they never answered the door or even opened it and they stopped the party straight away it was a good 2 hours after that they even opened the door to let people go home that they noticed the big hole in their door. By this stage I had manage to settle my friend down who had gone extemely quiet and hid in my bedroom until the situation was over and I had settled down. I felt so horrible for what I did that I rang the real estate agent and told her what I did she thanked me for being honest and that they already had a complaint about the noise and a the people who had the party rang up saying they had a hole in their door and they wanted a new door and that they had no idea who did it because they never saw who did it because everyone was drinking out the back patio. That was when my Mum and I told the real estate I have Aspergers Syndrome and my real estate agent went out of her way to understand more about my disability. Lying is bad it gets you nowhere and eventually you get caught out like I see me friends do.

I hate to lie. It bothers me even when the lie is completely insignificant, and I agonize over it and might end up confessing later. On the rare occasions I do decide I have a reason to lie, though, I seem to be able to do it pretty well.

Seriously, though, telling a lie as trivial as saying a band I hate is OK gives me physical pain. It's not that I think that it's immoral, it just bothers me, like nails on a blackboard do.

This brings back memories. Once I learned to lie, one of the practical ways I used it was to escape - at least slightly - the maniacal regime of my insanely overprotective father. (He actually thought "You shouldn't go near the water until you know how to swim" was a sane maxim - and I still don't know how to swim, because by the time I was an adult, I would have felt too humiliated to take lessons in front of a bunch of little kids.)

I had a memory that was well above average, so I didn't have to worry about keeping my lies simple. I tried some insanely complicated ones, and got away with most of them.

A few things I would have said. First, in order to "sell" a lie, make yourself believe it. Even if you know it isn't true, use "suspension of disbelief" to tell yourself it is. (Like reading fiction, and even though you know it's fiction, it feels real.) It can sometimes actually be useful to not be completely consistent. (In fact, I got in trouble for being too consistent - even when I was telling the truth. A teacher who thought he was clever decided to settle a dispute between me and a classmate by having each of us write down our stories. Of course, I figured that meant he was going to quiz us on them later, somehow, so I did my best to memorise the details I wrote down. They were the truth, but I wanted to be sure I didn't forget anything, get anything in the wrong order, whatever. Then he had us write another account, at the end of class. Mine was almost identical to the first one - so he said I was lying. ) If you seem a little confused, it persuades people you must be telling the truth. And too much detail often makes something look like a lie, anyway.

One of the more amusing things that happened to me was when I got "caught" lying. The funny part was, I really was lying - but the information that "caught" me did nothing of the sort. The person who "caught" me had got the lie completely wrong, and thought I said something I never said. So, when they found out that wasn't true, they were convinced I was lying. That particular detail - my original statement of it - actually was true. But I was using it to back up a lie. So that was ironic, to say the least.

I am a fantastic liar. Rarely need to lie, but it no problem for me at all. I have an overactive imagination.

I can lie, but I suck at it. It's painfully obvious I'm lying.

There's another sort of "lying" that seems to happen without my permission. It happens when I'm overloaded trying to keep up with a conversation. I'll just say something that matches the pattern of the conversation, and sometimes it isn't something true. These "lies" are not the sort of lies you would expect to hear; they don't make me look better or give me any kind of advantage; they don't reassure other people. It's more like I just get the information wrong, and produce a sentence that fits into the conversation without realizing that the sentence isn't true. I think it is probably closer to "confabulation" than "lying". It doesn't happen too often, but when it does, it can block communication because I'm essentially saying something other than what I would have meant to say if I had had time to think about what I was saying.

Does that happen to anyone else? You just kind of automatically respond, fitting patterns, and end up saying things that aren't true?

Wikipedia: Confabulation