I Fell in Love with a Con Man with Abby Ellin

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you think you're smart enough to figure out if
someone's lying turns out if you're a due smart that
may work against you. Lying is a consistent element we
see in narcissistic relationships, and it drives the betrayal and
the lack of trust that festers in narcissistic relationships. So
let's meet Abby Ellen and her experience of a bottomless

(00:24):
pit of lies that she encountered with the pathological liar
she almost married and who ended up going to jail.
He lied about everything from the Brussels sprouts at dinner
to having another fiancee in another city. Abby is a journalist,
the author of Duped, Double Lives, False Identities, and The

(00:45):
con Man I Almost Married, and host of the podcast
Imposters The Commander. Abby's experience in this relationship led her
to do a deep dive into lying and deceit. Today,
we get to hear Abbey's story, as well as some
of the truths she's heard about lying. We break down
why people lie, explore the idea of self deception, and

(01:09):
the steps you can take to protect yourself in a
world where trust is often in short supply. All survivors
of narcissistic relationships, know what it feels like to be
lied to. Today we're going to learn about the anatomy
of a liar. This podcast should not be used as

(01:29):
a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are
advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy
from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition,
mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on

(01:51):
this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering
to some people. The views and opinions expressed are solely
those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia,

(02:15):
or their employees. Abby Welcome. It is so nice to
finally meet you in person. Thank you. I'm so happy
to be here. You know. When I read your book
Duped and of course I'm double fisting it. I thought
I was going to read a memoir of lying, and
I really got a masterclass online? Are you the master? No? No,

(02:37):
no, no no, no, no, thank you for that. But lying
in deceit is a very specific area and it's something
that hurts people in so many ways. And so today
I'm navigating narcissism. Lying is very much a part of narcissism,
but it goes way deeper than that. And so can
you tell us your experience of being duped? Yes, I can.

(02:57):
The short version is that I was engaged to a
who was a pathological liar and went to jail. That's
a short version. The longer version is that I am
a journalist and I was writing an article for the
New York Times that I needed to quote a doctor.
It had to do with detox diets and I needed
an expert, and I found this guy who worked at

(03:17):
Cedars Sign I actually here in Los Angeles, and he
was lovely and smart, and we had a conversation and
that was the end of it, and I quoted him.
And then the story didn't run for about a year.
So I fact checked with him a year later and
he said, I'm not in LA anymore. I'm in Jacksonville
at the Naval Hospital. And I said, okay. And he
said I joined the Navy. I rejoined the Navy as
a Navy doc. I had been years ago. I said okay.

(03:39):
He said, I'm opening up a hospital for kids with
cancer in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I said fantastic, keep
me posted on that, because that's a story. And so
he said, okay, and every so often he would write
me these notes. They were very strange. They were just
filled with medical jargon. I didn't understand them. That was
the end of it. Until the end of whatever year

(04:00):
it was, he started writing to me more and it
soon became clear that he had interest. So we met,
and you know, it moved quickly. At the time, I
was forty two and he was fifty eight. I thought
he was ancient. Yeah right, right. As I get older,
that doesn't seem so old. But he would tell me

(04:20):
stories that I couldn't verify. Like he told me he
had met his ex wife when he rescued her when
she was held hostage in Iran, and I was like,
when were we in Ran, Like nineteen seventy that wouldn't
have made any sense or seventy nine, sorry, and he said, yeah,
it was a secret mission. You wouldn't heard about it.
And so then he told me that he was held
hostage in China and secret mission wouldn't heard about it,

(04:41):
and I was like, what, this is insane. But he
had a kid, and his kid who was twelve at
the time, seemed to know all of his father's stories,
like he knew him, and I thought to myself, well,
if he's lying to his kid about that, that's like
child abuse. Like one day, his kid looked out the
window and said, Oh, there's a black sedan outside. Is
that one of your guys following us? Because he had
told his kid that, like the bad guys hated him

(05:04):
so much that he had secret service following him to
make sure that all of his people were okay. So
his son knew this, and I would overhear these conversations. Yeah,
so I thought it's weird. But you know what, why
do I know? I am from the suburbs of Boston.
This is not my beat. Because he told me he'd
been to the CIA and all the stuff, I could
not verify it. Yeah, but it drove me mad because
I need to get answers and I don't like not

(05:25):
having information. And I remember friends of mine said, you know,
this is the lesson you're going to have to learn,
that there's so much information and you can't know everything,
and I was like, yeah, but that doesn't work for me.
I gotta know everything. I need to know how everything
lines up. So I would ask him questions and he
would yell at me. He would say, you interrogate me.
You have to trust, and you're mistrusting and that's your
problem and that's why you have had bad relationships in

(05:47):
the past. And so I really thought there was something
wrong with me, and so he proposed within six months
and I said, okay, sure, And I was going to
school at Johns Hopkins at the time to get it
green international relations one. He was working at the Pentagon
for Real, opening up this hospital for kids with cancer.
And we lived in the Watergate, which makes me very

(06:09):
happy because that's like round zero for deception. So I
just love that. Yeah, I mean, it really makes me happy.
But eventually I left him because I couldn't verify things.
And the final straw, we went out with my parents
and he talked with the Brussels sprouts and he said
they were like the best Brussel spreads ever. And then
we left the restaurant and my parents were gone. He said, God,

(06:29):
that was the worst meal I've ever eaten. I said,
why did you lie? Like nobody cared they didn't cook it.
He said, I didn't want to hurt their feelings. And
I thought to myself, he's lying about that. He can
lie about anything. And I said, you know what, I'm out.
I'm done. So it was within a year I left.
I said some things were on hear him out. A
year later, I got a phone call from NCIS, which
is Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and they're real, who knew,

(06:50):
not my garment, but they're real, and they said, there's
a doctor who's writing prescriptions for narcotics and he's using
all these people's names and you're one of them. Do
you have a prescription for Vikadin percoset and do you
know this doctor? And I said, well, I know this doctor,
but no because I prefer valium. And so they said, okay,
well come down and make a statement, and so that's
what I did. And then I kicked into journalist mode

(07:11):
and began investigating him and found out that the majority
of stuff he told me wasn't not true. But what
he did, which was so brilliant, is he mixed fact
with fiction. And that's what they do. So you really
don't know what's up, but good liars are going to
do that because if they can root it in something
that sounds factual, especially if it's not verifiable, then you know.
So he went to jail. I wrote a book, and

(07:33):
so I found out he had proposed to another woman
when he proposed to me, like he had been engaged
to this other woman, and told her I have to
go off on a secret mission. I'll see when I
come back. And the secret mission was operational Abbey. She
didn't know what happened to her. He was lying to
his son, he was lying to his daughter, he was
lying to his actual, he was lying to his family,
all of these people. He was lying to people he
worked with at the Pentagon, because he really did work there.

(07:54):
I mean, it was very weird, and he went to jail.
I have not spoken to him since since and twenty
and ten my book has come out. I did a
podcast about it called Imposters the Commander because I called
him the Commander as a nickname. Once it became clear
the depth and the breath of the lies with the Commander,
how did you feel initially elated after ncis called. I

(08:16):
was elated. I was excited because it was like, I'm
not crazy. I knew something was off because I thought
to myself, you know, forty two years old, it's not
old anymore. I mean, it's the end of really when
you want to think about having kids, and it's you know,
and I had wanted to adopt, and I really was
interested in that idea. So at that point I thought, okay,
I just found somebody in the nick of time. And

(08:37):
I wasn't madly in love with him. It wasn't one
of those passionate, youthful you know, you want to go
off together into the sunset and have sex all day long.
It wasn't that. It was. It was really I thought
it was a good dude. So in a way it
was worse. It was a worse betrayal because I can't
blame my hormones, you know. Well, so I really felt
elated when Special Agent pulled me up. I was really happy.

(08:59):
And my mother kept saying to me, investigate this guy.
He had been in private practice in Beverly Hills. The
whole time is with him, she said, who gives up
a lucrative position in Beverly Hills in private practice. I
wish you could call them, And I thought, yeah, but
I can't. That's not like a loving way to go
into relationship. As soon as I got the call from NCA, Yes,
I was like calling Beverly Hill I mean, I was thrilled,
So that was how I felt at first. I was

(09:19):
really really happy. And it makes sense because in a way,
you felt whole again. That's what I'm hearing right that
in these narcissistic relationships or deceitful, betraying relationships, people feel
chopped up into pieces, right, and anything that helps that integration.
People will say, my heart was devastated by an affair
they had, But when I realized that they'd had multiple affairs,

(09:43):
I actually started to feel a little better and that
it wasn't me. Well, that's it. And when I found
out that he had this other woman with whom he
was living in Jacksonville. When we moved into the Watergate,
he still had bags that he needed to move from
Jacksonville to Washington, and I said, let's drive down and
pick them up, but he said, now I'm going to
have them shipped. Reason was because he had been living
with a woman whom he had proposed to, so he

(10:05):
didn't want me to find that out. And you know,
it's very hard to parse out the person and the
woman and the journalist in me because I knew there
was a story there. On some level, there was going
to be a story, and I knew I was going
to uncover it on some level. And I think in retrospect,
and this is a whole other issue, but I think
I wanted a career more than I wanted the guy.

(10:25):
And this is looking back on it, you know, it
kind of makes me wonder what my own agenda was.
You know, I want to run with that. Yeah, what
you were saying that I wanted the career more than
the guy. Are you saying that because you stuck in
the relationship. You know, he promised these big things. I
wanted to change my life at the time, so I
went back to school for this what I call my
second useless masters, you know, in international relations at Johns Hopkins.

(10:46):
I wanted to really cover different kinds of things that
I was writing about. I had written a book at
that point about childhood obesity, and I didn't want to
do that kind of health stuff anymore. And he promised
me a big life, and you know, we were going
to go to the embassies and we were gonna, you know,
do all of these big things in Washington, and of
course the White House was always calling for his expertise,
and you know, we're going to go there soon the

(11:08):
Obamas are going to have us over. Of course, they
weren't going to have us over because they didn't know
who the guy was. I mean, you know, and in
my head, I always thought, you're lying. I know you're
lying to me. I mean, I told friends, this guy's
mastering with me, but I don't know what it is.
So I wanted a bigger life. And the truth is
I didn't want a guy to give me a bigger life.
I wanted to get the bigger life myself. And I
got the bigger life on the back of a guy

(11:30):
because I got to tell this story that has resonated
with so many people and happened to be very timely.
And how do you feel about that that you got
the bigger life on the back of a guy. How
does that affect you. I'm happy about that. I wanted that,
you know, I get to meet you. I didn't know
what my next career move was going to be at
the time, so this is going back ten years already
twelve years, so it really gave me what I wanted.
It opened up many doors in terms of you know,

(11:52):
I did a podcast, I did a documentary about other things.
I'm working in other spaces, so I'm happy about that.
Would I like to have a pride that life. Would
I like to have a partner who I really adored
and Doug? Yeah sure, Okay, that hasn't happened. Okay, that
hasn't happened. That hasn't happened. What I think an existentialist
might argue that you turned your pain into opportunity growth,

(12:13):
monetized suffering. And I joke, that's not like I got
rich in the slightest, but I mean, that's my joke.
It's just like when life gives you lemons, you make
lemon ring pie. Right, that's much more aspiration, much more emanation.
Yeah I like that. Yeah, I like that. So yes,
I want to take a step backwards. So, because we
talked about how you felt when you found out from
NCIS contacts you, which I didn't even know that was

(12:33):
the thing. I thought that was a TV show to
abimal investigative service totally, the real NCIS calls you, you're okay, this,
I see, this is what I suspected. There's an elation
you have. How did you feel while you were in
the relationship and all these lies in this gas lighting
were happened. I didn't know which way was up. I

(12:54):
had written a birthday cart to my friend's kid. I
asked the commander if he would mail it. He said sure,
my friends never got it. And I was like, I
don't understand you didn't. He said, you said you did it.
You said you did it, Like, why are you lying
to me? He said, I really did it, And it
turned out I had forgotten to put a stamp on it,
so but I was couldn't. I was like, not knowing

(13:14):
if I could trust him about anything. I didn't know
if I could trust myself. I didn't know. I was
really felt like I was Ingrid Bergman, you know. In Gaslight,
I felt like somebody was flickering the lights on me,
and I'm telling me I was making him up. Just
to clarify on why nobody would want to be ingrid
Bergman in a relationship. Ingrid Bergman played the role of Paula,
who was gaslighted in the film that Started It All, Gaslight.

(13:39):
She is the og survivor of narcissistic abuse. The film
gets its name from the flickering gaslights that Paula kept noticing,
but that her gaslighting partner told her weren't flickering and
that she was paranoid and unstable, and I thought this
might be my last chance at finding a partner, at

(14:03):
doing that thing, you know. And he's a good guy,
and I thought I was blowing it by being so suspicious.
So right there, right took that that's my gift. So
but that's the narcissistic relationship right there? What is it
about me? I've got it's all here, And the problem

(14:23):
is in these relationships the above the line, stuff looks great, doctor, Jewish,
successful embassies, white house like it all looks good. It's
the below the line that teaches us the narcissism of
it all. We feel it. I don't know which your
ways up. I don't feel comfortable. Those are the things
you're saying, Ingrid Bergman. Yeah right, No one should ever

(14:45):
feel like Ingrid Bergman in a relationship. Well maybe because yes, right,
maybe because of all But even then that didn't quite
didn't Well, so all of that's happen best below the line.
Above the line is this looks great, and so you
call yourself suspicious? Yeah, I thought I was suspicious. And
again what he would always do is malign his ex wife.

(15:06):
Of course, it's always the ex wife's problem. I didn't
know he had been married twice before I found the
XX wife, you know, and then I found out, of
course he never met the second ex wife in Iran.
He'd never been to Iran, she had never been to Iran.
They met in medical school, and he left his first
wife for this. You know. So all these things an
NCIS contacts you. So now you're feeling a good more whole.

(15:27):
You talked about feeling happy, okay, and elated. What other
feelings where you have relief? Okay? Relief I believed. I
was just like, Okay, I'm not crazy, I'm not imagining things.
I didn't just blow the best thing that ever happened
to me. Because this is not a reliable person. This
is not a reliable narrator. This is really screwed up individual.

(15:50):
In that way, you got a gift that a lot
of survivors of these relationships don't get into. That they
live in regret for years. Did I make a mistake?
Is this new person getting the better version of it?
Did I give up on whatever was? In your case?
It might have been embas seasons someone else is just
did I give up on the secure home? To this?
To that? And so they don't get the NCIS moment.
I know they don't, and I think that's one of

(16:11):
the reasons that I was able to write a book.
And I don't feel like a victim. I don't even
feel like a survivor, you know, And I feel like
a sufferer. I feel like I suffered something. I don't
use the words survivor just my own pet thing, and
I certainly don't use victim. I suffered through this experience,
and then I stopped suffering about it because I learned
about it. I mean, the way to deal with it

(16:31):
was I had to learn about this and what struck me.
With so many people who had been in these kind
of relationships, nobody wanted to talk about it, or at
least certainly not publicly. And I was telling my Gammy,
I was telling everybody because it was a story, it
was a good story, but everybody felt so ashamed, and
I thought, well, what's the worst thing you did? You
trust it and somebody lied to you, Like that's not
a crime. That sound stupid. That's actually the way the

(16:51):
world works. We have to trust because if we don't trust,
the society will not function. What do you think is
holding survivors back? What's the source of shame. They think
that they missed something. They think, why was I so gullible?
They you know, they think that they should have been
able to see something in advance. I mean studies have
been done actually that the smarter you are, the more

(17:13):
likely you are to have been duped or to be
duped because you think that you'll spot it. So you
are your vulnerable to your vulnerability. You have no idea,
you know just how susceptible you are. And in my instance,
I'll tell you something else. He told me he had
been held hostage. I told you, in a lot of hostage,
a lot of hostage kaship. And actually he was taking
other women hostage, right at least mentally. How's that for

(17:36):
nice theraps? But he would sleep with the lights on,
and he would sleep with the TV on, and in
the middle of the night he had nightmares, screaming nightmares.
And this is all for real. I was next to him,
and I remember thinking, well, there's our evidence right there.
You don't scream bloody murder in the middle of the
night unless something bad happened, you know. I still don't
know his ex wife and I who became friendly the
second one. She said, what was that, Like, what do

(18:00):
you think happened? And she said, I guess he just
had nightmares. You know, I don't know why. I don't
know what his background was. I don't know, but it
was really interesting. And so that again people think, I
don't know, if you watch the Tinder Swindler. Yeah, so
they thought they had evidence this guy they met. I
mean so when you so, then you do your due
diligence and you think, okay, I'm looking at all the

(18:23):
ducks and they're all seeming to be lined up, and
then you realize they're not. You think, well, well, how
do I trust anything? You know? But in a way
that makes it much easier for you, doesn't it, Because
if the ducks line up, you're looking around, you're seeing
everything seems to make sense, then you're absolutely absolved. It's
really not your fault, right, And I'm going to make

(18:43):
the argument it never was your fault in the first place.
You know that that's you know, I think that that
the challenges is that people are looking for that fault
to get lifted well, and I think there's also people,
you know, why people feel such shame because nobody wants
to be taken for a ride. No, I didn't lose
any money. In fact, we're living for free, so you
know I did. Okay, people who've lost a lot of money, yeah,

(19:06):
I mean that's really heartbreaking. But what's interesting is that
the people I know who've been emotionally betrayed and didn't
lose money in a way feel worse because you understand
somebody doing it for money, but you don't understand somebody
messing with you for absolutely no reason, just because they're
playing chess with your life. It doesn't make sense. You know,

(19:26):
what did this guy get from me? If I was
going to try and to see if somebody, I mean
I could go to like some heiress, I could go
to like some supermodel, Not that he would have gotten one,
but you know, I mean there was other people than like,
you know, a loud mouth journalist who is going to
research the hell out of you. So it was not
smart on his part. What do you think he got?
He got something he didn't know. I think I can

(19:48):
be fun I can be funny. I think I think
there's a part of him that was intrigued by me.
I'm you know, I think I'm pathologically independent. Maybe he
was felt that was a challenge to try and rein
that in Who knows. Did you ever stop to think
though that you are a journalist, you are an investigator,
that you are a bigger fish to land if he
could deceive you. Yes, I think that's right. I think

(20:09):
that's right. What happened when you were in the relationship
and you called him out on a lie? He would
attack me. You don't trust he would you interrogate me.
In fact, I once called his brother in law and said,
I don't know how to talk to him. He said,
you gotta go easy on him. You know, he's got
a really important job. He's doing really important things. So

(20:30):
it's my fault. It gets us into this tricky territory
of a lie versus a gaslight, right, because that's one
of the big debates out there. What's the difference? And
you had both right, So the lie is sort of
how the person walks in the door for anything, from
jobs he had to CIA to hostage situations. Right, that's
a lie. It is a twist of fact. It's completely untrue.

(20:55):
You're suspicious, you don't trust. What's wrong with you? That's
a gaslight? Right, that's right. And I think that people
get confused by that, And I think it's a really
important distinction, because a liar caught in a lie, when
they're given an evidence space, they will gaslight you or no,
a liar when caught in a lie, who's not a gaslighter?
What might cop to it? Like the right? Right? But

(21:18):
it's the conversion to gas lighting is when you give
them the evidence you're the paranoid, untrusting, suspicious, whatever you
were being called. Then now the conversation shifted away from
the evidence onto you. Right, you're the problem. That's right. Well,
it's what Lance Armstrong did, wasn't it. Everybody else has

(21:39):
a problem. All you people investigate me? You know you're
at fault. That's right, exactly what it was. And that
deflection is every one of these liar slash gas sliders.
So I think that that's an important element here. And
I know a lot of people are are so confused.
When he was with you, I just wanted to be
clear he was engaged to someone else. He was engaged.

(22:00):
It's just someone else whom he left. They were living
together in Jacksonville. He actually left a bunch of his
belongings there. She sold them. He never came back for him. Okay,
she didn't know what happened to him. He's living with
his brother and sister in law in Georgetown. I then
moved to DC and we moved into the Watergate and

(22:21):
ostensibly were going to get married in November. And it
was very quick. I mean, at that point, it would
have been maybe eight months that we were seeing each other.
But again, I was forty two, he was fifty eight.
My parents met, you know, at the Catskills at Grossingers,
you know, and they're like sixty years later, they're still together.
They were married within three months. So I mean, I'm

(22:43):
not saying that's a relationship, love them both, not saying
it's a relationship I want to emulate, ever, But you know,
it's possible. It's possible to have it again when you're older.
And you know when people say when you know, you know.
And I wasn't a kid, like I said. It wasn't
like this hormonal response. It was I thought he was
a good person, he was solid, you know. And then
once I start hearing him screaming at the middle of

(23:04):
the night, and all these things don't make sense to me,
and I don't understand why. Is when I began thinking,
did you ever ask him why he screamed in the
middle of the night. Yeah, he was so tortured. He
was tortured. He had nightmares about being tortured in China. Duh,
he would they would beat him in the middle of
the night. And thank God that he had been a runner,
long distance runner in college, because that's how he escaped. Okay,

(23:29):
So something happened to this dude. Clear screaming tantrums, Clearly
an adult male. That's not an unusual post traumatic stress. Clearly,
So I'm not crazy. Okay, So that tracks and compartmentalization
is associated with trauma. He was compartmentalizing having relationships multiple

(23:55):
simultaneous like keeping not only simultaneous relationships going, but hundreds
of simultaneous lies going. And while he was with me,
just so you know, after I kind of left him,
I guess he had reached out to an old girlfriend
from thirty years ago, and after he and I officially
broke up, he started hanging out with her. She had cancer.

(24:15):
She died of cancer, but he was actually there for
the last year of her life. And I talked to
her after I found it all out about you know,
what had gone on, and ants called me and she
actually helped nail him. She helped nail him because he
lied to her so badly and about so many things,
and she ended up wearing a wire And it's all

(24:37):
on my podcast Imbosters the Commander. But anyway, you know,
to me, that was like he was predatory. You're praying
on a woman who's dying of breast cancer. I mean
that to me is criminal. You've now talked to all
these people because you did your research for your book.
What I'm hearing is he lied to every single one,
every single one, every single one his ex wife's kids,

(24:58):
girlfriends in laws. How did this relationship affect you in
the long term, you know, in a good way? Okay.
I have always been told you're too fast, you think
too quickly, you speak too quickly, you do things too quickly,
you're spontaneous and impulsive, and I am. And it really
made me slow down with relationships. That made me slow
down with what I was kind of really had to

(25:19):
stop and look at what my own responsibility was here.
So as six years after that, after him, I met
another guy who told me that he was separated from
his wife. And the joke is that they were separated
the way you and I are separated like by a microphone.
They were not separated. They were just living together. And
you know, but like technically I'm in the bathroom, she's
in the badroom. We're separate. And it was awful. I mean,

(25:41):
it was such a cliche. It was like, I'm lying
to you about being married. That's not that's not psychopathic.
I don't think that's you know, that's just being an asshole, right.
The clinical diagnosis is asshole. But I understood why that happened.
I get it, like he wanted to hang out with me,
and I get it. The other one I didn't get.
I didn't understand that. And again, why not an eirass?

(26:03):
Why do you have to give me a ring? I mean,
it was a shitty ring, But why do you have
to do that? You know, why do you have to
propose that? It didn't make sense to me? And what
I realize is that, you know what, as I get older,
there are things that I might not understand and I
think that's okay. And the other thing it made me realize,
in addition to slowing down, was that I don't say this.

(26:27):
People don't know themselves. I used to think people understood themselves.
I used to think people really knew why they did things,
and they don't. I'd be out of a job if
they did well, right right right, you would, you would.
But I really thought people had much more self awareness
because I have a pretty good self since that, and
they don't. And I also thought people are really one thing,
and they're not at all. They're very complicated. And that's

(26:50):
a good thing to know because it actually has helped
me like hypocrites. I understand. I used to really I
don't like hypocrites. I think most people don't, but I
actually have a little bit more tolerance because I understand
why people that does some degree we tell them. I mean,
actually I don't think they know. I think I think
there's because of this lack of awareness. I think one
part of the brain doesn't really know what or they
compartmentalize so much, you know that they just part A

(27:13):
is not talking to part BE in the you know,
So that's what I think. I don't know, you're the expert.
Does that make sense? It does make sense, It absolutely
does make sense. I think that's it gets into complicated
place right. This idea of self awareness is if anything
we could use self awareness is sort of the antidote
to these antagonistic personality styles like narcissism. Right by definition,

(27:35):
these are not self aware styles. There's no self awareness
of how is my behavior affecting someone else? What is
the downstream effect of my behavior that's gone, and very
little awareness of how what I'm doing could be hurting
and affecting another person. That's the core conflict. So, which
is to say when someone lies about being not married

(27:55):
and they have a wife at home, or they're leading
a double life, or your spouse or whatever, that's narcissistic behavior,
is it not? There are people out there who have
double lives for lots of reasons. Some people have double lives. Honestly,
it wouldn't be unusual to see in a post traumatic
presentation that person is that successful at compartmentalizing to such
a level that they're doing these things and are just
not thinking about like they've locked these things up separately

(28:18):
with a little regard for how this would be found out.
I think narcissism is definitely high on the list of
differentials because there's a real lack of empathy. If his
wife found out that he was walking around saying he
wasn't married, there's a complete you know, no empathic awareness
or a tunement to what his wife would want. Psychopathies
in the mix because they can outlie a narcissism all day,

(28:41):
all night. Well at narcissist. I think the other thing is,
you know, you don't lie to the mistress. That's just stupid.
The reason you're the mistress is so you don't get
lied to. By definition, I'd say the mistress does get
lied to a lot, because already this is a person
who has entered the deceit club. That's right. So now
from that point forward, it's all lies all the time,

(29:03):
because this lie is working, and you've done more research
on this than I have. Does lying beget lying on?
You know, because you have to keep all the stories straight.
And then when you get caught on something, it's it's like,
but I don't this doesn't make sense. Why? Well, and
then you tell another lie. You know. For example, I

(29:24):
was driving by the Watergate one night and I see
the light on and so I called him. I was like,
and he had said, oh, I have to move out
of the water Gate because the Navy needs the apartment,
and the Navy was paying for the apartment, and he
really was a Navy dock, I mean for real, but
he said, so I'm going to move out. That's why
I'm sending all your stuff away. And so the light
was on and I emailed him and I said, are
you back in the apartment. He said yeah. It was

(29:45):
a comedy errors he said. I packed everything and I
moved it out into storage and then the Navy said,
you know what, you gotta come back. I said really,
I said, well, you know what, My cookbooks are there
and I'd like to pick them up, which is the
biggest lie of all because I don't cook and I
don't like to cook. But I did have these cookbooks
because I thought, you know, well i'm going to be
in this relationship, maybe we'll cook and you know, that's

(30:07):
what we'll do on winter nights, will make soup, you know.
So he's like all right. And so I went one
afternoon just just poke around at the watergate and I said,
I want to go up to the apartment. I did
not have a key, and the guy at the front
desk said, you're not allowed up. Specifically, you are not
allowed up. Abbiellen is not allowed up. So I said why,

(30:27):
he said, I don't know. That's all I had here.
So I called the guy up, the commander. I said,
what's up with that? He said, oh, there was an
attack in the building and they're cracking down on who
they will let up. Okay, so this speaks about lying
be getting lying, And I thought what so I said, okay, fine, right,
So he finally lets me into the apartment so I
can pick up the cookbooks, and I go there and

(30:49):
everything is exactly as it was when I left, down
to a slaver of soap in the soap dish. I mean,
it was exactly The dude didn't move out. He didn't,
I mean, he didn't even wash it, you know. And
I said, you never moved out, and he looked at
me straight in the eye and he said, oh, yes
I did. And that's when I thought, there is no discussion. So, yes,

(31:09):
this line begets lying. It is. This is my story,
and I'm sticking to it. Except when I heard the
left and I make something else up. It was just confounding. Okay.
I'm going to say one thing here though, because I
want people to understand, is that you said something really
interesting in your book. A line that jumped out at
me is what no one realized. What I didn't realize

(31:31):
then was that I was in an abusive relationship, was
not physically but emotionally. For there was one hundreds abusive
and I think those relationships can be harder on some
level because, at least to other people, they see when
you have a black eye, nobody understands. And let's be
clear about something we were talking about, shame and why

(31:53):
people feel such shame. The rest of the world condemns you.
If you've been duped? What did you do? How could
you be such an idio? How could you have not
known that? How did you not know? Why would you
believe that they were held hostage in China? Why would
you know? Why didn't you know that they had another
family around the corner. I mean all of these things
in story after story to that point, when we've had

(32:15):
people who have been in these sort of con situations
on this podcast, that came up over and over again,
and as we'd researched the stories, it was always so
striking to me was it wasn't even like a few
people were blaming them. I'm almost going with majority they do.
We're saying, well, I wouldn't have been played like that,
And I want to say you know that means you
are going to be That's what I'm saying. The smarter

(32:37):
you are, the more convinced you are that you can
be taken for a ride, the more likely you will be.
And that was why I didn't. You know, so many
people want to know about their psychology. That's where you
come in, and that's what we're going to talk about next.
My session with Abby will continue after this break. The

(32:59):
psychology of lying, well, the psychology of lying again. I
was more interested in the victims, but the liars are fascinating.
This is what I know. They lie because they have
bad self esteem. They lie because there's something wrong with
their brain. They lie because they like stories. They lie
because they think they can get away with it. They
lie because they can get away with it. Here's a question.
Do you think lying to that degree is a symptom

(33:24):
or its own diagnosis? You know how I approached this.
To me, When I look at lying, I come at
it as a behaviorist wood. Human beings do things because
they're rewarded. They're rewarded for the lie, and the more
popular kids are the kids who tell lies. And that's
something you wrote about. Could you talk about that, because
actually that was actually a killer fascinating, right, because they're

(33:46):
fun and they have good stories and people like to
be around them, and they know how to charm people. Right.
These people are charming. I mean the guy who was
with was not really good looking, but he was charming
and fun and he knew what interested people, and he
knew how to talk to them. I think there's also
something else, which is that these people believe it themselves eventually,

(34:06):
which is why there's you know, I always talk to
people about polygraphs. There's no such thing as a lie
detector's and it measures anxiety, It measures the way your heartbeats.
It measures that. So if you don't believe you've lied,
you're going to pass a test. And this is where
we get into the reasons people lie. I felt like
your story of the commander. I don't know him, I've
never seen him. I could not render a meaningful clinical opinion.

(34:29):
But the patterns you laid out in your story of
the commander, that depth and breath and consistency and sweep
of lying feels more like it's in the psychopathy neighborhood.
I thought he was a psychopath. His wife, his ex wife,
thought he was a narcissist. Narcissistic people lie, but like
I said, they cannot lie as well psychopathic people. Here's

(34:49):
why you did something in your book. You wrote down
every lie you told for six months. Okay, talk about
that for a minutes, and I'm going to bring it
back to what we're talking about. I created a lie
log because I wanted to see just how much I lied,
and I found that I tell lies. I mean mostly
they're white lies, though, and research shows that women lie

(35:10):
to make other people feel good and men lie to
make themselves feel good and look good. And that's exactly
what mi I did. I mean, he was, you know,
James Bonstein. But I have lied to make people feel
good and I don't have a problem with that. What
do you think of that? I want you to tell
me this was the boat's fascinating interview you've ever done. Yea,
I will believe you. I won't, but I'll like it.

(35:31):
And I don't want you to tell me this is
my color. So yes, So I completely agree with you.
And I think that one thing is that lies, like narcissism,
like everything in the world, is on a continue on
correct right. And if I told everyone what I honestly
thought of their dress, what they look like, and who
they are. Nobody had left in my life. You have

(35:52):
no friends. I know that we've had movies about that.
There was that Jim Carrey movie, right, and then it
wasn't liar, liar? What was the Ricky Gervais one? He
did one? I don't remember the name of it, but
I know what you're talking about, the theory of I
don't know. You cannot tell people to truth all the time,
but yet we have to trust the car is gonna
stop at the red light and not bash into us.
And I actually have been thinking about more and more.

(36:13):
I'm a terrible jaywalker in New York. Not in Los Angeles.
I know it's legal, but in New York, I'm like,
I'm stupid. Why do I assume these cars are going
to stop for me? Again, going back to yes, we
need to be able to trust, but why do people lie?
And psychopathic lying, narcissistic lying, and then the lying we
all do the commander situation, depth breath, all of it.

(36:34):
That felt more like psychopathy, right, And I think he
really really had terrible self esteem. I really believe that, no, no, no,
he did, and he needed to pup himself okay, which
is a very obvious response, but I think it's true,
and the self esteem issue now pulls me back more
into a narcissistic place. Right. So psychopathy is interesting because
it has a really strong biological piece to it. It's

(36:56):
a downregulated, autonomic nervous system. So when I tell a lie,
it is so clear my face turns red, I sweat.
I couldn't even play poker if I wanted to. And
if you hooked a lie detector up to me now,
it would just go off like it was the fourth
of July. Because I can't lie, you know, I can like,
I can tell you can tell me, I can tell
me that this is my color. Well, I wasn't like,

(37:20):
but I did tell a friend the other day like
I liked the dress and I thought the dress absolute hideous.
So I can tell those pro social lies right right right,
which made the world go around. Correct. But what you're
talking about this is a different animal. Narcissistic people will
often lie to save face, to look good, to get validation,

(37:40):
to get supply. Psychopathic people don't need supply, They need
power and dominance, so the lie allows them to maintain control,
but they go together. Can you be a psychopathic narcissist?
Sure you can. No, No, No, I mean I do
think that they're separate entities. I really do. Appy. I
think that psychopathy is a very rarefied space. It is

(38:01):
heaven above, thank you that it is rare, because it's
dangerous because when a person's not getting that kind of hmm,
this doesn't feel good to do this, it's a disincentive
to do something bad. For a narcissistic person, they do
actually think that, I don't want to be a bad person,
and they'll often look guilty and sweaty and all of that.
They'll still lie to be able to cheat on a spouse.

(38:22):
They may still lie to cook the books. But the
psychopathic liar is a much more successful liar because they
don't have a tell and they don't have empathy, and
they don't have empathy, but nor do the narcissi. And well,
and then the question from everything I've read is that
psychopaths really cannot be treated. I think that what we've
seen is that you know, I'm not going to give
the long academic version here, is that it's not convincing. Hey,

(38:43):
they're not going to go into therapy unless they're court ordered.
If they are court ordered, they're often going to outwit
the therapist. Right. There has been some interesting work where
they've attempted to simulate empathy, like want you to imagine
someone La La la and going through a sad situation,
And some imaging studies have shown that when you can
force empathy by them reacting to a situation, areas of
the brain will light up. That are empathy areas of

(39:05):
the brain, which ordinarily don't automatically light up the way
they would for someone else. And what about with narcissists,
they have actually more of a capacity for empathy. It's
not fair to say a narcissistic person doesn't have empathy.
They use it transactionally. It's quite performative. It tends to
be more cognitive. So I understand why you're sad versus

(39:26):
having that Oh my gosh, my friend is sad. I
want to be with her. I need to sit with
that person and hold that space with them. There's a
different game. And when the narcissistic person feel safe, well regulated,
secure in a good place, actually they can be quite empathic.
It's almost like they're not hungry. You know, they're good.
And when they're in that place. They're not missing the chip,

(39:48):
and psychopathy you're talking about something missing a chip. But
in narcissism, the chip is just an old, slow processor
and it's a selfish processor, and so everything in their
life has to be perfect, and then they can bring empathy.
But that can actually meant narcissistic people lie. They're just
not as successful. So we were talking about George Santos,
Is he a psychopath? I would say that Again, I've

(40:11):
never met and treated Jarge Santos giving that, but I'd
say somebody who's able to successfully pursue a political office,
a political office, and not some local small town council.
We're talking a federal political office, successfully run a campaign, fundraise,
win the race, and go in despite all of this
being found out and never breaking gays. I know it's

(40:36):
I know, that's definitely more in this advanced you know,
like we'd think of it more in the psychopathy. Yeah,
and then some people say, are all these states delusional?
I mean, do they believe their own hype? But the
fact is they're able to pull this off. George Santos
was sworn in officially as a member of Congress in
twenty twenty two, but on the back of multiple fabrications,

(40:58):
which he met with quote, my sins here are embellishing
my resume. I'm sorry. Embellishing is an under a statement.
His exaggerations include not being truthful about working at two
prominent Wall Street banks, that he had obtained degrees in
finance and economics from two New York colleges, that he

(41:21):
was Jewish, and that four employees of his company were
killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in
June of twenty sixteen, and even more lies. None of
these things were true, and yet that did not stop
him from being elected to higher office. I think it

(41:41):
is delusional. I think it is psychopathic, and I think
it's were they born this way? Where they made? I
don't know the answer. Nobody seems to know the end.
I mean, there was a point where people were distinguishing
between sesiopaths and psychopaths. Everything I had read said that,
actually some people seem to use them interchangeably. Other people
said not the same. So some people say the sasiopaths

(42:03):
were made and the psychopaths were born that way. I
don't know which is which. What we see is that
psychopathy does have it. There appears to be something in
that autonomic nervous system thing. There seems to be something
genetic there. So work in progress, right, we're figuring this out.
The fact is a person who might have the genetics
may also be coming into a home where there's a
psychopathic parent. So how much of this is modeled, how

(42:24):
much it is the chaos that can ensue. There's definitely
a stronger evidence space for psychopathy and genetics, narcissism not
nearly as much. Narcissism definitely seems to be a social
and developmental kind of an issue around attachment and early
relationships and all of that. So theopathy an entirely different beasts.
Psychopathic people cool, calm collected. Sociopathic people not so calm

(42:46):
and collected. They tend to be a bit more reactive,
and that speaks then to probably more of a traumatic origin. Interesting.
Interesting because that's I don't know what page, but somewhere
in there I talked about how it was used interchangeably,
because that's they're not interchanged. You're interesting, Yeah, no, I
don't think correct. So in terms of another thing that

(43:07):
you talked about in your book, and I think it's
really worth mentioning, um, I'm going to read. I'm going
to read to you, and it's interesting you talk Harold Sackheim,
which talk about a little bit of Jungni and synchronicity.
Harold Sackheim was one of my professors when I started
a PhD program at NYU fifty two million years ago
and dinosaurs still around the earth, and I ended up

(43:29):
transferring from NYU to UCLA, and Harold Sackheim also worked
up at New York State Psychiatric Institute, where I had
done some of my research internships. So it was like
this whole Harold Sackheim universe. So when you interviewed, my
tremendous respect for his work, and you talk here about
self deception and this piece from Harold Szackheim's work, the
people who were the happiest were the ones who were

(43:52):
lying to themselves more. And then someone else talks about
the realists. According to Joanna Staric, a clinical psychologist, said
the realists tend to be slightly more depressed than others,
and Zackheim says they see how horrible people are, what
their weaknesses are, and the problem is they're right. I
remember reading this and laughing. I'm like oh yeah, as

(44:14):
a miserable realist, I got you so talk about self deceptions.
I thought that was really interesting. Who do we deceive
the most? And again I believe that we have to
deceive ourselves. Unfortunately. I have this favorite story, which is
that I was walking by a window in New York

(44:34):
City and I saw my reflection and I thought, damn,
I look good. Then I realized I was looking at
someone else, and I thought, you know, this is good.
I should I wish I hadn't realized that, because it
would be nice. It's like when you go and you
look in the mirror and it's one of those tall,
skinny mirrors, and you think, I really look hot. You
don't need to know that. So I wish I was

(44:57):
able to be fooled more. I really do. Had I
not open my mouth, I could have been married to
this guy. I really could have been. Thank god I
opened my mouth, but I could have really gone, you know,
a long way. And I remember I remember actually right
after I got engaged to him, I own my apartment
in New York and I called a lawyer and I said,
can this guy get his hands on my apartment? And

(45:18):
they said, no, not unless you give it over to him.
I said, what about debt? What if he has debt?
Do I incurred that. They said, whatever he comes into
the marriage with you don't, but whatever after it's yours,
And I remember thinking that's gonna be a problem. So yeah,
I think people who live in the state of denial
are a lot happier. Yes, and yeah, However you could

(45:39):
also see the danger for entering and staying in a
narcissistic relationship or the psychopathic or toxic relationship. Okay, so
figure this out. Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power, right, Okay, Okay, yeah, great,
so let's break that down. Okay, ignorance is bliss and
knowledge is power. So the question is do you what
do you want more bliss or power? I think that

(46:00):
change is depending on where you are in your life.
And I don't actually think that ignorance is bliss because
I look at survivors and I do use the word
survivor because I actually think you are a survived I
don't think you're a sufferer. I think you suffer. I
don't think myself as a sufferer. Now I was a sufferer. However,
you suffered and you came out of it. I suffered.
I suffered, You did suffer and ship. Yes, people in

(46:22):
these relationships suffer, Okay, I think that the narrative is
and then people say, and now I'm broken, right, and
so they stay and suffer and might not. You got
out of this. You survived it, right, as much as
one could survive graduate school, one could survive recession. You know,
you're still standing on the other side. Right. So that

(46:42):
language said ignorance wasn't bliss for them, and they tried.
They tried, ignorance was bliss until it became known. You
don't know what you don't know. I'm going to push
back on that, Okay, it's not that you don't know
what you don't know. They're suffering. In your case, it
was deceit, gas, sliding, manipulation, heavy relationship. I hear that

(47:05):
for other people, it's a push pull between really good
days and really bad days and blaming themselves for that.
It's the being compared to other people. It's dealing with
the angel at the dinner party and the monster in
the car and the ride home. It could be betrayals,
it could be infidelities. All of that they're suffering. Okay.
They're often trivialized, their goals are laughed at, they're mocked,

(47:28):
they're held in contempt. It's suffering, right, And so this
is all happening to them, and they are suffering, but
they don't have a name for the suffering, and they
don't know what, they don't know why. All they know
is I am so unhappy. I'm not supposed to be.
Everyone said, we looked really good at the dinner party.
I am miserable. Maybe, And this is how I hear

(47:49):
this from survivors every time I talk to them. I think,
you know, what am I complaining about? There's people who
are homeless, there are people are suffering, where there are
people getting beaten up? What am I complaining about? When
I'm thinking, you're being emotionally devastated on the daily, you're
being emotionally manipulated and betrayed. And yeah, So the ignorance

(48:11):
in that case is that they're actually having an experience,
a physical psychological experience that doesn't happen name. I appreciate that.
What about the people who live in these marriages and
they're totally happy and they do not suspect their husband
has another family around the corner, like a Stepford kind
of a thing or just really yeah, just like really
so ignorant. They're they're living their best life, They're doing

(48:33):
what they do and they have no idea. I guess
there that's actually a really really good questioning. Is that
somebody that somebody would be And we've all known people
like that. I've had friends who were in relationships that
were just riddled with deceit and then there was the
moment somehow something got found out. And I think with

(48:56):
Internet and the digital Adrian, it's a lot harder to
keep alike covered up right, But then I have to
say that the devastation at that point, it's a different
like in other words, now the blast site, the blast
phone is going to be that much larger. And folks
in those situations where they manage to not see it

(49:18):
sometimes feel when it's all when after it all blows up,
that they're complicit. Well sure, because and then all of
a sudden they're like, what did I miss? What did
I not see? What did I willingly not see? Right? Yes? Right?
And it wasn't even willingly like maybe I mean again,
unconscious processes aren't willing processes. And then we start getting
we curve into interesting territory around things like culture abbey

(49:41):
that when there's no option, divorce is simply not an option.
Breaking up a family is simply not an option. That
kind of denial on seeing this is survival and safety,
because to see it and have to stay in it
is a very specific kind of hell on earth. Okay,

(50:01):
you know, I do think that those things are all
operating in terms of how people get stuck. When we
have had guests on here. We had one guests in particular,
gen vas On from Betrayed, who perfect life and the
one day comes home to a search warrant on her
door and they watched her husband be taken away and
that was the last time she ever saw. I did
a piece about white collar wives and it ran in

(50:23):
the Times, and it was about these women whose husbands
were white collar offenders. And the women had no idea,
they say, and yet then you uncover the layers a
little bit and they're like, well, I had a reason
not to know. And the reason I had to not
know or ask questions was because I liked the life
we lived, Yes, and I liked the money made, and
I liked the car I had. And you know, there

(50:44):
was and I think in that sense, there's a sense
of complicity because they were I hear that, and I
think that they still don't think it's a sense of
complicity because ultimately they weren't committing the wrongdoings, right, I mean, well,
they weren't committing the wrongdoing. It's so it's so interesting
because Bernie Madoff's wife, Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah.
I think she knew maybe something was not kosher, but

(51:06):
she didn't listen. I can barely add. So if I
had been married to Bernie Madoff, I wouldn't know what
he was doing. But I might say something might not
be right here. But I don't really want to know.
What I don't know doesn't hurt me. So am I complicit?
I mean that's like a question for the rabbis. I
don't know. Yeah, maybe maybe it's a tough one, you know.
I An analogy I've often used is around magic tricks

(51:29):
and magicians, right, because even adults like going to magicians,
it's not kids. And I hate going to magicians because
I need to know how they do it. Bingo. On course,
here's the thing. A lot of people go to a
magician and they're content to not know how the trick
was done, because once you show how the trick is done,
it's not magic anymore. It's right, And I think that

(51:51):
we're complicit, right, are you complicite? I refuse to believe
I was complicit with the guy at Magic Castle. I
think you were. That's the contract between the audience. The
audience has to be willing to be disputed, and I
wanted to believe there everybody was closed about you. Oh no,
I mean, but the emperor has no clothes. The audience

(52:11):
is complicit, then the city whatever it was, the village, right, right.
It's an interesting one because then once we know how
the trick is done again, the magic is gone. The
charade is over, and that's tricky, and you become the
miserable depressive who is no longer living in denial. Harold
Sackeim's realist, right, and so that that's tricky. We will
be right back with my conversation with Abby. When we

(52:40):
talk about narcissism and toxic relationships, we often don't deconstruct
like we are right now, because we're really focusing on
a pattern that characterizes the relationships. But it's not all
of it. And yet you see it kind of is
all of it because if you lie systemically, lie not
you look good in that dress. Lie systematically lie. You're

(53:03):
entitled because you feel like you can hold the monopoly
on truth. You lack empathy because you don't care about
what your deceit is doing to the other person. You're
arrogant because you think you're above all of us. You're
grandiose because at some level you must believe your own
hype that you are the great trickster of our time

(53:25):
and you hold the power. That's right. So all of that,
even though we're talking about a behavior that all of
that behavior pings into all of these elements of the
bigger pictures antagonism. But then we could boil that down
to narcissism and psychopathy. When you were in the relationship,

(53:45):
did you ever stop to think, I'm in a relationship
with the narcissist, I'm in a relationship with the psychopath.
You did, he said to me at one point, I'm
not a psychopath. I said, yeah, you are, Okay, I did,
and that, you know, for whatever reason, and that's a
whole other podcast. I was never in this thing one
hundred percent and always had to foot out the door.

(54:06):
You know, I've been freelanced my whole life as as okay,
so there's definitely there's a connection there. So I think
I kept a foot out because I knew it wasn't
going to work out on some level in my gut.
I just knew it. And that's why I say I
wanted the career, I wanted the story. I had to
stick it out until I had concrete, concrete proof this
person was a liar instead of these fantastical things I

(54:27):
couldn't verify. I had to get out for my self esteem.
But it was just like I knew there was going
to be some story there, so you know, that's yeah.
My shrink accused me of the same thing once. She's like,
I think you keep getting into narcissistic relationships for a
material like that's insensitive, and I'm like maybe, but it's well,
it's true. Everything is copy, you know, But if you're

(54:48):
not doing anything, if you're not in with anybody, you're
just hanging out by yourself eating bonbonds, what's the copy?
You know? I ate a bad bombon, right or not
that interesting to teach me how to live a bonbon
life because I'd actually been interesting antidote tell Well, yeah,
that's true. There's that you do talk about, though, and
I'd imagine this was a quality that might have been

(55:09):
quite attractive in the commander is that intelligent people tend
to lie more, and we value intelligence, and I think
there's something else. We don't want to be the one
person who's that kids says the Emperor's naked. Everybody thinks
we're talking about complicity. Everybody, all those people in that
village said, God, the guy looks naked. But maybe I'm

(55:29):
not saying it right, Maybe I'm making a mistake. Nobody
wants to be the one person who says, you know,
called it out. And in your research, did you figure
out why nobody wants to be the person who wants
to call it Because I think it's what I call
the Lemming effect. Nobody wants to be the odd person out,
because nobody wants to look wrong. And to bring it
all full circle, no one wants to look stupid, right,

(55:49):
And we also are shaped by other people. If you
look at Solomon Ash's work, if you remember that, you
might have learned that anyone listening in psychology, there would
be three lines. One was clearly longer than the rest
of them, and there would be a group of nine people.
They were confederates. People working alongside the researchers were sort
of like liars, stuck in the group. And then a

(56:10):
person would say I think line B is the longest,
line B, and then the confederate saying line A, and
then other people they would start responding the clearly shorter
line was the longest because they were affected by other people.
A lot of this research actually came out of post
World War two and people are trying to understand what happened.
How could such horrors happen? How could people just have

(56:31):
gone along like that? Do you remember The Wave? That
was an after school special, The Wave? It was about,
you know, the kids in the school and it was
based on a real experiment. Some were guards, some were prisoners. Wow,
you mean the it wasn't it wasn't no, not the
Zimbardo Zimbardo expects, right, And they did a show called
The Wave, and it was all about basically following the crowd, right.

(56:54):
Other people were doing this. I mean, that wasn't the
whole point of that. But the guards were abusing the prisoners,
and everybody was doing it, and so everybody continued to
do it. The Sara for prison experiments actually interesting because
it really speaks to once we're placed into a role,
how we take on that role. Because I remember it
was Zimbardo randomly assigned. Yes, he listeners and guards, so
they I think he shifted it and then and so

(57:15):
what happened was though he had to end experiment early
because the guards became so abusive. But they were He's
just a coin flip on which group you were assigned
to be, right, that's right. But when we get to
this stuff on conformity, they were all doing it because
even though some people thought Guard A is doing it,
GUARDB is doing it, guards said, why that's really bad.
I shouldn't do it, but amb are doing it, so
I'm going to do it too. Yes, yes, yes, yes,

(57:35):
but see all of this relates again to Solomon Ash's
work on conformity. And we are a tribal species, right,
so the human beings live in small social groups, and
so to be ostracized for a human being is actually
to die. If you go to our primal sort of
state as human beings. You can't make it alone. We
can now because of the Internet, but that's pretty ray,

(57:57):
but it's also made it that much easier to get caught.
It's made it hard. Or Two, I think we've always lied.
I don't think we're lying more. I think that what
we're seeing is there's more evidence of the line because
because there's a public e trail. Yeah, there's an e trail,
and the public is the media now a right. So
now we're seeing the person in another country is lying,

(58:17):
like we'll caught you out in that lie. It makes
it seem ubiquitous. I'm not convinced in your research, did
it seem like rates of lying have gone up? People
were talking about it more, and the reason was because
back in the old days, to have your double lives,
you'd have to walk to the farm twenty miles away. Ye.
Now you click on the button on the internet, you know,
or you have a burner phone, or you can call
up a website to get a person who will pretend

(58:39):
to be your boss. You know. You can pay them
to and they will give you a recommendation for a
job you never had. You can get the sounds of
airplanes taking off, you can. I mean, there's so much
opportunity for deception. There is so much opportunity for deception.
There's not much opportunity to get caught. But that's why
I think we're talking about it more. But I think
that you know, if George Santa stays in office and
nothing happened to him, it's really going to be interesting

(59:02):
to see what happens in the world because people are
going to say, well, why should I bother telling the truth?
If this guy is being rewarded for lyne we know
he's making shit up and yet and my counterpoint to
that is going to be because most of us are
wired to tell the truth? Are we? I believe? So
it's the red light you said, if if we don't
follow these rules on red lights and honesty creates tighter

(59:23):
social bonds, which is still the name of the game. Okay,
but do you think I used to think about this
a lot the Holocaust, World War Two, people had to
lie to save their lives, Stissy did so. Is everybody
capable of that? Are there some people who are? Not?
Everybody's capable of it? To a point, I think some
people though they maintaining the lie would become too much

(59:44):
of a mental stretch for that to sur They needed
to to survive. Not everyone was able to do then survived, right,
So I think that under survival circumstances, human beings can
do things right. But in general people prefer or the
truth because they don't have that commander like capacity to
compartmentalize and keep it all straight. Well, it's just it's

(01:00:08):
easier to tell the truth. It is easier to tell
the truth. It is, but there's consequences, and I think
that's that's the other piece. Do you think after the
experience you've been through, and even some dating experiences you
said that you went through years later and still were deceived,
and everything you've learned about lying, do you feel that
the only way forward is that everyone just has to
keep their guard up all the time. You know, I

(01:00:30):
say this all the time, Reagan, trust, verify, right, trust
but verify, and I go trust but verify, but still
don't trust. I don't know how I could be involved
with somebody very seriously without really checking into their past
and really like, you know, hiring a private eye. And
I say that half facetiously, but really have not. I
don't know that I could. I don't know that I could,

(01:00:52):
and I don't know if that's so bad. I don't
even know if I want to be involved with anybody seriously.
I feel like, God, what an emotional, exhausting experience, mostly
exhausting experience that would be to go through somebody's Michigans.
And I don't know. Do you trust other people in
your life? Oh? Well, who? Friends? Yes, family members? Yeah, okay.

(01:01:15):
But it's very different when there's romance involved. It's very
different when there's love involved, very different when there's hormones involved.
It's very different when there's DNA involved. It's very different
when there's you know, there's so much there. It's different
from a friendship. It is different. I have a lot
of really good friends, and I take those relationships seriously.
But you know, I don't have to live with them, right,

(01:01:35):
And have you had the experience with being significantly lied
to in anything outside of an intimate relationship? I have,
And it's very easy to say, you're nuts, I'm out
of here. Okay. So it's a different buy in. It's
a different buy in. It's a different buy in. Your
I got no reason, you know. Yeah, And I tell
folks your stories that my stories, that your relationship with

(01:01:57):
trust will change. That's exactly right. And I think I
said this earlier. I don't necessarily need to know everything, Like,
I don't need to know if it's all what it is,
but I also need to know what I can accept
and what untrusts I cannot accept. YEA, you know, I
totally agree, and I think that it gets very, very complicated.
So now that you've done what you've done, what steps

(01:02:17):
do you suggest that people could take to protect themselves
from being deceived in romance if you're really serious about
I don't think there's a problem in hiring somebody to
check out the records, and you know, is this person
lying about their income or they're lying about their position.
I get a story a day, mostly women, but from
men too. I didn't know they were lying about it.

(01:02:39):
You know, their income, they were lying about their position,
they were lying about where they were from. They were
lying with this their research that. I mean, there are
websites you can do online, right, there's like what is
it dark verify whatever they have to trustify Verify, what's
it called. I don't know one of those things you
can go online. But yeah, I would think if you
need to get hard facts, you hire somebody to do
it for you. I think that's smart. I think that's savvy.

(01:03:01):
I think you also need to know what your tolerance
level is and what you're happy to be. You know
what you're okay being misled about and what you're okay
not being missing. You know. The unsophisticated version of what
you're saying, if check someone out is to google them. Yeah,
but I'm saying taking a step from take it from
because I was seeing a guy last year and he
didn't have a Google profile, and I was like, I
can't do this. I mean, and I did all the things,

(01:03:21):
I got background records from whatever that website is that
I can't remember, but at the end of the day,
I couldn't do it. And he wouldn't quite tell me
what his story was, and I thought, I can't do this.
So in essence, what you're really in telling he was
do some homework before, especially here, and this is in
an intimate relational space. Let's expand this out. Okay, friends,
what place other people you're going to run into? Would

(01:03:42):
you give the same guidance? Yes? You would? Okay, do
you know that? What is it? Like? Fifty five percent
of people line in the resume? Wow? Wow, they santos it.
We're gonna use them as a verb. I mean, they
you know, but there were people in the book that
I talked about who you know they were. Let go
for making things I'm making if they degrees making of
all the stuff. You know, part of the problem that

(01:04:02):
I have with them is that they're stupid because they
realize they can be checked. Except the complicity piece is
that people don't often do they don't check right? How
much can fear of consequences do you think keep a
liar in line? It depends what the consequences are, because
here we are looking at this country, we have had liars,
and for better for worse. If you are a Democrat,

(01:04:25):
you will think that Joe Biden hiding up his documents
or forgetting his documents is not a big deal. If
you like Trump, you're gonna say it's not a big deal.
Same thing. But if we see somebody we clearly know
fabricated like at George Santos, and nothing happens to them,
what is that going to do? What consequences are there?
Why should anybody then tell the truth other than the
hard wired other than the hard wiredness, which actually goes

(01:04:45):
farther than you possibly think. In your book, you focus
on the lying what happens to people, and we read it.
We understand what the motivations around lying are, but what
we are often our tendency is and there's a proverb
I've used on this podcast before is you know, the
tale of the hunt is always told by the hunter,
not the lion. You know, So, which is we're so

(01:05:08):
focused on the perpetrator, on the wrong doer, right, So
then we try to come up with interventions like how
can we change them? How can we make people not lie?
And you're saying, that's the wrong tree to bark up.
That's right, that's what you're saying to you. That's exactly
what I'm saying. And that's what your book is doing,
is saying, let's talk about what happens when a person
is lied to. That's right. I never confronted this guy,

(01:05:30):
I told you in the beginning. I didn't. I haven't
seen him in twelve and I thought about it because
I thought, well, it would be a good copy, you know,
it could have been tier for a book. And I thought,
what's he gonna say. He's gonna say I didn't do
anything wrong, or else he's gonna say I don't know
why you know, or you're crazy, you're a bitch, whatever,
he's gonna say, and I thought, what is the point here?
So I never got a response because I didn't need
that closure. It wasn't going to do anything right. And

(01:05:50):
I think there's something very valid in that. And that
was also something that I because everybody said, wow, you're
going to talk to him, there was no need. And
that's a good place to get to because you have
to realize again you're taking care of yourself. You're putting
on not your own oxygen mask, but your own pandemic mask.
You are protecting yourself. At the end of the day,

(01:06:11):
that's who has to protect you. And that's so important.
It's unsettling too because people said, I want to be
taken care of. It's the child and all of us
that is saying, can't someone like make it so I
don't always have to be on it. But unfortunately part
of the work is to say I need to, in
whatever form, need to do my due diligence, whatever that
looks like. The fact is people are going to do

(01:06:32):
that in different ways. But this is about you. And
because you're never ever going to make a liar, stop lying.
And the very last thing I would say is if
anybody is asking you for money, especially someone you've never met,
are you met on the internet and all of a
sudden they tell you they're your boyfriend or whatever. Don't
give them any money. Seriously. Yeah, and that's something. It's sad,

(01:06:55):
but it needs to be said. No, it does need
to be said. And I think that when we look
at the various ms out there, they do prey upon
the lonely people. Lonely people and a very very human need, yes,
to want to be loved, to want to be loved.
That's it, Abby, Thank you so much for coming on.
Just as we wrap up here, Where can people find
you and connect with your work? They can find me.

(01:07:16):
They can go to my website abbe Ellen dot com.
I'm on Instagram vaguely at Abbey Underscore Ellen Underscore author.
You know you can buy my book on all your
local wherever you buy your books. Duped, Double Lives, False Identities,
and the con Men I Almost Married, And you can
listen to the podcast I did based on the book

(01:07:37):
called Impostors The Commander Season two and that is on Spotify.
In my first takeaway, many survivors feel foolish for getting duped,
and this can happen whether it is a long term,
committed relationship, or even a short term relationship that ends
in a scam. None of us want to believe we
fell for a con or we're taken for a ride.

(01:08:00):
But there is a danger to this mindset because it
can leave survivors isolated, less likely to get help, and
more likely to get lost in self blame and shame.
It doesn't feel good, but seeking out help and talking
it out when you are caught in a confusing place
of deceit can be absolutely crucial to healing. In this

(01:08:23):
next takeaway, all liars are not narcissistic, but all narcissistic
people are liars. People lie for lots of different reasons,
as we have learned, and even narcissistic people tell lies
for a wide range of reasons. We are often wanting
simple black and white tools to be able to organize

(01:08:43):
the people in our lives. Sadly, lying is a little
bit too complicated to allow us to do that. Odds
are that most of us don't really want people to
tell us the truth about how we look in this dress,
but we don't want to be lied to about big
ticket issues. For our next takeaway, while Abbey raised the

(01:09:05):
issue of people being complicit and how they may engage
with a lie or other deceit. I take a slightly
different stance. Denial often plays a role, but it is
an unconscious process and it is designed to protect us
from information we don't feel able to hear. Complicity implies
something more active, of being an aware player in someone

(01:09:28):
else's deceit. For many survivors of toxic relationships, I don't
see this complicity, but rather as a complex mix of denial, confusion,
and hope to see what is happening clearly in these relationships.
To be neither in denial or complicit means jumping into
the unknown, and that can feel very unsettling. Sometimes we

(01:09:53):
don't see things right away that may simply be self
protective at a primitive level. So in this takeaway, when
Abby finally understood the depth of the lies and got confirmation,
although she was elated, she also learned that there is
no such thing as a clean slate. These relationships do

(01:10:15):
change us. Our slates have some marks on them that
just don't disappear. After someone you love and trust perpetrates
repeated and elaborate lies that reflect no empathy or awareness
of the pain caused by these lies, your relationship with
trust changes forever. While there is no clean slate, perhaps

(01:10:36):
those marks that linger our teachers that may make us
more circumspect and yeah suspicious in the future. A little
suspicion can go a long way. And in our last
takeaway for Abby, I ask, and she asked, why do
we do what we do? Abby was surprised as she
went through her process and her research on lying that

(01:10:59):
people are not that self aware. Lack of self awareness
is a hallmark of narcissistic personalities, but it's not just
antagonistic folks that lack self awareness. Most of us could
do with a deeper dive into ourselves, and when we
do this, we become clearer not only on our own motivations,

(01:11:21):
but also become more aware of how our words and
our actions affect other people. Self awareness connects us into
our worlds more profoundly, and that not only connects us
to other people, but it also allows us to keep
our eyes more clear and wide open to what is

(01:11:41):
happening around us, good, bad, or indifferent.

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Host

Dr. Ramini Durvasula

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