Why is my guy friend lying to me?

I have known compulsive liars, and I believe that I might be one of them. but here's what I have gathered over the years.

Compulsive liars lie, because of three things.

1. It gives them attention, or lets them give attention away from something
2. It makes them feel empowered over the mental habits of the people that they are lying to.
3. It gives you a little euphoric high when you do it, and it makes you laugh.

so in short, that's why he lies, it's not to impress you, it's to bring attention to himself and make him feel good.

At some point he learned that lying was a way to protect himself from being hurt. He uses lies as a mechanism to keep people from getting inside and either judging, or to kistance his heart from the pain that truth brings. If you can observe his parents, and his interaction with them, you might be able to see where the behavior comes from, due to how they handle the truth and whether they seem to prefer his verbal submission, or behavioral integrity. Most likely, someone who he looked up to, a lot, in the past, taught him, through some coersive behaviors, that saying what he thought they wanted to hear, would keep things peaceful, then never confronted him for not following through, so he can't handle it when someone does now.

It takes a lot of investment to help someone who lies, because you have to listen to their story, and invest a lot of time in them, before the truth starts to come out, because they trust you, finally. One thing you can do though is start letting him know what his lies do to you. Don't confront him, just let him know: ____ "I feel like" ___ "when you tell me" ____ "and then do" or "and then I learn" ____ ", because I care about you, and want to trust you, but when your actions and your words don't add up, I have to go with what the actions tell me, because they are more permanent and lasting than words."

I don't know if you should be the one to explain this to him, or if you might be able to pray, and let God set up the situation where he learns it but, words are only 10-15% of communication. Another 25-35% is tone, phrasing, grammar, etc. The final 50-65% is non verbals, like posture, eye movement, facial color and tension, etc.

It may even be that he is giving off his verbal lying with non-verbal behaviors. One good example of this was my dad, who would always say "Trust me" when he wanted me to trust him, but knew what he wanted me to trust him about wasn't right. Another example is what happens with the character, Marcus, in Tyler Perry's "Why Did I Get Married?' movie. The problem is, once people learn the clues, they tend to either let the person continue lying, knowing when they can trust them, or not, or confront them ever time they lie. Both of these encourage the person to continue lying, or find another way to protect themselves, often by withdrawing from the relationship.

The better option is to, prayerfully, work with God to get the person to open up and confess whatever has led them to take on the behavior, so God can deal with that event, which oftens leads to grieving and healing. When you bury, deal with, get over or ignore the pain of your soul, you end up with a bunch of decaying crap infecting it, causing you to react to everyone, and everything, around you as potential enemies, rather than as friends who may, without malice or intent, hurt you.

You mentioned the word "impress people by lying".

That basically sums it up. He must be insecure about himself. Often times we guys need to demonstrate that we are higher value. That means we are better than those around us. Mostly this is due to insecurity.

Some actually do something to achieve it. Some are happy about their selves while some are not and they lie or invent things to say.