No relationship is entirely devoid of secrets; I once went out with a guy for 6 months without him knowing where I lived (I forget why I did this; I was 24 and now that I think of it, the whole thing may have been an experiment? I don’t know). But whoever said all’s fair in love and war has obviously never attempted to establish a relationship with a person who told a Big, Weird Lie to garner sympathy, loyalty, or some undetermined similar perk. We want to hear all about the time it happened to you.
We’re not trying to go too dark here — everyone’s had a boyfriend be like “Hey I love you!” and then it turns out that he doesn’t. Or had a partner who’s been like, “Derp! Forgot to tell you I’m married!” And then there’s the old “I’m leaving her; I swear” line that has been so pummeled in wacky best friend plotlines in romcoms that knowledge of its stupidity is culturally ubiquitous.
No, we’re looking for the really weird lie stories. The guy who lied about having cancer. The girl who tried to fake an entire trip to Budapest and even went so far as to attempt geotagging photos taken in one Jezebel staffer’s apartment (didn’t work). Stories of friends that don’t exist, of secret families in North Carolina, of high-powered corporate jobs that are actually unemployment checks.
I’ll start with one that I’m sure won’t be hard to top: One of my ex boyfriends told me, shortly after we started dating, that he was colorblind. So sometimes just to mess with him, I’d change the color of text in emails I’d send him to red with a green background. I would make jokes about Christmas being a cruel holiday for him. I’d ask him questions about what it was like to go to the movies, to watch TV. After about a year and a half of this, we were walking down Clark Street in Chicago when I pointed out a homemade poster that was garishly green and red. “I bet that bothers you,” I said. “What?” he responded. “Because, you know, you can’t see the letters.” “Um, I can see the letters.” “But I thought colorblind people couldn’t see red and green.” “Erin, I’m not colorblind.” Cool. Cool moment.
Anyway, I’m sure of you can dredge something weirder from your memory banks. You know what to do.