Sadness In Perpetuating Lies

I am beginning to suspect two friends of lying.  It is all online, and I understand that people are never honest online, but since I talk to one of these two and they are mother and son in real life and they lie about him, it is hard for me to keep silent about it.

While I am not upset about this, these two have themselves and the world convinced that he is someone he is not and for some reason neither of them seem to realize that it is easy to Google the truth, and that this is not right.  He posts pictures that he passes off as himself...

The thing about this that worries me is that you can find the actual person on Youtube in interviews and his own website with information that is totally different...mainly, the actual person is a straight married man who is about five years older than my friend.

The other problem has been that the things they tell me don't match up to the person himself.  While they lie about his identity, they slip up and share reality with everyone online and with me when I talk to the mother.

I don't know why this woman insists on perpetuating these lies by involving herself in them and laughing over it.  It is nuts and wrong.  He is a young man, and a father of 3 children...though I question this situation a lot because some parts of this story have me scratching my head and the pictures they send me of the youngest seem odd and not a match for things.  This does more harm than good to these two.  

The worst part about this is that he has his boyfriend convinced he is this other person and it explains why this young man really doesn't want to meet the guy in real life since they only met online.  This is going to hurt the boyfriend, who is a friend of mine and a veteran of this country...he doesn't deserve this kind of pain after the ten years and five tours he did in Afghanistan and Iraq.  This young man is being totally selfish, self centered and self absorbed.  It is not going to be good...if this man discovers the truth from anywhere else other than his lover he will never be able to trust this young man again...even if he forgives him, he will have a hard time believing the young man and always wonder what other lies he is being fed.

These two have made a lot of people believe these lies, and as I believed some of them myself, I am in a place where I cannot be angry...it isn't my place to be angry or get involved.  I am going to wait to see what happens and if they tell the truth on their own.  

There are times when he posts a picture of something that is real and it doesn't match the image he is trying to portray.  Even his postings don't make much sense in this regard.

I know they are good people and if they tell the truth to me, I will tell them I already know and it is alright.  I won't be the one to out them to others...even here, I am keeping their identities secret (though I hope a certain person never sees this blog post).  

Believe me, I want to  say something to them right now, but it is hard when I know they will get defensive....I may accidentally slip up one day, but I am trying hard right now to learn discretion in this situation.

Oh well, people are never completely honest  online and that is alright because they are trying to protect their identity, but to go overboard like this and believe it yourself seems a bit much.  I hope he comes clean some day in the future.