When you catch an old friend telling a story that you know didn't happen the way he's telling it, should you correct him?
A reader we're calling Frank wrote that he has an old friend who regularly likes to spin yarns when they gather with other friends. The wrinkle is that the friend often tells stories that Frank suspects or knows not to be true. Typically, Frank lets these fabrications slide. But recently, his friend began telling a story about an incident from their high school days that Frank immediately recognized as one that had actually happened to him. The friend had nothing to do with the incident and wasn't around when it happened. Frank decided to chime in and correct his friend by telling the assembled listeners that the incident happened to him and not his friend. The others laughed, but Frank worries he offended his friend by pointing out his lie.
Was Frank wrong to correct his friend? Or should he have corrected him on earlier occasions when he knew that the friend had likely co-opted others' experiences?
Some people regularly embellish stories to make them funnier, more dramatic or more interesting. There's a difference, however, between bolstering a story and stealing someone else's life experience. If a friend claims your story as his own, he moves beyond exaggerating to taking credit for something that belongs to you.
Frank's decision to speak up makes sense. If he hadn’t, those listening would have believed the story belonged to his friend. There wasn’t anything hurtful about correcting the friend. Frank was telling the truth. That others laughed likely wasn’t to humiliate the storyteller and more a reflection of the awkwardness of the situation.
While Frank was in the right, there’s no guarantee that his public correction didn’t embarrass his friend. If Frank wanted to do more than set the record straight, he might consider talking to his friend in private to let him know he was uncomfortable having his experiences told as if they had happened to someone else. By stopping short of calling his friend a liar, they might end up having a good conversation about the incident.
Should Frank have corrected his friend on earlier occasions when his stories were suspect? If Frank simply thought the stories might be fabrications, holding back from making accusations made sense. Calling someone a liar based on a suspicion is not typically a good move. But once his friend took Frank’s story as his own, staying silent no longer was the best option.
Trust and honesty are needed for friendships to thrive. If Frank’s friend’s storytelling notoriously strayed from the truth, his friends might have trouble knowing when to believe him. If Frank can find a way to respectfully let his friend know this when he speaks to him, that’s great. But he should stop short of calling him out on stories he only finds suspicious rather than those he knows to be untrue.
Sometimes it’s OK to let a harmless exaggeration pass. But when someone tells your story as if it happened to him, it’s best to correct the record. If friendship is indeed built on trust and honesty, then being honest with his friend is the right thing to do.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2026 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC
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