"My boyfriend is lying to me."

CHICK: “I need advice. My boyfriend is lying to me.”
ME: “How so?”
CHICK: “Okay, so a couple days ago, we went out, and everything was cool, and he was saying how much he liked being with me, right? But then the next day he does not call me once while I’m at work. Then after work, I call him, and I try to be all nice and ask him what’s going on, if he’s mad at me, and he says no. So I say, “okay, if you’re not mad, let’s hang out,” but he says he’s already got plans to hang out with my friend from Vancouver and her boyfriend, who I hate. So I ask, “where are you going to hang out?” and he says “probably Vancouver.” So I just stay at home while he’s out with his friends. THEN, last night he comes over, and we’re hanging out, and in the couch cushions I find a receipt for the Marathon, which is like two blocks from my house. FROM THE NIGHT BEFORE. So I confront him on it, and he makes up this excuse, like, “oh, well I went out to see them in Vancouver and then we decided to go down to the Marathon.””
ME: “Sounds like a viable situation.”
CHICK: “So he lied to me.”
ME: “Sounds like he’s telling the truth to me.”
CHICK: “He lied by not telling me where he was.”
ME: (pause) “You know, this sounds like a textbook case of smothering.”
CHICK: “What do you mean?”
ME: “Well, he’s made an effort to say how much he enjoys spending time with you, and you still get mad at him if he doesn’t check in with you at least once every eight hours, and then you appear to have your friend doing spy work on him…”
CHICK: “What friend!? Spy work?”
ME: “Did you show him the Marathon receipt?”
CHICK: “What? No, of course not, I threw it away as soon as I saw it, I was so angry.”
ME: “Did you tell him you saw the receipt?”
CHICK: “Of course!”
ME: “So you’re mad that he is ‘lying to you’ after he had been totally straightforward with you, and amazingly patient with you giving him the third degree, and meanwhile you’re blatantly lying to him, claiming that you just happened to find a receipt in your couch cushions of a place he had been when he was wearing different clothes, when it seems perfectly obvious that you grilled your friend, with whom he was at the Marathon, about where he was and what he was doing.”
CHICK: “Well, he isn’t exactly trustworthy.”
ME: “How so?”
CHICK: “Like I told you, he doesn’t tell me where he is, and for all I know he could be out with his ex-girlfriend.”
ME: “What would possibly make you think that?”
CHICK: “I know he calls her. I checked the call history on his cell phone.”