The Land Of Pretend

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Guess what happens when you demand that a 17-year old girl pee-on-a-stick for you and explain that you'll need to contact her mother as you are concerned that she feels no urgency in this very serious situation?

Your son gets a text the next day saying, "There is blood. I think I'm having a miscarriage."

Good news, right?? 

Well ... yes ... *hesitates* ... and no ...

Based on all of the details of this 2-week long teen soap opera, the only logical conclusion is that Cam's girlfriend was never pregnant.

That conclusion begs the next question: Why??

Cam has been diligent in defending her. He refuses to believe that she might have been less than honest - with me and with him. 

I think I understand why he wants her to be telling the truth. I cannot imagine it would be easy for him to acknowledge that he was gullible and that someone he cares about has been lying to him, but why would she lie?

I happened upon this post titled Is Pretending to be Pregnant a Mental Illness?:

Why would a teenage girl want to put up with the scrutiny and criticism that comes along with being pregnant in high school? This is what I think:

1. Attention

Some of these young girls are starving for attention no matter if it’s positive or negative. Perhaps they see all the attention their peers or siblings got when they were pregnant and crave some of that same attention. I often see that their friends, while at times judgmental, often start bonding with the young girl in a nurturing way, something that she doesn’t get normally from them.

2. To Keep a Boy Interested

I think this may be the most common reason young girls pretend to be pregnant. I see it played out over and over again each year in the high school I work at. A relationship ends or is on the break of ending and all of a sudden the young girl blurts out she’s pregnant or thinks she’s pregnant. This usually sends the young man into a panic and even if he’s skeptical, he tends to at least try to stay on her good side until the pregnancy is confirmed or denied. Like a lot of young teens who pretend to be pregnant, these ladies may go through great lengths to convince their boyfriends (ex-boyfriend) that they are pregnant and often times in the process, continue to try to really get pregnant. These drastic attempts to keep a boy are seldom successful.

3. Biology

Evolutionary psychology may say that it is normal for young teens to pretend to be pregnant since it’s in their biology to want to conceive children. During my research it appears that pretending to be pregnant is to some extend normal, but I think what is abnormal is the way that some young adults go about pretending to be pregnant. Perhaps pretending to be pregnant to yourself is normal, while pretending to be pregnant and in effect lying to your friends/boyfriend is more on the abnormal end of the scale. However, if it is to some extend normal to pretend to be pregnant, can it ever go so far that it can be classified as a mental illness. To what extent does a young girl have to go to in order convince people she is pregnant, before she moves into the realm of psychopathology?

The post goes on to offer some diagnoses that might help in answering the "Why?" - Factitious Disorders, Borderline Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Dependent Personality Disorder - but being that I am not a mental health professional, I'm not offering up any diagnosis.

Besides, my diagnosis would read more like, "Conniving, self-centered, attention whore."

All that I know is that I would prefer this young woman have nothing to do with my son. For whatever reason, she is clearly manipulative and dishonest ... and in a BIG way.

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