How can you tell if a friend is lying in a text message?

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First of all don't sweat the small stuff. Lying over why you're 10 minutes late is irrelevant and people who are naturally mistrusting of others won't hold onto friends for very long. Secondly don't care if someone is lying to you or not, few people or nobody can remember every story they ever told, when someone lies (about important things) sooner or later the truth comes out. You will talk to someone else and they would have told a different version of events to that person to what they told you or they may tell you some information later on that contradicts information they told you earlier or physical evidence will contradict their story. This is not usually true of mundane stuff like, the bus was late or my car wouldn't start but it is true of important stuff like hiding debts or cheating etc. If there are no incongruities to alert you to a probable lie don't suspect let alone accuse someone. If there are incongruities give people the benefit of the doubt and ask follow up questions. If the follow-up questions result in an evasion they you can be pretty sure the person is lying either for good reasons or bad. This applies equally to text messages as to face to face.