9 traits of a narcissist — and i’m fairly sure

nine traits is the number you arrive at when you cut three from a list of twelve and add one back because it felt unfair to leave it out. i have done this math. the math itself is a trait.

the working draft of this list began on a saturday in a coffee shop with terrible chairs and survived three rewrites on a napkin before i typed it up where i type everything: at the desk, on a wednesday, while carla is upstairs at the new-hire training overrun. i have, as far as the calendar goes, until eleven-fifteen.

i’m not a clinician. a clinician is a person with a degree and a chair that swivels properly. i’m a man with a personal history with the gaslighting pattern from a relationship that ended in 2019, a folder on his phone named “evidence”, and a list of 9 traits of a narcissist he revised on a napkin until the napkin gave up.

writing from the desk on a wednesday. carla is at the new-hire training overrun on the third floor. eleven-fifteen, give or take a coffee.

9 traits of a narcissist, the working list

here is the list, in the order i wrote it down. order matters less than you’d think. the traits are roommates more than they are a sequence. the roommates do not always get along, but they pay rent in the same apartment.

i am giving you the list once, plainly, then defending the angle in the rest of the post. the 9 traits of a narcissist, working draft, napkin-revised, no warranty:

1. grandiosity — an exaggerated sense of self-importance that does not require evidence to maintain itself.
2. fantasies of unlimited success, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love — the daydream is the engine.
3. belief in being special — and only understandable by other special people, ideally with letterhead.
4. need for excessive admiration — the room must clap. the clap must be loud.
5. sense of entitlement — unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment, a permanent skip-the-line energy.
6. interpersonal exploitation — using others to reach personal ends, with no pause for the using.
7. lack of empathy — unwillingness, not just inability, to recognize the feelings of other people.
8. envy — believing others envy them, and envying others while denying it. it goes both ways. it always does.
9. arrogant, haughty behaviors — and this is the giveaway, the one that makes the other eight visible to a friend across a dinner table.

nine. you can google more. you can google fewer. i did. somebody, somewhere, has a list of seven and somebody else has a list of fourteen. mine is nine because nine is what fit on the napkin after i crossed out three and reinstated one. that one was envy. envy belongs on the list. envy belongs on every list. envy is the thing the muted group chat is mostly about.

the coffee shop where this draft started

i was, on the saturday in question, at the coffee shop two blocks from my apartment. i do not write posts from the coffee shop. let me be clear: i write posts from the desk. but lists, particularly lists of typical traits of a narcissist, can be drafted on a napkin if the napkin is sturdy and the espresso is honest.

the coffee shop has, on the weekend, a particular type of customer. a man at the next table, late thirties, vaguely tall, was on a phone call he did not believe was loud. it was loud. he said the word “obviously” seven times in eleven minutes. i counted. counting is its own pathology, but it is a pathology i know how to spell. he said “i was the one who” four times. he said “they wouldn’t understand” twice. he laughed once, at his own line, and the laugh did not reach the table.

i did not write the napkin about him. but i wrote it near him. proximity, like the volvo guy, is part of the data.

the napkin started as a list of twelve. you can find lists of twelve everywhere — pdfs from clinics, slides on instagram, ranked articles your insurer claims to trust. the longer ones exist. you do not need them today. the napkin lost three because three felt redundant. the napkin gained one back because envy is not, in fact, redundant. envy is the engine in the dark.

items 1 to 4, with the defense embedded

traits one through four are the visible ones. they are the traits a stranger can spot from across a coffee shop. i’d like to say something embarrassing now, which is that i find them, individually, almost endearing, in the way a poorly-installed shelf can be endearing for the first eight days. then the shelf falls and you remember that endearing has a half-life.

grandiosity in a small dose is a personality. fantasies of unlimited success in a small dose is a hobby. belief in being special in a small dose is what got most people through high school. need for excessive admiration is, in a small dose, the engine of every linkedin post and at least three of my own group chats — which i have, in the last year, muted into the digital basement they deserve.

now, here is where i defend a position you did not ask me to defend. while we are on traits and the small things that reveal them, let me put this on the record: the toilet paper roll goes UNDER. over is for monsters. i am aware that this seems unrelated. it is not unrelated. a person who insists, with a calm voice, that the roll goes over — and who corrects you in your own bathroom, in your own apartment, on a tuesday — is exhibiting trait five before they ever get to traits one through four. the entitlement is in the correction. the lack of empathy is in the correction. the grandiosity is, frankly, in the correction. it’s all in the correction.

over-people will tell you that “the design intent shows the pattern”. design intent is a phrase i have heard, in the wild, from people who also park diagonally. design intent is not why my hand reaches under the roll in a half-lit bathroom at 3am with a head cold. ergonomics is. trust ergonomics. trust the hand at 3am. the hand has no agenda. the hand is just trying to get back to bed.

items 5 to 9, with the toilet-paper riff

items five through nine are the structural ones. these are the traits that, if present, do not just inconvenience you. they organize themselves around you.

entitlement is the trait that explains why someone you know never apologizes for being late. exploitation is the trait that explains why their problems are everyone’s problems and your problems are tuesday’s. lack of empathy is the trait that explains the calm voice during the apology that wasn’t an apology. envy — both directions — is the trait that explains why your small wins make the room cold. and arrogant behaviors is the trait that, when finally spotted by a friend across a dinner table, retroactively clarifies the previous four.

the toilet-paper position is not a personality test. let me be clear: i am not saying every over-person is a narcissist. i am saying that the willingness to correct another adult, in their own home, about a domestic preference of zero consequence, is data. a mild trait, in a mild person, is a tuesday. the same trait in someone who also exhibits four of the other items on the list is a forecast. and the forecast usually arrives on a wednesday.

which brings me to the certified letter. i had one, last year, sit on the unopened mail pile for eleven days. when i finally opened it, it turned out to be from a former roommate, asking me to confirm, in writing, that a specific event between us had not happened. the event had happened. there was, at the time, a witness. the certified letter was the first time i understood that some people will, in fact, escalate to postage in pursuit of a corrected version of events. that is a trait. that is, possibly, several traits, stacked. that is the project plan in stamp form.

NINE. IS. ENOUGH. TEN. IS. GREED.

i kept the letter. it sits, now, in a different folder. the unopened mail pile has continued, on its own time, to grow. there are, by my last accounting on a wednesday, six red envelopes leaning against the side of the pile. one of them is from the man who calls, almost certainly. one of them is from a service i no longer use. the rest are anyone’s guess. i’ll get to them. probably tomorrow. tomorrow is, traditionally, when i get to things.

closing pulpit, nine is enough, ten is greed

i should also mention, while we are on lists and rooms and corrections: there is a film called the master, with a man who teaches a system that almost works on the protagonist, and the look on the protagonist’s face — the slow, late-arriving look of “i think i’ve been counting wrong” — is the look i had on the saturday at the coffee shop, watching the loud man on the phone, while i wrote the napkin draft of this list.

carla just walked past the desk. window minimized. she did not say anything. that’s a good sign or a very specific bad sign. the seventh microwave, on the kitchen counter at home, is unrelated. the kitchen counter at home is unrelated. moving on.

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