personality traits of a narcissist woman — 1 investigation

personality traits in a narcissist woman are, in my limited but extremely educational experience, identical to the male version with one exception, which is the exact volume at which they say your name when they want something. the volume is precise. the volume is unforgettable. the volume travels through walls a wedding venue swore were soundproof.

i found a notebook this morning. it is a small black notebook with a green elastic band. it belonged to the photographer tom hired for his wedding, the one i attended alone, in 2018, in a borrowed jacket that smelled of someone else’s cat. the photographer had been using the notebook to mark the lighting for the group photos. on the back pages, in a different ink, he had been doing something else. he had been describing the guests.

it is currently 3:18pm on a wednesday. carla is in an all-hands on the third floor about something called “vendor consolidation”. i have, give or take, the rest of the morning. the notebook is on my desk between the keyboard and a mug that says world’s okayest, which i did not buy.

writing this from my desk. carla is upstairs. the notebook is open at the page where the photographer wrote, in pencil, “guest 14 — see appendix b”. appendix b is, somehow, also in this notebook.

this post lives downstream of the long investigation into gaslighting and the apartment with the dimming lights, which is the spine of the cluster. consider this a side door into the same room, opened by an unrelated photographer who took notes for himself and forgot the notes inside the notebook.

1. personality traits of a narcissist woman, the working list

the photographer, whose name i will not give because his handwriting deserves the privacy, is a man who shoots weddings on weekends and corporate offsites on weekdays. he writes in pencil. he uses serif capitals for the names. he uses lowercase cursive for the observations. he is, in a small way, a better archivist than i am.

on page nineteen of the notebook, in three short lines, he had written eight items about a single woman. the woman was at tom’s wedding. she was, by the photographer’s note, “in row four”. he did not name her. he did not need to. the eight items, in his order, are the working list. i copied them onto the back of an envelope from the man who calls, which is the kind of stationery i can spare.

the eight items, before i go further, are these: the room-as-stage entrance, the warm first contact, no follow-up question, the silent ledger, the modest brag, the calm rewrite, the helpless ask, the apology shaped like an apology. they are the same eight items every list of personality traits of a narcissist woman ends up with, eventually, regardless of who is keeping the list — a photographer at row four, an idiot at a desk, a productivity bro on a thursday.

i did not arrive at this list. i found it. that is, in a small way, the point. these traits travel. they show up in row four of a wedding and on page nineteen of a stranger’s notebook, and a man with a borrowed jacket recognizes them years later because he was, at the time, also in row four, trying not to be noticed.

2. the dmv line where stefan came to mind

i had to go to the dmv last week. the dmv is, in this city, technically a post office that also handles licenses, which is the kind of arrangement that sounds efficient until you stand in it. the line was long. the line was stationary. the line had, at one point, a child in it who was, by the eighteenth minute, narrating his hunger in a tone of professional grief.

i had the notebook with me. i was, at the time, only on page twelve. but the dmv line is what made me read on, because there was nothing else to do, and because halfway down the line a woman was talking to her partner in a register that reminded me, immediately, of stefan.

stefan is a man i met once at a wine night a friend of a friend hosted in 2022. stefan knew everything about wine. stefan knew the soil, the slope, the year, the cooper of the barrel. stefan, the entire night, did not ask anyone in the room a single question about themselves. i did not have a great time at the wine night. i did not, in fact, finish my glass. i remember stefan because he is the cleanest example i own of trait three on the list.

the woman in the dmv line was performing trait three at full volume. her partner had, at some point, said something about his sister. the woman responded by talking, for four minutes, about a course she had recently completed on “personal branding”. her partner, to his credit, nodded. the line did not move. the child resumed narrating.

i flipped to page nineteen. the photographer’s eight items, lined up, applied. i stood in the dmv for forty more minutes and read appendix b twice.

3. items 1 to 4, the stefan-style ones

item 1 — the room-as-stage entrance. the photographer wrote: “guest 14 entered the venue as if she were also the venue.” this is the cleanest sentence in the notebook. this trait, in a narcissist woman, like the same trait anywhere, is a posture, not a moment. it is a way of crossing a room. stefan crossed every room at the wine night the same way. it is not necessarily about the woman. it is about the room being, in her view, a backdrop.

the productivity bro online, the one who tweets at 5am about waking at 4am, performs grandiosity for engagement. the bro can be turned off. the room is full of buttons. the trait we are describing here is the version that does not turn off. that is the difference. (i borrowed this distinction, i should say, from a tweet i muted in the same group chat i have been muting since 2024. a man whose handle was an aphorism kept replying to his own posts with applause. the handle was, possibly, the productivity bro’s smaller cousin. the cousin was not real. the cousin was a brand. moving on.)

item 2 — the warm entrance. the photographer wrote: “warmer to the photographer than to the bride at minute two.” this one is personal. i was, in 2018, on the receiving end of a warm entrance from someone in row five. she introduced herself with a smile so professional i thought, briefly, she was the wedding planner. she was not. she was a guest. by minute four she had moved on to the next person and i was holding a glass of warm wine i did not order.

the tells of the warm entrance are physical. the eyes hold yours for a beat too long. the question, when it comes, is one you cannot answer in a sentence — “so, what do you do” — and the listening lasts the length of your first sentence. then the eyes flick, gently, behind you, to whoever is next.

item 3 — no follow-up question. see stefan. see the dmv woman. see, in fact, every conversation i have ever had at a baby shower with someone i did not know. follow-up questions are a small ritual. their absence is its own data point. i did not, until this week, realize how often i count them. i count them now. i counted them with the cashier at the coffee place this morning. she got two follow-ups in. she is, by this metric, the kindest person i interacted with on wednesday.

item 4 — the silent ledger. the photographer wrote: “she paid for the cab in 2014 and brings it up in 2018. cab was eleven dollars.” this one is the cruelest item, because it is invisible until it lands. there is a private accounting going on. you do not have access to the books. on a thursday in october, an item from 2014 is invoiced to you, with interest, in a tone you do not have a comeback for.

THE LEDGER. IS. NOT. SHARED.

4. items 5 to 8, the tom-phone-dodged ones

tom called twice this week. i did not pick up. i have not picked up tom’s calls since the wedding, which is a separate post i have not, despite many drafts, finished. tom leaves voicemails. they are short. they end “call me back when you can.” the voicemail is, of course, full. tom’s most recent message is, technically, sitting in a queue behind a message from the man who calls from august. the queue is, in a small way, a ledger of its own.

i mention tom because the second four items, in the notebook, are the items i recognize from a relationship that ended in 2019, possibly later, possibly earlier, depending on which version of the year i’m using.

item 5 — the modest brag, on a loop. the photographer wrote: “guest 14 mentioned, twice, that she had been asked to speak at the conference but declined.” this is the modest brag with the safety clip filed off. the brag is not the conference. the brag is the decline. the trick is that the decline reframes her as humble while transmitting the underlying achievement. it is a complete sentence with two functions, and only one of them is the surface one.

item 6 — the calm rewrite of events. this is the central trait, because it is the engine of the rest. a thing that happened on monday is, by friday, slightly different in her telling. by next month, the original friday is gone. she does not believe she is rewriting. she has, in the language i borrowed from a man at the bar, simply updated the working ledger. you have the old version. you are the bug. she is the user. and the microwave plate doesn’t need to spin. the plate is a ceremony. the ceremony does the work of pretending the food is being attended to. the food is fine. the plate is theatre. the calm rewrite is, in this analogy, the spinning plate of memory. it does not need to be spinning. she insists, gently, that it has always been spinning, and you, holding the manual, begin to wonder if you read the manual at all.

item 7 — weaponized helplessness. the photographer wrote: “asked the bartender to open her wine because, quote, ‘i never could.'” she has, presumably, opened wine before. the trait is the small announced incapacity. it is targeted. it lands on the person nearest, who picks up the task, every time. the apartment fills, eventually, with tasks that have, for one reason or another, become permanently yours. for what this looks like at the door of a new relationship, the longer survey at the post on what dumb actually means and why it is not what your ex is calling you covers the early-warning version, where the helpless ask is mistaken, briefly, for charm. (the word dumb, by the way, is not the right word for any of this. dumb is a different problem. dumb is honest about what it does not know. these traits are the opposite of dumb. these traits know.)

item 8 — the apology shaped like an apology. “i’m sorry you feel that way.” nine words. the words contain no admission. the sentence accepts no fact. the sentence is a structure that resembles an apology from the outside and contains, when you cut it open, an empty room. the photographer wrote, with what i suspect was a degree of editorial pleasure: “the only artifact of the conversation was her exit, which she announced.” that is the trait in one observation. the apology and the exit, in the same minute, both performed.

5. closing pulpit, the traits travel and the line keeps moving

the dmv line, i should say, eventually moved. i got my form stamped. i walked back to the desk by way of a coffee i did not finish, because the notification on my phone was insistent about something i had not opened in three days, and the coffee, as a result, cooled in my hand at exactly the rate of a man who is being summoned by a small machine. the notification is, of course, a separate problem. the notification is the algorithm’s version of the calm rewrite. it tells you, every six hours, that you have not done a thing you, on wednesday, agreed you would do. the notification keeps no ledger. the notification is the ledger.

i have, on different fridays, demonstrated three of the eight items myself. the modest brag is a hobby of mine i defend in front of mom. the calm rewrite is what i do to the seventh microwave’s cause of death every time the story comes up at the bar. the helpless ask is how the third yoga mat ended up under the couch — i could not, i announced to the room, possibly find the time to put it away, and now it is part of the structural support of the apartment. these are the traits, in fairness, traveling. they are not unique to a wedding venue or a dmv line. they are, in low doses, most of us on a slow tuesday.

the difference is the calendar. one item on a friday is a friday. eight items, sustained, across the kind of timeline a winter coat takes to disappear from your apartment, is a pattern. that is the only line the photographer was drawing, on page nineteen, in pencil, in a notebook he forgot at the venue. he was drawing a calendar.

carla just walked past my desk. she did not look at the screen. the notebook is closed. the all-hands has, by the sound of the third floor, dispersed into smaller arguments. the seventh microwave is at home, alone, presumably plotting.