narcissist father traits — 1 thorough investigation

father traits in this particular style are inherited or learned, depending on which book you happen to read first. i read both kinds of book. neither one of them was comforting at the time. neither one of them was wrong, either. i kept reading anyway because the reading was, at minimum, a real activity.

this draft started at 12:51pm on a friday, on my desk, while carla was upstairs in an all-hands on the third floor and i had, generously, the rest of lunch. i opened the document because i had just gotten back from the dmv, which is technically a post office, depending on which line you stand in. either way you stand for a long time and consider your father.

writing this from my desk. carla is upstairs. the dmv visit took an hour. i still have time. close enough.

the wide-angle on this whole topic, if you want it, is over at my long write-up on the broader gaslighting pattern — the parental version is a particular dialect of that bigger problem, slower and quieter and harder to leave because, conveniently, it leaves with you.

1. narcissist father traits, the working list

i am not a clinician. i looked some of this up on the shows i watch. i read parts of three books. one of them i read on a kindle, which counts because reading on a kindle is the same as reading, no matter what some people insist on a podcast.

so when i list the narcissist father traits i am listing them the way a man at the dmv might list them: with confidence, a numbered ticket, and the certainty that the person sitting next to me has already met one of the fathers in question, possibly his own.

the trick of this investigation is that the traits are not, individually, criminal. they are mostly small. it is the collection that does the damage. one ruling is a tuesday. eleven rulings, over an arc of a childhood, is a courtroom. you don’t realize you grew up in a courtroom until you start objecting in your own kitchen, alone, to nobody.

another tell is the inheritance angle. the narcissist father traits, helpfully for diagnostic purposes, do not stay where you left them. they move into your apartment. they answer the door. they pour the coffee. you turn around at 2am and there they are, holding the spatula, exhibiting trait number four to a microwave. that is when you start the list.

2. the dmv line where the draft happened, voicemail full

the dmv shares a building with the post office i avoid, and the line splits at a single counter where a tired woman decides which one of the two services you are getting. i was renewing something. i don’t remember what. while i waited, my phone buzzed. it was, almost certainly, the_man_who_calls. it always is. i did not pick up. the voicemail has been full for eight months now. the voicemail being full is a feature, not a bug. nothing more can be added. nothing has to be heard.

standing in that line i had a thing happen which is, embarrassingly, the reason this post exists. the man in front of me, on the phone, was talking to what was clearly his adult son. he used the verdict voice. flat, calm, instructive. “no, that’s not what happened. that’s not how it went. you weren’t there. i was there.” the son, on the other end, said something quiet. the man said, “well, you remember it wrong, then.”

i stood there with my ticket and i felt, distinctly, the lining of an old jacket being pulled out of a closet i had not opened in years. the jacket fit. it was warm. it was mine. i had worn it for thirty years. that is when i decided to write this, on the walk back, on the desk i now sit at while carla is upstairs and the document is open and the cursor is, technically, blinking at me with mild expectation.

the barista at the place across the street from the dmv handed me my coffee on the way back. she said “the usual?” without looking up. she has known my order for two years. she does not know my name. that is, frankly, the healthiest professional relationship in my life. i mention her because she is, for the purposes of this investigation, a witness — she has watched me, on six separate fridays, take a phone call from a number i pretend not to recognize and walk out without finishing the coffee. she has never asked. she is a saint of the unasked question. you cannot say the same of certain fathers.

3. items 1 to 4, the hot-take-collection grade

i keep a running list of narcissist father traits the way i keep my hot takes — half on a sticky on the standing desk, half in the notes app, all of them defendable at a bar at 11pm with the third beer. items one through four are the ones i would defend on the corner with mike, who has not filed his returns since 2019 but has the cleanest theory of fathers i have personally collected.

1. the verdict voice. he does not have opinions. he has rulings. you do not disagree with a ruling. you appeal it, in writing, in seventeen years, after you have left the building. by then the building has been remodeled. the appeal goes to no court. that is the design.

2. the edited record. the family memory is his to maintain. you will hear, when you are forty-one, a version of your eleventh birthday in which he was the patient one, you were the difficult one, and your mother was the reason the cake was late. you will be in his kitchen. you will be eating his food. you will issue no correction. the seventh telling becomes the official telling. that is how libraries work.

3. the apology with a contract. he does not say “i’m sorry i did that.” he says “i’m sorry you took it that way.” the apology shifts the verb. the verb now belongs to you. the apology is, structurally, an invoice. you have to sign for it. you have to thank him for it. you have to not bring it up again. (this is a trait i have inherited and i have to actively turn off, on the phone, with people who deserve a real one. frequency, the kurt russell film about a son who talks to his father across time on a ham radio is, in a way, every adult son’s fantasy: a fair conversation with a dead version of the man, on a frequency the living version never tuned.)

4. the audience problem. he is a different man at the bowling alley. coworkers love him. neighbors love him. the dentist loves him. the only people qualified to confirm the pattern are the ones inside the house, who have been instructed, since age six, to keep the brand intact. you grow up as press secretary for a politician you didn’t elect.

4. items 5 to 8, the barista-corroborated

i tested four of these narcissist father traits on the barista, theoretically, in passing, one friday, and she nodded at three of them while not looking up from the steam wand. that is, in this neighborhood, a peer-reviewed study.

5. the proxy hobby. he picks an interest for you, signs you up, pays for it once, claims credit forever. you will be introduced at gatherings as “my son, the [thing]” twenty years after you stopped being the [thing]. you will smile. you will not correct him in front of his friends. that is what he chose the venue for. the_man_who_calls, by the way, is unrelated. completely unrelated. moving on.

6. the conditional gift. he did not pay for the deposit. he made it possible. which means he gets to comment on the neighborhood, the lease, the color of the door, the brand of the kettle, the angle of the kettle, and whether the kettle is on. the third yoga mat, noted, was bought by me. i mention this because it is the only thing in my apartment with no paternal commentary attached.

7. the inheritance, embarrassing parts only. he gives you his temper, his stubbornness, his refusal to read instructions. then, when you display any of those, he calls them your problem. the bad genes are yours. the good genes are his. cold pizza is breakfast, hot pizza is dinner — that one i kept. it is the only ruling of his i have not appealed.

8. the present-tense ghost. he is alive or he is not. the trait does not require a living father. that is the part that surprises people. the voice he installed runs on its own power, off-grid, indefinitely. you can hear it during a stuck microwave button at 1am. (the seventh microwave in this apartment died last march, for unrelated reasons, possibly fork-related, possibly judgment-related, the line is blurry.)

5. closing pulpit, the father is quoted, the traits are inherited

the practical version of the narcissist father traits checklist, offered with no credentials, is short and unwelcome. notice the tone before you notice the content. notice the moment you start editing yourself before he is even in the room. notice which of the eight traits above you have begun to perform in his absence, alone, at 2am, with no audience but a microwave that, for what it is worth, is on its seventh life. the inheritance is real. it is also, with effort, returnable, although you will be returning it for the rest of your life and the receipt is in a language you cannot read.

if you want a wider frame on this — the why of being raised by someone who cannot say the word dumb about himself but uses it about everyone else — i wrote the long piece on why being dumb is, structurally, healthier than being correct, because the dumb son tends to survive better than the correct one in this kind of household. i do not say this lightly.

carla is back from upstairs. she is at her desk. she has not looked over. i will close the document in three minutes and pretend to stretch. that is the system. it is, technically, the only system.

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