signs of a narcissistic woman — 1 fairly sure investigation

a narcissistic woman, in case anyone in the back is unsure, is a fully real and well-documented type of person who is not invented by men with grudges. some of the men with grudges have a point. i have a small grudge and a large point.

writing today from the desk while carla is upstairs in the all-hands on the third floor, which leaves me roughly forty minutes and one cooling cup of coffee. on a wednesday. the kind of wednesday where the elevator was full at 9:14am and i had to ride up next to the landlord, who said nothing to me the entire eight floors, which is on-brand.

this is, i’ll admit, not my usual beat. i normally investigate a fork. today i’m investigating a person. or rather, a pattern of person. let’s call it an investigation, because the editorial line says so.

signs of a narcissistic woman, the working list

let me say something at the top, and you can write this down or not, i can’t see you. the signs of a narcissistic woman are, mostly, the signs of any narcissist with the gender filed off. the gender, in my fairly-sure opinion, is a wrapper. the contents are the same. but people search for the wrapper, so i write about the wrapper, because i need eight more clicks before next tuesday and the landlord is getting curious about the rent again.

the broader pattern, the one i’ve already filed a longer report on, lives over here in my full investigation into gaslighting and the people who do it, which is the pillar of all of this and frankly the post i’d send my past self if i had a time machine and a working printer.

this list is what shows up when you compress that pattern into the version most people meet first: the friend, the sister, the boss, the woman in the elevator who asks how your weekend was and then doesn’t listen.

i am not a doctor. i am a man with a desk. i looked it up in places i won’t name. i talked to mike at the corner once. mike has a system for taxes. has not filed since 2019. mike is not a doctor either, but he has, as he likes to say, “seen things.” mike has seen one of these. so have i.

the signs of a narcissistic woman, briefly stated, are eight. i’ll do four now and four after the elevator story. the elevator story is the part of this post that justifies, technically, the rest of it.

the elevator where the landlord rode silently

so. wednesday. 9:14am. elevator. me, the landlord, a woman from the seventh floor i had not previously met, and a small dog of indeterminate plan. you do not ask a landlord questions in an elevator. this is, i believe, written somewhere. i didn’t.

the woman from the seventh floor was on the phone. loud. she was telling the person on the other end about something her sister had done, and the something her sister had done was, in her telling, the worst thing a sister has ever done since records began. her sister had, and i quote, brought up that thing from last christmas at the dinner. that was the crime. that was the indictment. she said it three times for emphasis.

then, and this is the part where i started taking notes mentally, she said: “you know how she is. it’s always about her.” she said this with no irony, in a voice that filled the elevator, while telling a story that was, in its entirety, about her.

IT WAS. ALWAYS. ABOUT HER. NOT THE SISTER.

i exited at my floor. the landlord exited at his floor and said, finally, “good morning,” which, considering it was 9:18am by then and we had been in the same metal box for four minutes, was overstating it. i went to my desk. i wrote this down. i am writing it now. i’d like to enter it into the record, the same way band of brothers enters things into the record, with a serious face and a small graphic.

the_man_who_calls left another voicemail while i was in the elevator. i didn’t listen to it. the voicemail box has been at capacity for roughly eight months. i won’t be opening it. that’s a separate investigation.

items 1 to 4, the stefan-style ones

these first four signs of a narcissistic woman are what i’d call the stefan ones, named after a man named stefan in a vest who once tried to convince me a wine had notes of forest floor. they are the signs that present in social settings, in meetings, in the elevator, with confidence and a vocabulary that has been rehearsed.

1. every story, somehow, is about her. you tell her you broke your foot. she tells you about a foot her cousin once broke, but worse, with photos. you tell her your dog died. she tells you about a dog she nearly had, which would have been better. the conversation is a return ticket. the destination is always her. the seventh microwave in my apartment knows the feeling. it returned to the topic of itself, briefly, before catching fire.

2. her version of events is the only version. you remember the dinner one way. she remembers it another. her version is the official version. yours, on review, was a misunderstanding, possibly a lie, definitely incorrect. there is no committee. there is no transcript. there is only her, and she is, unfortunately for everyone, the historian.

3. compliments come with a small bill attached. she said your jacket was nice. now you owe her something. the something is unspecified. it will be invoiced later, in a moment of your maximum vulnerability, in front of people. compliments from this kind of woman are, frankly, like a credit card with terms in 4-point font.

4. she’s the most empathetic person she’s ever met. she says this often. she says it the way stefan said “forest floor” — with the certainty of a man getting paid by the word. and, like forest floor, it is not, on closer inspection, a flavor.

items 5 to 8, the dm-regret ones

these next four signs of a narcissistic woman are what i’d call the dm ones, after the dm i sent in 2022 that i still think about at 2am. they show up in private. in messages. in late-night texts. in the slow drip of a relationship that, on the outside, looks fine, and on the inside, leaks.

5. the late text that requires immediate response. 11:47pm, your phone. it is her. it is urgent. it is, on inspection, a feeling she had about something you said three weeks ago. you have until morning to respond correctly. there is no rubric. you will be wrong. the longer list of narcissistic traits goes deeper into this one, because it deserves its own paragraph and i’m trying to keep this one moving.

6. the silent treatment, used as currency. you have done something. you don’t know what. she’s not telling. you will find out, possibly, after three days of escalating quiet. the silence is the bill. the bill is for an offense you cannot name and therefore cannot apologize for, which is, frankly, a perfect closed system. respect to the architecture, terrible to be inside it.

7. her friends, on closer inspection, are also her audience. there’s a group chat. you are not in it. when you meet her friends, they look at you a certain way. you cannot place the look at first. then you realize: they have been briefed. you are a character in a show you didn’t audition for, and you’ve been playing the wrong part for months. the deeper trait map covers this one in finer detail.

8. water is the most overrated drink, and so is her version of self-awareness. she says she’s “working on herself.” she’s been working on herself for as long as you’ve known her. progress, on review, is hard to identify. the working is, in fact, the entire activity. it is its own destination. it is, like the third yoga mat, a posture, not a use.

this last one, by the way, is where i quote one of my own working positions, which is that water is the most overrated drink. i stand by it. i stand by it the way i stand by my refusal to open the stack of envelopes on the kitchen counter, which is also a working position. one of these positions has more legal consequences than the other. i’ll let you guess which.

the men, briefly, for the search engine

for completeness, and because the search engine likes a side-comparison, the warning signs of a narcissistic boss work the same way regardless of gender. the boss takes credit, redistributes blame, and praises only in private. the male variant write-up covers it in more depth, because some of you are looking for that specific wrapper, and i am, again, in the click business.

the patterns repeat. the wrapping changes. that’s the entire investigation, in one paragraph, free of charge.

closing pulpit, the gender is a wrapper

that’s the working list. the elevator was the proof. the landlord said good morning at 9:18am, four minutes after we got in the box, which is, in the strict sense of the word, both a greeting and a confession. he’s behind on the heating again.

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