signs of female narcissists — 1 thorough investigation

female narcissists, plural, is a category i did not believe in until i met two in the same calendar year through different jobs. they did not know each other. they used the same phrasing about my haircut. the phrasing was identical, word for word.

this is being typed on a wednesday around 12:08pm from the place where i type all such things, which is a desk that the company pays for and which i am, in this exact moment, repurposing for what could politely be called field research. carla is in a vendor call upstairs, the one where two strangers explain software to seven people who already have it. i have, by the kindest estimate, the rest of the morning before any of this becomes a problem.

at the desk. carla is in the vendor call. door of the conference room is closed. i have a window. i’ll keep it short, more or less, by my standards.

signs of female narcissists are not, despite what a confident corner of the internet wants you to believe, a special subspecies. the traits track. the patterns track. the gender adds flavor, not substance. but if you came here because you typed the phrase into a search bar at 1:14am, in the dim of a kitchen that judges you, you came here for specifics. specifics are what i am, on this wednesday, in the mood to provide. you can read the wider pillar on gaslighting and the patterns that surround it if you want the longer architecture; this post is the door, not the whole building.

SIGNS. ARE. PLURAL. PEOPLE. ARE. INDIVIDUAL.

signs of female narcissists, the disclaimer

before the list, the disclaimer, because i have been ratioed in a comment section before and i would prefer not to repeat the experience. female narcissists are not a separate species, a hidden cabal, or a girlfriend-revenge subgenre. they are people, with the same nine-ish traits as anyone else who lands in this category, presented in whatever style their decade and their wardrobe allows. one woman who is occasionally self-centered on a wednesday is not a narcissist. one woman who has rerouted every dinner, every birthday, every funeral, every flight, every haircut for forty months back to a story about her — that’s a pattern. the pattern is the entire diagnostic.

i am not, in honesty, a clinician. i am a man with a folder, a microwave count, and a slow afternoon. but i have, in the spirit of honest inquiry, watched two female narcissists from a close enough distance to take notes. one of them did not know i was taking notes. neither did i, technically, until much later. the notes are now a small body of evidence i call the dossier, in my head, and which lives, in real life, at the bottom of a drawer with the certified letters i don’t open.

the doctor’s office where this draft happened

i drafted half of this on the back of a clipboard at the doctor’s office on monday, which is where i went for what was advertised as a routine appointment and which became, instead, ninety minutes in a beige room with a magazine from 2019. i had nothing to read except my own thoughts, which is a punishment, and the magazine, which was about boats. so i wrote down the female narcissists i have known. there were two. there were also, on the magazine cover, three boats. the boats were not the topic.

the doctor’s office, like all doctor’s offices, is a place where time pretends to apologize but doesn’t. they call it a wait. it’s a hostage situation with a sign-in sheet. i mention this because signs of female narcissists are easier to see, in retrospect, when you are in a beige room you can’t leave, with no phone signal, holding a clipboard. you remember things. things float up. by the time the nurse called my name, i had eight items. by the time the doctor’s office released me, i had nine. they are below.

items 1 to 4, the dave-and-carla-corroborated ones

these four are signs of female narcissists that i double-checked with two people who are not me. dave, who picks up on the second ring and has, over the years, listened to me describe both women without realizing they were two different people, confirmed three of them. carla, who is not a confidant but who once shared an elevator with one of them at a holiday event in 2022, confirmed the fourth with a single raised eyebrow. four eyes are better than two.

1. the haircut comment as opening move. she critiques your hair within ninety seconds of seeing you, every time, with the same syntax. the syntax is calm. the syntax is concerned. it’s a tone that pretends to be care.
2. the silent re-edit of stories you were both in. the dinner you remember, she remembers differently, and her version is always the one where she was the only adult present. you were there. you brought the wine. she does not include the wine.
3. the friend-shaped supply chain. her closest people rotate quarterly. each former-best-friend is later described as “complicated”, “intense”, or “a lot to handle”. the constant in every story is, of course, her.
4. the pre-emptive accusation. she accuses you of the exact thing she is, in real time, doing. it is uncanny. (if you want a film that maps this almost too neatly, see Gone Girl on IMDB; the structure is the structure, the gender of the structure varies.)

items 5 to 8, the drawer-of-letters ones

these four i did not corroborate with anyone. these four are mine. these four were written, in pencil, on the back of a clinic clipboard, which is now in the drawer of certified letters i keep next to the unopened mail pile and which i will not be opening any time soon. the drawer is a graveyard. the certified letters in it are about, i suspect, money. these notes are about people. it’s the same drawer. that’s where i’m at, on wednesdays.

5. the curated apology that is not an apology. when she does, finally, say “i’m sorry”, the sentence is doing four other jobs at once. it is also a defense. it is also a counter-accusation. it is also a job application for sainthood.
6. the unwell-friend currency. a friend’s crisis becomes, in her telling, a thing that is happening to her. she is exhausted by it. she is so generous. you are watching her perform compassion with the lights on.
7. hot take she will go to war over. she has a single inane preference she will defend like family land. for one of mine, it was “pineapple on pizza” — a phrase she could not let pass, ever, in any company, with a level of personal investment that should have been a flag. it’s not the take. it’s the temperature of the take. anyone who turns a topping into a hill to die on twice in one week is telling you something else.
8. the tone that does not move. when you finally raise a real concern — calmly, with examples, with the receipts — her tone does not change. the calmness is the answer. the calmness is what tells you the thing is not being heard. it is being managed. you are being managed. that is the entire signal.

nine items, in the original draft on the clipboard. i cut one for length and one because it was, on rereading, just a thing about hair. so eight made it. eight is the count.

closing pulpit, the signs are plural, the women are individual

vendor call ran long. carla is, allegedly, in a follow-up. i have, allegedly, fifteen more minutes. the doctor’s office, in case you were wondering, did not call back about the bloodwork. i am, in the medical sense, schrödinger’s patient.