A female narcissist or female psychopath (a rarer occurrence) is someone who hides behind a seemingly sweet-tempered demeanor, moral absolutism, and haughtiness to conceal her true lack of empathy, contempt, callousness, and condescending bullying behaviors. Here are four sadistic behaviors you may notice them engaging in according to a researcher specializing in narcissism and psychopathy, especially if they are jealous or envious of you and have made you a target.
Psychopathic and narcissistic women are aware that in order to gaslight their victims effectively, they have to be able to bully their victims covertly so other people take their side. Whether it’s bullying their relationship partners, their friends, their family members, their colleagues, their acquaintances, the strategy remains the same: feign moral superiority and faux innocence while doing so and paint the people you treat with contempt as the ones “in the wrong.” For example, let’s say Miranda is cheating on her husband Thomas. She doesn’t want others to discover her infidelity, so in order to gaslight him and anyone who supports him, she starts a smear campaign against Thomas claiming that Thomas is unhinged (much like a male narcissist would if he were the one smearing his female victim) and becoming increasingly mentally unstable, developing “delusions” that she is cheating on him. That way, when Thomas holds her accountable, she can simply say he is being possessive and controlling and his friends and family may even come to her aid, concerned for his mental welfare.
In the context of friendships, this might look like Miranda being envious and jealous of and targeting her more attractive and successful friend Nancy who is a Pulitzer-winning journalist for bullying. When Nancy holds Miranda gently accountable for making a rude remark to her in front of their mutual friends, Miranda might pretend to feel remorse and apologize, only to go on a calculated smear campaign against Nancy to punish her and retaliate. This might include trying to covertly diminish Nancy’s talents and beauty to anyone to their mutual friends. She might say something like, “Do you think Nancy really got the job fairly? I mean I heard she has connections in the industry” or “I don’t even think she writes that well.” When their mutual friends remind her of all of Nancy’s accolades and the fact that she won the Pulitzer Prize and got on the New York Times bestseller list, Nancy might condescendingly sneer, “Yeah she got on the New York Times bestseller list and the Pulitzer Prize but who hasn’t? I bet I could if I actually tried. Not a big deal. That prize is trash and meaningless anyway,” essentially demeaning the weight and strength of her numerous achievements due to her malicious envy.
Female narcissists, and to an extent, female psychopaths, believe they are entitled to being the center of attention. Female psychopaths especially are prone to behaviors such as partner poaching, which has been shown by studies to be associated with psychopathic traits. Partner poaching includes attempts to secure the attention and affection of someone who is already in a relationship whether or not they reciprocate your affections. This is not a simple case of two people engaging in an affair: this is a case of a female narcissist or psychopathic woman deliberately targeting people in relationships specifically as a serial pattern – this pattern occurs even if the person they flirt with rejects their advances. Of course, the person who cheated on their significant other shares the majority of the blame, but female narcissists and psychopaths are more than happy to engage in this pattern as a way of life, which makes them especially harmful to others. Female narcissists and psychopaths will go out of their way to flirt with other people in front of their own partners to maintain power and control, even going so far as to have affairs with other people while they themselves are in “happy” relationships (sometimes even with doting partners who worship them).
This behavior seems bizarre when you consider that if they already have a healthy, loving partner at home, they would feel no need to try to chase after anyone else outside of their primary relationship, least of all people who are also in relationships themselves. But this has nothing to do with who they are with at the time or the stability of their relationships: it’s all about “ego,” power, control, instant gratification, and feeling like they “one-upped” other women in a nonexistent competition they manufactured themselves. It gives them a sadistic thrill to feel like they were the ones who “poached” a partner from another woman, especially if that woman is someone they perceive to be more beautiful, well-loved, and successful. Thankfully, studies indicate that people in relationships where poaching occurred tend to be of lower quality. As the old adage says, how you get them is how you also lose them.
While female narcissists may search for validation, female psychopaths tend to look for power and control they can wield over people. This can include trying to consume all of their relationship partner’s attention and punishing their partners if they don’t make numerous sacrifices to maintain the relationship, leeching off their partner’s resources while cheating on them, conning them into sham marriages only to use them for money or status, or moving the goal posts constantly to make their partners keep up with their arbitrary expectations. Or it may look like setting up love triangles and trying to make their partners jealous (also known as jealousy induction in research) so their partners are always busy vying for their attention. Outside of relationships, they may engage in sneaky underhanded methods to sabotage hard-working, talented colleagues so they can climb the corporate ladder. For example, they may pass on misleading information to superiors that misrepresents a more talented co-worker to prevent a true meritocracy. Or they may sabotage a friend by pretending to support them in their career success, only to encourage that same friend to party with them before an important interview, exam, or presentation to sabotage their efforts. Whatever actions they take, it usually has one aim: sadistic pleasure at one-upping a person they are secretly in competition with and manufacturing chaos in people’s lives, luring them into situations they may not be able to disentangle themselves from.
Narcissism tends to be associated with victim-blaming and victim-shaming behaviors, while psychopathy is associated with sadistic, gratuitous violence according to a wealth of research. In fact, women with primary psychopathic traits (the less impulsive, more calm and collected subtype) were more likely to blame the victims of a crime and less likely to blame the perpetrator and discourage confrontation of the perpetrator while encouraging a victim’s compliance in studies. It will come to no surprise that both female narcissists and psychopaths are capable of cruelty and more underhanded forms of violence (whether physical or more emotional and relationally aggressive) that no one would suspect, as well as cruel victim-shaming and blaming. In romantic relationships, this might look like them defending the people who betrayed and violated you and overly rationalizing, minimizing, and justifying their heinous actions, or enabling the toxic people in your life by feeding them information they can use against you. Outside of relationships, you will also notice psychopathic and narcissistic women often enabling and supporting male predators or other like-minded cruel women because these fellow predators represent to them their own characteristics and behaviors. They will encourage and justify the bullying behaviors of others because they, too, want to escape accountability for their own sadistic cruelty. For example, a female narcissist or psychopath may be the first to exhibit “pick-me” behaviors, defend a male friend who’s been outed as a sexual predator and join a smear campaign against his victims (or, if they’re more covert, pretend to extend empathy for the victims only to show up at trial as a witness defending him).
They may create social groups with peers who are known for their bullying tactics, defending other women who target the innocent and the marginalized. Of course, even in those scenarios, they will still overpower others and establish “Queen Bee” status to come out on top in those social groups. If you have been targeted by a female psychopath or narcissist whether as a romantic partner, friend, colleague, family member or acquaintance, you are not alone and you never deserved their mistreatment. You deserve justice and you deserve to heal from toxic people.
