10 Signs of a Wife with Narcissistic Traits

Number 1: Continuous sense that the wife is disappointed.

She’s disgusted by the husband’s appearance, his earnings (like at his job), his contribution—or lack of contribution—to household chores, interactions with the children, his motivation, and his educational level. So really, in many ways, if not in every way, the wife is putting the husband down. This really fits into this narrative that the wife puts forth that she’s a victim of a bad marriage—a bad husband. At the same time, the wife would be highly responsive if another woman is interested in the husband, right? Which seems inconsistent with this continuous sense of being disappointed.

Number 2: The wife tends to take sides against the husband by default.

She assumes the worst of the husband; she has a lot of distrust for him. An example here would be something like, if there’s some sort of home improvement that the couple wants to do—like remodeling a room, putting down a floor, repainting, replacing light fixtures—now some people are good at this and some people aren’t; but no matter what the skill level is, the wife is going to be skeptical about the quality of work that the husband can deliver, maybe even to the point where she hires somebody after the job is done to do it right—to come back and fix everything that she thinks the husband did wrong.

Now, the point of this isn’t really to fix anything; it’s to embarrass the husband and not give him any credit for being proficient at anything. Giving him credit would run against this narrative that he’s a bad husband.

Number 3: Fantasies of success, power, wealth, and other factors that we see with narcissism.

This is kind of an unusual characteristic of narcissism; someone who’s narcissistic has these fantasies so frequently, and they tend to be fairly stable fantasies—like the same fantasy over a long period of time. Now, here with the wife who’s narcissistic, we would see several fantasies that involve another partner—like a replacement for the husband—and these aren’t really delivered in a subtle way.

Narcissistic fantasies extend into the future most of the time, but they can also be in the present and in the past. This is one of those kind of unusual angles that we see here with these fantasies. So, the fantasy could actually be going back in time and marrying somebody more worthy—a better provider, a better lover. Fantasies are often about undoing something that somebody regrets. Now, we often see that reflected in the phrases that are used, phrases like: “I never should have settled,” “I should have listened to my family members who I guess would have said not to marry the husband,” “I should have trusted my instincts.”

Now, of course, as I mentioned, the fantasy could also be in the future—and most of the time, it would be. And with the future-oriented fantasies, we see that the wife is clear that if the fantasy could ever come true, she’s gone. The marriage is over; she’s not even pretending that there’s a good relationship between the couple. Consistent with all the types of fantasies, the wife compares the husband to other men; she points out how other men are better. Now, what’s interesting about these fantasies, as well, is that if the husband is doing something that supports one of the wife’s fantasies, she gets along with the husband. So, she gets along with him when he’s working toward one of her fantasies.

So, if he takes a new job that’s more demanding on him but pays better, the wife could be supportive—right? That kind of feeds into her fantasy: more money. Or it could be just having him have a house more; that could be the fantasy as well, giving her more opportunities to explore alternative relationships.

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