This article was originally published in Le Point on 31.08.2025
Have you ever dated—perhaps even married—a narcissist? If so, then chances are they still have something of you lying around. Well, hopefully not literally (although I suppose a lock of your hair or maybe that gallstone you had laparoscopically removed back in ’13 applies). More likely, it’s a photograph, love letters, jewelry… that sort of thing. These keepsakes are inanimate objects that reflect or are somehow connected to your past relationship.
Now, that might sound sweet. Even romantic. After all, doesn’t that mean they secretly still adore you, using these objects to reminisce about what once was, or perhaps even to lament their selfishness and mistakes? Think again, says a team of Polish researchers led by Aleksandra Niemyjska in a study published in Personality and Individual Differences. The only thing they’re reminiscing about is their own accomplishments. For narcissists, such relationship keepsakes act more like trophies. That framed snapshot of you embracing in front of the Eiffel Tower, that tube of vermillion-red lipstick you left on the bathroom vanity, the movie-ticket stub from that magical night you saw Dune together after spending weeks apart in a Covid quarantine… your narcissistic ex holds onto them not to remember you fondly, but to remind themselves of who they (believe) they are: an important person who can attract and conquer desirable mates. Like big game hunters with the glass-eyed heads of wild boars on their walls, they hold onto such items mostly to puff up their own egos.
That, at least, is what recent findings on these ‘hunting lovers’ suggest. Before we delve into the study, let’s get a quick scientific refresher on narcissistic personalities. The term gets thrown around a lot these days, but the formal definition of narcissism clusters around two features. The first, explains the psychologist Constantine Sedikides, is egocentric exceptionalism: “Narcissists of all sorts believe that they are superior and special, important and entitled.” The second feature is social selfishness. “Given their lofty sense of their own uniqueness,” Sedikides writes, “narcissists can afford to look down on others unempathetically, even antipathetically.”
For someone to be diagnosed as having full-blown narcissistic personality disorder requires a formal clinical assessment by a trained specialist, but at a subclinical level, individual differences in narcissistic traits can be easily measured by various psychometric tools. One of the most trusted is the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), which is used in much of the research literature. You can take it online for free… if you dare. It’s a forty-item test that presents the user with two forced-choice options for each item: one being what the average person would say, and the other what a narcissist would say. For example, “I am more capable than other people” vs. “There is a lot that I can learn from other people”; or “I want to amount to something in the eyes of the world” vs. “I just want to be reasonably happy.” There are different dimensions of narcissism (e.g., vanity, entitlement, superiority, etc.), but your total score on the NPI (out of 40) is a sort of big-picture number. If you’re anywhere near the ceiling mark, you might want to get that checked out, especially if your self-centered thinking is negatively impacting your behavior and ability to empathize and connect with others. Except, tellingly, narcissists know they’re narcissists and take pride in these attributes.
The other important thing to point out is that scholars believe there are two main types of narcissists: grandiose narcissists and vulnerable narcissists. Although both types feel that they’re the center of the universe, so to speak, they differ in their ability to guard their fragile self-esteems. Grandiose narcissists are largely immune to threats to their soft ego underbellies, whereas vulnerable narcissists are extremely sensitive to such social threats. In other words, they differ in “mental toughness,” and this translates into very different emotional and behavioral profiles. The grandiose sorts tend to be domineering blowhards who are largely unfazed by what you or anybody else says about them. They have harder external shells than vulnerable narcissists, and this showy carapace is both a buffer against emotional injury and a performance booster (especially when others are evaluating them).
Sure, others might abhor them for their obnoxious egos, but they’re so oblivious to their own imperfections that they’re mostly unbothered by any pesky feelings of shame, anxiety, and self-doubt; they’re just eager to control the situation by trumpeting their intelligence and perfection. As a result, grandiose narcissists, with their impenetrably high self-esteem, ironically enjoy better mental health than most of us.
By contrast, vulnerable narcissists are quietly seething that the world has failed to recognize them for how special they truly are. With their softer external shells, these are the highly sensitive, worry-ridden introverts who see hostile intent everywhere and withdraw from others to protect their tenuous self-esteem. They don’t do well with criticism. They’re often vindictive or passive aggressive (“interpersonally hostile”), writhe with envy when others succeed in areas where they feel entitled, and take pleasure in other people’s misfortunes (schadenfreude). Whereas the NPI primarily measures grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism can be assessed with a measure fittingly called the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (HSNS), which is also free for the taking online. Again, don’t say I didn’t warn you. That one includes items such as “I often interpret the remarks of others in a personal way” and “I easily become wrapped up in my own interests and forget the existence of others.”
Which of the two types of narcissist makes for a “better” partner is a weird way to put it. Obviously, they’re both a lot of work. But knowing whether they’re of the grandiose or vulnerable variety helps to predict what they’ll do with your stuff if—or when—you split up.
The logic behind Niemyjska et al.’s investigations into whether narcissists keep relationship trophies is simple. If our perceptions of inanimate objects betray our attitudes to people associated with those objects, then narcissists should use these keepsakes as instruments to feed their own egos rather than as nostalgic vessels of lovelorn melancholy. After all, that’s probably how they treated their exes in real life—as trophy partners whose attractiveness, success, subordination, or even love could be flaunted to showcase their own worth. For grandiose narcissists, who are all about “winning” and publicly dominating others, collecting these objects serves to remind them of their romantic and sexual success. Just like walking into a hunting lodge with those hairy, disembodied skulls of all kinds, the more, the better.
Vulnerable narcissists, meanwhile, might use these keepsakes to help steady their jittery self-esteem, trying to convince themselves that they are indeed special because they attracted someone of extraordinary merit—the object is physical proof of that. In fact, it’s not uncommon for those with low self-esteem to idealize their former partners, often talking about them incessantly (especially about how much their ex adored them), as a form of “indirect self-enhancement.” They might, reason Niemyjska and colleagues, feel compelled to show these keepsakes to others to solicit desperately wanted praise and attention.
Neither of these mechanisms, mind you, has much if anything to do with feeling emotionally close to the former partner or evoking cherished memories of affection and mutual understanding. Such sentimental motives might be why most people hold onto keepsakes. But these types of “communal” social traits—caring, developing intimacy, trusting others, needing others, helping others, and so on—aren’t really in the narcissist’s wheelhouse.
In their first study, the researchers administered a Polish version of the NPI to 301 participants, men and women who reported still having keepsakes from a previous relationship. Participants were asked about the personal meanings they ascribed to these things. Three general “meaning categories” served to tap into the individual’s perceptions of the keepsakes, with participants using a five-point scale to rate the degree to which they saw the objects as: (a) trophy items (e.g., “I consider my ex-partner’s stuff to be a sort of prey or trophy that belongs to me”; “Things associated with my ex-partner document my success of having owned this person,” etc.); (b) cues for nostalgia (e.g., “Things associated with my ex-partner bring back moments we spent together”; “....make me think about good moments from my past,” etc.), and; (c) substitutes for an ex-partner (e.g., “When holding my ex-partner’s stuff, I have a feeling that some part of this person is left in the object”; “I direct my feelings toward the object associated with my ex-partner as if I were addressing them,” etc.).
This first study—which assessed only grandiose narcissism—found empirical support for the hypothesis that higher narcissism scores go hand-in-hand with higher scores on the perceived trophy-item ratings. There was no such correlation with narcissism and the other two meaning categories. This jarring trophy-hunting effect of narcissism panned out for male and female narcissists alike, of all ages and irrespective of the duration of the relationship.
Niemyjska and her colleagues’ second study was a bit more nuanced. It included not only grandiose narcissists’ perceptions of keepsakes, but vulnerable narcissists as well. This study included 414 Polish participants, all of whom completed not only the NPI (to measure grandiose narcissism) but also the HSNS scale, which is explicitly designed to detect traits of vulnerable narcissism. Again, the more narcissistic a person was—whichever flavor it happened to be—the more they perceived the keepsakes as trophies. But unlike the grandiose individuals, the vulnerable narcissists scored higher across the board on all three meaning categories. That is, they were more likely to perceive the keepsakes not only as trophy items, but also as cues for nostalgia and as substitutes for an ex-partner. That finding, admit the authors, was somewhat unexpected. They speculate, however, that in retrospect it makes perfect sense. “We theorize that in contrast to grandiose individuals,” they write:
vulnerable individuals may need to use inanimate objects to regulate not only their need for self-enhancement but also their social needs … Both inanimate objects that elicit nostalgia and are perceived as a partner substitute [have been] shown to alleviate loneliness. Research shows that on the one hand vulnerable individuals appear to be cold and distance in personal relationships, but on other hand they feel lonely.
Incidentally, that partner-substitute quirk is also closely related to the psychology of sexual fetishes involving objects (think of the proverbial “panty bandit”), but that’s another topic altogether. The takeaway message from both of these keepsake studies is that narcissists of all stripes use objects from their fizzled-out relationships as trophies to bolster their own self-worth. Their exes might be long gone, but these tangible leftovers of the relationship continue to testify to their awesome, brilliant, big beautiful existence among mere mortals.
Like what you read? Toss a tip in the jar—any amount that makes sense for you—so I can keep overthinking things on your behalf.