How to Make Your Ex Jealous (in 5 Easy Steps)

Before you read any further, I want to make one thing clear. Jealousy is an incredibly powerful tool that can really mess with people’s heads and even hurt them if used irresponsibly. So if you’re here looking for advice on how to manipulate or emotionally wound someone, you’re at the wrong virtual address. However, if you’re just bummed out about a bad breakup and would like to give your ex a reminder on what they’re missing out on, keep reading!

Jealousy is a funny little thing. It starts off as an annoying little twinge at the back of our minds and it can build into a raging demon that makes us care about things that we hardly gave a damn about before. But for it to really be effective, it needs to be a subtle process. You see, jealousy isn’t something that you can shove in your ex’s face. You can’t just send her a picture of you with a hot girl and scream “suck on that!” So here’s how you go about doing it the proper way…

Step 1: You stop contacting her

 The urge to contact your ex right after a breakup can be one of the most overwhelming feelings ever. Trust me I’ve been there and I know. But if you want your jealousy plotline to take root, this is the first and most important step that you need to start off with. You see, cutting contact with your ex alone isn’t going to make her jealous, but what it will do is get her wondering what you’re up to and what’s going on in your life. This way her own mind does half the work for you.

Usually after a couple of weeks of not hearing from you at all, you’ll start getting the odd text message or two asking how you are holding up or how your life is. Ignore that shit like the plague. When you do this her mind will start formulating all kinds of “what if” scenarios without you having to say a damn word.

“What if he’s already met someone?”

“What if she’s hotter than me?”

“What if I take ages to meet someone as good?”

And just like that the seeds of jealousy will start flourishing in her mind, allowing you to move onto more direct approaches.

Step 2: You start improving your own life

If you were to randomly bump into your ex today, would she be impressed with how great you look or would she feel sorry about how far you’ve let yourself go? If you feel like it would be the latter, you have a lot of buckling up to do. You see, women always want to believe that they were the best thing that happened to you. Even the most unselfish of exes, somewhere deep down, wants to know that you’re pining away for them. I suppose it’s just human nature.

The instant your ex sees that you’re not losing sleep and letting yourself go over her, it’s going to create that worry in her mind that she wasn’t as great as she thought she was. Maybe she wasn’t the hottest girlfriend you ever had, or maybe she wasn’t the best lay of your life. Because if she was, surely you’d be sulking around a whole lot more. When this happens she is going to be full up to the brim with jealousy and anger.

So if you’re still moaning and moping around about the ex you just lost, just stop. Think of this as an opportunity to upgrade yourself to an even better version of you than ever before. Join a gym, get a new haircut and buy yourself some sick new clothes. Whatever you do, focus all that negative energy and sadness into making your life better than it ever was.

Step 3: You use indirect jealousy

Remember what I said before about subtlety being key? Well, there’s nothing quite as subtle and quite as effective as some good-old indirect jealousy. You see, you might sometimes feel that after your breakup your ex doesn’t give a damn about what’s going on with you. But the chances are that she’s actually paying close attention through one way or another. She just won’t be letting you in on it. In fact, I once met a girl who told me that whenever she breaks up with a guy, she always makes sure she has at least a couple of mutual friends with him on Facebook so that she can keep track of what’s new in his life.

So how do you use this knowledge to your advantage? Well, you make your life look as frickin’ awesome as possible. Start focusing on meeting new people (the more hot women the better) and doing new exciting things that you always wanted to do; and document it all on your social media pages. You can bet that your ex will be paying close attention and feeling progressively more jealous as she sees you meeting new people and doing all sorts of fun, exciting things without her.

Step 4: You start dating again

First of all, a word to the wise – I don’t think it’s cool at all to lead people on or to give them false hopes. So you should always be upfront and honest about your intentions. Remember, you’re not looking for the next big love of your life right now. Instead focus on just meeting new people and having fun. In fact, it doesn’t even matter if your “date” is just a female friend that you like hanging out with.

If you and your ex share a circle of friends, you can be sure that she’ll get to know about these dates of yours. And if not, all you have to do is put up an innocuous picture of you and your date doing something fun in public, and I guarantee she’ll take notice. But remember, like I mentioned before, subtlety is key. You don’t want to shove a picture of you making out with some girl in your ex’s face. You want there to be sufficient doubt as to what exactly is going on so that you ex’s imagination can run free and create all sorts of jealous thoughts while at it.

Step 5: You use direct jealousy

Direct jealousy can only be used in this type of situation if you’ve followed each of the steps that I’ve listed out before. You see, for direct jealousy to work there already needs to be a certain amount of jealousy present in your ex’s mind. If not you’re just going to come off as try-hard or desperate.

There are a ton of simple things that you can do to really intensify the jealousy plotline with some direct jealousy at this stage. For example you can text your ex randomly and say “Hey, I saw this movie and it reminded me of the time we watched it together.” And when she asks what the movie is, name one that you’re sure the two of you haven’t watched together. Her reply will usually be something along the lines of “Erm…no…” And this is where you deliver the death blow and say, “Oh, maybe it was someone else.”

Or let’s say that you randomly run into your ex. Ask her how her life has been and genuinely compliment her on how she looks. And then when she least expects it, tell her that you know a guy that you think would be perfect for her and ask if you should set the two up. If you’ve played your cards right and built your jealousy plotline correctly, this will drive her mad with jealousy.

Now before you run off to use these tactics on your ex, I want you to take a moment to think about what your motives are. If you’re looking to hurt them or get some kind of petty revenge, your energy is really better spent focusing on something else. But if you genuinely would like a second shot or just want to gently remind your ex about what they’re missing out on, by all means put this knowledge to good use.