Making a Guy Jealous (Part II)

Yesterday we talked about why it’s a bad idea to bring up an ex/other guys to make a new guy jealous.

But casually mentioning other men in your life can be advantageous when you’re unequivocally dating, although we’re still not advocating using it to inspire jealousy.

Let’s say you want him to come to something with you—your office Christmas party. He kind of balks at the idea and seems totally uninterested. You could nag, but it’s better to say something like, “It’s fine—I can just bring this guy Jeff.” When he asks who Jeff is (or even if he doesn’t), you say something like, “Oh, he’s just this guy I went out with a few times last summer—it’s OK, I’m totally not interested in him in that way, although I wish he would get the hint, but he’s a really cool guy and I’ve been meaning to hang out with him.”

You need to establish that this guy wants you, but totally desexualize the relationship on your end (i.e., assuring him that you’re in no way interested). That way, it looks like you’re going out of your way to prevent jealousy (because there’s no way you’d initiate anything with Jeff!), but you’re still allowing your S.O. to imagine the possibilities of you spending the evening with a guy who has the hots for you.

If you are going to evoke competition, you have to make it seem like you’re going out of your way to do exactly the opposite. If you say, “Fine, I’ll go with Jeff—we’re totally into each other!” it makes you look petty, spiteful, and overly dramatic. The trick is to present it as something that seems like the perfect solution—Jeff is totally in love with you, so of course he’ll go, but don’t worry, you have absolutely zero interest in him, so nothing will happen. Everyone wins!

Or let’s say you’ve been wanting him to take you to Komi, but he won’t take the hint. Say something like, “My friend Jeff’s taking me to Komi on Friday—I’m so excited, because I’ve been really wanting to go but it’s wayyyy too expensive for me to pay my own way, but I need some guy advice. A few months ago, he told me that he was in love with me—he’s really awesome and cute, but I just don’t think of him in that way, and I told him, but I think he still thinks there’s a chance—am I leading him on if I go? I mean, I’m totally, 100 percent, not interested, but I know he won’t let me pay because he knows that’s like the easiest way to make a girl stick around—Oh, you didn’t know that? Yeah, paying for girls is like the easiest way to have her eating out of the palm of your hand—not that I’m saying you should do it with me—I like not being totally under a guy’s spell.”

This looks totally innocent—after all, you’re just asking for advice, and he’s being paranoid if he thinks you’re going to end up at Jeff’s place at the end of the night—how many times have you told your S.O. that you don’t think of this totally sweet, cute, amazing guy Jeff in that way!

But if the issue is that he’s not calling, flaking out, whatever, you need to appear unavailable and uninterested. That means you shouldn’t even be in enough contact with him to drop other guys’ names.

Let’s say he invited you to dinner on Saturday, but texted you at 3 p.m. to say that the restaurant lost the reservation and suggest just coming over to his place instead. You could either 1) head to his apartment and keep saying, “Wow, my ex used to take me to such great dinners!” while you’re making out on his couch or 2) say, “Ah no problem—let’s try for sometime next week!”

The problem with the first scenario is that, no matter how subtle you think you’re being, it’s not working. He’s either missing the point or totally turned off by how obvious you’re being—he gets it, you want dinner, but you’re giving him what he wants and he didn’t have to drop 80 bucks, so all he has to do is ignore your whining.

And Jeff won’t work in this scenario, because neither of you is committed enough for it to be an issue. If you’ve only been on a few dates, and he seems like he wants to keep things casual, it’ll look weird if you start talking about Jeff. He has no right to care if you’re dating other people, and rubbing it in his face makes you look a little skanky. And you don’t know him well enough to be asking him “guy” advice, and even if you did, his reaction probably wouldn’t be, “Wow, I need to take her to Komi,” it would be more like, “Wow, doesn’t she have someone else to ask about this?”