When your girl tries to make you jealous, you have four options, in ascending order of personal benefit and relationship management effectiveness:
- act butthurt
- promptly try to make her jealous
- tease her*
- ignore her
Act butthurt, defensive, or otherwise emotionally pained, and you can count in hours the time to her dumping you.
Immediately attempting your own jealousy incitement ploy risks seeming ham-fisted and try-hard. She will see through a blatant table-turning maneuver. It’s better to spin your jealousy plotlines when they aren’t kneejerk prompted by her own jealousy provocations. However, a prompt response that may include flirting with another woman is better than an emotional outburst that will tell your girl she has “won” this battle and has you wrapped around her finger.
*I added this choice after commenter Jakius reminded me of it. Of course, teasing is a great response — “hey you may want to try licking your lips next time, your flirting is really bad, needs work” — and it was an oversight on my part to leave it off (in fact, teasing and ignoring are my go-to options whenever a girl tries to make me jealous).
Ignoring her is imo the best response. (I find teasing can be misconstrued by your girl as evidence that she unsettled you, especially if you have trouble teasing with the required amused mastery while in the fog of actual jealousy.) She will seethe with impotence. Acting like you don’t even notice her attempts to stoke your jealousy is a nuclear nonverbal neg. It’ll cause her ploy to completely rebound against her, and she’ll start pressing you for your attention.
You could NEXT her, but that’s a trigger happy response associated with hotheads. Every girl has her moments when she wants to incite an angry possessive passion from her lover. The NEXT option should be saved for chronic manipulators.
Ignoring her is a short term solution for those infrequent moments when your girl lapses into insecurity or entitlement. But a chronic offender needs a stronger corrective. Chronic abusers of the jealousy tactic will need eventual punishment (either leaving her or lowering the boom on her). The boom-lowering option can be accomplished by, in stern but controlled language and in clear terms, telling her to cut the shit or you’ll take your leave. The other boom-lowering corrective is basically Dread Game: a slow burn type of searing instructional that adjusts her behavior incrementally, slowly, but profoundly for the better.
For instance, say your girl tries to make you jealous. The Dread Game option would involve you openly flirting with another girl in view of your gf. If she doesn’t cut it off with the dude she’s flirting with and come shimmying back wondering what you’re up to, get ready to end it with her. (9 out of 10 times, she’ll crack first under the pressure of dueling jealousy plotlines as long as your frame is solid, thick, tight.)
It’s good to instill in your woman the knowledge that you have options and won’t hesitate to use them if she disappoints you, and this can be accomplished many ways but most permanently and effectively through your attitude which should subcommunicate at all times that you aren’t a domesticated eunuch.
***
Captain Obvious, with the Comment of the Week:
Either pwn thyself, or prepare to be pwned by someone else.
Nice. This spiffy aphorism is the central thesis of relationship management, and really, of all human interaction.
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