Do they have a sense of confidence and satisfaction in what they have? Are they satisfied with the quality or standard of their lives? When the relationship is over the narcissist will try to make you believe that you are worse off without them. They will try to make you believe that they are so much happier without you. But it's not true, it isn't real. They can make it look like it's real, they know how to coordinate the elements of a situation to produce the desired effect. But that doesn't mean that it is real.
Remember the love bombing phase, remember when you first met the narcissist, that character and the illusion that they displayed to you. They were not real, but at the time it was very believable. You really believe that everything they were showing you was real, but it wasn't, it was an orchestration. It was directed and intended for you to believe in.
It's like when you go to a movie theater, you sit down to watch the movie and while you're watching it, you really believe that what you're seeing is real. That's what makes it so entertaining. But then when the credits start rolling, you realise that it was just a movie and then you walk out. It's the same thing with a narcissist, but now the movie is over. If they're with someone else, you're just watching someone watching a movie, who will soon enough begin to see the credits and then realise that it isn't real. The character that you see now isn't much different to the person you saw when you first met them. They may have made some slight changes to adapt to the new person they're with, but it's still a false character, it's still an illusion. It's designed to fool the new person, while also fooling you into believing that they're actually happy with them. But they're not happy with them, they're not satisfied. They just want you to believe that they are, they want you to think that they've moved on to to live this great life with someone else.
They want you to think that you're missing out on something, but you're not missing out on anything other than lies and an illusion. The best you will ever get from the narcissist is a lie and an illusion. The reality is that most narcissists have a home or job that is not satisfactory or acceptable in quality. It's not something that a healthy mature adult would be interested in or satisfied with. They want to make you believe that they're happy without you, but they're not, they're trying to make you jealous. When really they are jealous of you, they're just trying to project their feelings of jealousy on to you. But what they're involved in is nothing to be jealous of. Narcissists hate responsibility, they hate having to be responsible for anything, they hate having to respond to the best of their ability. They don't want to be involved in important duties or independent decision making. Which then leads them to become involved in things that are of a very low standard. Many of them are in dead-end jobs and they have no motivational desire to attain anything greater. Their living environment is often so poor that they won't even invite you into their homes.
They are involved in things that a healthy, mature adult would not be interested in or satisfied with. But the narcissist can be easily persuaded to believe that they are involved in something great, they could be manipulated too. If someone is feeding their ego and making them feel special or important, they can be very gullible and since they believe in what's been displayed to them, they expect you to believe in it too. They expect you to see it in the same way that they do and they expect you to be jealous of them. But if you look closely at what they're displaying to you, it's never anything special, it's never anything that great for where they are in life. It's not something that a healthy mature adult would be bragging about. A person with good qualities and abilities would not be excessively proud or boastful about that. They might be involved in it if they have no other choices or options, but they're not going to portray it as though they're doing something big. Because they would realise and understand that it's not something to be proud of.
People often trick the narcissist into believing that they're getting a good deal. They sell the narcissist a dream and then the narcissist tries to use that same dream to make you jealous. But you should not believe in that, you should not believe in what they are displaying to you. It is designed to make you jealous. The narcissist is miserable and dissatisfied. They are envious and jealous of you, but they don't reflect on those emotions, they don't want to deal with it because it's too painful for them. So they have to find a way to transfer their feelings of misery and dissatisfaction on to you.
They might be talking with excessive pride and self-satisfaction about their achievements, possessions or abilities, but it isn't real and they are not happier without you. They're actually even more miserable, because now they have no one to project their feelings onto. They have no one that they can use to make themselves feel special or important. So now they feel completely worthless and insignificant. Which is why they have to orchestrate these situations in an attempt to make you jealous, so that they can then project their feelings onto you. But it's all a lie, it's an illusion. Most of them have dead-end jobs and poor living environments. They are involved in things that a healthy mature adult would not be satisfied with or bragging about.
When you see them trying to display these things to you, it isn't worth your attention or consideration. Although they will try to get your attention, especially after you have left them. They will try to pull you back in with them, with some story of how they've accomplished something, but a healthy mature adult is not going to be satisfied with a dead-end job or a poor living environment. That is not something that a healthy, mature adult is going to be interested in.
I'm not saying that it's bad for them to be working or having their own place, I'm just saying that at some point in their lives they should be working to progress that past that point, to put themselves in a more desirable or favorable position. A healthy, mature adult should expect more from themselves and should want more out of life. They wouldn't be satisfied with a minimal standard of living, something that a teenager would be satisfied with. But this is what the narcissist will use to try to make you jealous. Things that don't involve any growth or development, things that are dead end.
You should not be jealous of the narcissist. Most of the things they're trying to make you jealous of, they're not satisfied with anyway. It's just something they're using to manage with their difficulty to live or accomplish something. They're not doing good and they're not happy. Don't be jealous of the narcissist. They're not doing big things. They want to make you believe that they are, so that they can make you feel jealous, but there's really nothing to be jealous of. What they're involved in is nothing to brag about and it's nothing to be proud of. But they will exaggerate it and act as though it's so much more than what it is, in an attempt to make you jealous. They are not happy without you and that is why they're doing everything they can to transfer their feelings onto you.