Breadcrumbing...

Breadcrumbing in dating refers to when someone gives you just enough attention to keep you interested in a relationship without any real intention of progressing or committing to it. It's essentially a form of manipulation where they lead you on with sporadic, non-committal interactions like social media likes, fleeting messages, or vague plans, all while avoiding a true commitment.

In my own experience, I will tell you that it isn’t just in dating.  I have experienced this in a committed, long term relationship which I know is next level fucked up.  But I also know, I am not alone.

How it plays out in a committed relationship is the other person says many of the “right” things but doesn’t actually follow through with most of them.  They leave you tiny crumbs of affection, attention, always with the promise of more, like a whole slice of bread to nourish you at some later time. But that time never comes and you starve yourself almost to death waiting for the slice that never comes.

Signs of Breadcrumbing:

Intermittent Communication:  You might receive sporadic texts, calls, or messages, often followed by long periods of silence.

Surface-Level Interactions:  Conversations may be flirty or fun, but don't progress to meaningful discussions or deeper connection.

Vague Plans:  They may agree to plans but never commit to specifics or follow through, leaving you uncertain.

Social Media Attention:  They like your posts or stories occasionally, but don't engage in deeper interactions.

No Commitment:  Despite showing interest, they avoid discussing the future or the nature of the relationship.

Why It Happens:

Breadcrumbing can be a way for someone to maintain a sense of having options or enjoy the attention they receive without investing in a serious relationship. It can also be a sign of insecurity or a lack of clarity about their own desires.

How to Deal with Breadcrumbing:

Communicate Your Needs:  Clearly express your feelings and boundaries to the person breadcrumbing you.

Set Expectations: Make it clear you're looking for a more meaningful connection and are not comfortable with this type of behavior.

Consider Your Boundaries: If they continue to breadcrumb, it might be time to reassess the relationship and consider whether it's healthy for you to continue.

Don't Feel Obligated:  You are not obligated to stay in a relationship that doesn't meet your needs or desires.

Prioritize Your Well-being:  If the breadcrumbing behavior is causing you distress, it's important to prioritize your own emotional well-being and remove yourself from the situation if necessary.

In essence, breadcrumbing is a manipulative tactic that can leave you feeling confused, hurt, and undervalued. Recognizing the signs and addressing the situation with clear communication and healthy boundaries is crucial for protecting your own emotional well-being.

In my personal and professional experience, breadcrumbing is the behavior that immediately follows lovebombing.  They get you hooked with attention and affection that feels next level because it is.  Then later, they begin to cut off the communication, attention and affection down to crumbs you have to search high and low for.  Also in my personal and professional experience, breadcrumbing only happens with someone who rates high on the narcissism or sociopath scale.  Normal people don’t do this.  Ever.  Let me explain...

If you are in a normal/healthy relationship with another person and you have a conversation about your needs not being met, a normal, healthy person will listen without being defensive (provided you have set this conversation up with good communication and not an attack) and then reflect on their own behavior and make appropriate adjustments.  In a normal, healthy relationship, you want to attend to your partners needs and desires just as much as they want to attend to yours.  The response to a conversation is not to give you less and less until you are starving for affection and attention.  And it is also not normal for the person to get pissed off and then blame you for a whole bunch of shit and deflect the attention away from the issue at hand.

Healthy relationships do not involve breadcrumbing.  Like ever.  No one in a good relationship thinks that the best way to deal with needs not being met is to give less and less.

Also in my personal and professional experience, people put up with this kind of behavior because they don’t value themselves.  So when the object of their affection begins giving them less, they tend to feel like they deserve that treatment on some level.  In my experience and opinion, this is the most sinister thing about life with a narcissist...they see a wound in you and then they do everything they can to exploit that wound for their own personal gain...which leaves me questioning where exactly the line is between narcissists and sociopaths.

We tend to accept less because we are afraid to ask for more, fear we do not deserve more, do not know how to ask, are terrified the person will leave if we ask for more, or are so love starved that we believe the pittance we get from the other person is better than nothing.  I can tell you from my own experience, it isn’t!  Like at all.

Given how much time I have sat at the edge of love’s demise in my professional life, you would think I would have been more prepared for dealing with this type of relationship in my personal life. I wasn’t.  In fact, I didn’t even see it coming.  I was all caught up in the lovebombing thinking that I finally found someone who valued me and cared for me.  It was heady stuff, so much so that I didn’t properly evaluate what was actually going on, the sporadic dating history of the person in front of me, see there were no long term relationships in this person’s life other than family and the familial relationships were strained to the point of snapping.

Perhaps I didn’t see because I didn’t want to.  It all felt so good in the beginning.  When you wait your whole life to hear that you are hot, desirable, wanted, appreciated and valued, it is hard to walk away from that.  Personally, I had to hit a bottom with all of this to get the tools to properly evaluate these type of people.  Oh, I could spot them in YOUR life, but my own, I was completely inept.

I think that is the most insidious thing about a relationship with a narcissist, they know exactly what they are doing the whole time, they see your wound, your lack of worth, and then they exploit it.  You think you are falling in love, but really, you are a mark, because it is all a con game and you are the patsy that is being set up from the word go.  The fact it feels like love and something real is the biggest selling point.

Sick and twisted.  I KNOW!  I pray that you don’t have to experience this for yourself to be able to see the warning signs.  But in my own personal experience, I couldn’t even though I had over 25 years experience with it.  I had to live through it to be able to identify it early on and then walk away.

If you feel breadcrumbed, your best course of action is to attempt to have a conversation with the other person about the fact that the effort they are expending to stay in a relationship with you is falling below the mark required to continue the relationship.  Not a threat but an honest conversation about what you are willing to accept and what you are not.  If that conversation is met with defensive accusations, storming out of the house, or fingers being pointed at you, then take heed.  You are likely in a toxic relationship with a narcissist and you were just given important information.

No one likes to hear they are letting their partner down.  But healthy people listen to their partners and reflect.  They come back to the table with an honest self appraisal and say things like, “I am sorry I let you down, I can do better”and then actually do better. Or “while I don’t completely agree with you on what you stated, I do see that you need more from me and I am going to do my best to provide that to you” and then they do so.

With a narcissist change will only happen in very small ways or not at all.  Mostly, your needs will be your fault and they will define themselves outside the sphere of responsibility.  And more often, they will turn the tables on you and somehow a conversation that started about what you needed and wanted, will turn into a conversation that ends up with them telling you how you are not measuring up and you apologizing and walking away with a “what the fuck just happened” kind of feeling.

True partners care to meet the needs, expectations and desires of the other. Not to the exclusion of their own, but in a way that augments both people’s lives.  Breadcrumbing is a gigantic red flag that not only are you going to starve in this relationship, you are also going to be manipulated, gaslit and lied to so much that in a short period of time you will have a very hard time distinguishing the true from the false.  You will starve to death emotionally and be the one apologizing for the lack of sustenance.

If you feel breadcrumbed, ask for help.  Chances are you are in way over your head and don’t even know it.  Call a coach, a therapist or someone trained in dealing with personality disorders. You are going to need help to appropriately assess where you are and what to do.

As always, if I can help, let me know.  I have been there, I do know the way out.

And hopefully learned my lesson so that I can, at least on this topic, never say again...still, ever again.

A photo I took in Ireland when I was in the relationship where I was being breadcrumbed, I took the photo because I knew it was representative of what was happening to me, it still took me two more months to leave him for good.