Breadcrumbing can be a manipulative way to keep someone in your mind so that you can’t fully move forward, keeping you as a pawn in another person’s game. In this article, I address an email from someone who is dealing with their ex, who has been breadcrumbing her for 13 years!
Have you ever wondered why someone from your past keeps popping up in your life through random messages years after the relationship ended?
I received a message from someone who was with her boyfriend for 10 years before he left her for another woman. He claimed nothing happened with this other woman while they were together, but eventually he moved out, moved on with her, married her, and they had a child together.
What’s interesting is that even after all these years – over a decade – this ex-boyfriend still randomly messages her. Once when she was out walking with her family, he texted saying, “Hey, did I just see you and your dad and your sister?” Over the years, she’s received completely random messages out of the blue as he reached certain milestones in his life, keeping her updated.
This happens a lot. Men are the main culprits of breadcrumbing, at least in my experience with those I’ve worked with on their relationships. But why?
One of the main reasons one might breadcrumb is to keep you connected as a backup plan. I know that sounds so cold, but it happens a lot. I’ve seen this with two or three women in my life whose exes continued to breadcrumb them to keep them connected. I’ve seen situations where the person who breadcrumbs is driving through town and says, “Hey, I’m in town. You want to get a bite to eat?” That sounds like friendship, but if every time they got a bite to eat with that person in the past, it led to sex or something similar, it tells me the other person’s intentions are to keep that person as a possible hookup.
Then there’s the ego thing. Some breadcrumbers need to feed their ego to make sure they’re still in good standing with you because they don’t like to be seen as “the bad guy.” Otherwise, it will be a crushing blow to their ego and self-esteem. Some people don’t like the idea that someone might not like them.
There are insecure people who want to feel needed, even though they discarded you. They still want to keep that connection for multiple reasons. They want to make sure you’re still on their radar. If you’re on the radar, then no matter what happens, they’re there for you. That’s how they keep looking like “the good guy.”
And if there’s a possible chance for a connection, whether it’s them cheating on their partner to be with you, or they broke up or got a divorce with someone else, and now want to connect with you, at least you’re always in their black book.
If somebody is breadcrumbing you for the reasons I mentioned, you can tell by how they reach out and act as if nothing bad ever happened, nothing ever changed, or there were no hurt feelings. They might say something completely out of context,t like, “Hey, I just bought a book,” or some sort of non-sequitur that isn’t connected to anything before it.
So if you had a breakup a year ago and they send you a text that says, “Hey, I just saw somebody that looked like you,” completely out of the blue, there’s no connection to what you’ve been talking about recently because you haven’t been talking to them. When that happens, that’s not necessarily healthy or even honest. They’re just keeping that connection, putting that breadcrumb out there so you’ll follow the trail. And they want you to continue following the trail so that they can keep some sort of connection with you.
Some people like this are playing the long game. The long game could even take years before you “accidentally” run into them again.
Breadcrumbing can be toxic, especially if you did not want to keep in touch with them. Someone who doesn’t honor your wishes to stay out of your life means they don’t care about your boundaries or how you feel. That’s toxic! If you tell someone, “I don’t really want to talk to you anymore,” and they try to talk to you anyway, they’re not honoring what you want. That is not loving or caring behavior. It’s selfish.
They could also be attempting a manipulation where they’re trying to eventually coerce you (doing that long game thing) back into a situation with them that probably wouldn’t go anywhere anyway because they have dysfunctions and insecurities they’re not choosing to heal in themselves. After all, why would somebody text you out of the blue with some seemingly insignificant information when you’ve already moved on with your life?
Breadcrumbers throw thoughts into your head to remind you of them.
They don’t want you to stop thinking about them. And as long as they keep planting thoughts in your head, you won’t stop thinking about them. Again, the long game. They’re trying to keep them in your thoughts at perhaps even a subconscious level so that they are always on your mind in some form.
Breadcrumbing will drive you crazy unless you block the person or tell them, “Please don’t reach out to me anymore.” That’s if they respect your boundaries. If they do, great! You can move on with your life. If they don’t, my suggestion is to block them.
People who care about you care about how you want to honor yourself and will honor you honoring yourself. That’s how it works with healthy people. They back off and say, “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re right, I shouldn’t reach out to you because you told me not to, and I won’t.”
What’s not healthy is the drip feeding of manipulative behaviors. Emotional abuse is all about drip feeding. It’s a slow, sometimes daily dose of subtly abusive behaviors. If a person is not honoring your boundaries after multiple attempts to get them to stop, that is abusive.
Someone who reaches out to you, especially after a breakup or hard feelings, and they don’t mention those hard feelings or offer any apologies for their role in the breakup, that’s something you want to watch out for and be aware of. It could be the beginning or continuation of breadcrumbing.
You don’t want somebody continually coercing you. When they keep planting thoughts about them into your head, that kind of keeps you dependent on them in a way (again, at a very low level in your mind).
If their messages seem very neutral or even friendly, it’s also another way to kind of erase the history they had with you. That history can be sordid and hurtful and all kinds of things. If they don’t want you to remember them like that, breadcrumbing could be their attempt at erasing your bad memories and installing good ones.
Being under someone’s influence when they don’t have your best interests in mind takes away your power. Imagine you’re having a great day, and then suddenly an ex sends you a text out of the blue and says, “Hey, I bought new doors at Home Depot.”
What? Why are you telling me this?
But it’s too late. Now that person is in your mind. They want you to think about replying or even calling back. It’s deceptive. All they have to do, if they really want to talk to you again (and you haven’t put up a boundary telling them not to reach out), is call you up and say, “Hey, I was thinking about you. Can we have a conversation?”
That seems like a pretty healthy and normal thing to do! Even if your reply is, “Hell no, I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” at least it was a straightforward conversation.
Remember, you have the ability to block and move on when somebody does that. If they are always putting thoughts in your mind, trying to force you to think about them, don’t let it happen unless you absolutely want it to.
And if you do want to stay connected with them, remember who they were, because who they were hasn’t changed unless they are willing to talk about who they were. In other words, if they said, “Hey, you know, when I did that thing to you, that was terrible. And this is what I’ve learned.”
That’s a great start to a conversation. It doesn’t mean you still want any type of relationship with them, but that would be a lot healthier than some random or disconnected comment like, “Hey, I bought some paint!”
I remember my ex-wife got a message out of the blue from her ex, and it was definitely somebody who wanted to keep her in mind and on his list in his black book. Even though it was just a neutral text and “no big deal,” I thought, That’s not right. She’s married to me now, and now this random ex is sending her this weird message out of context, which just seems to be a ploy to make her think of him?
To the person who wrote, I’m glad you’re out of that relationship. It doesn’t sound like it was going to work out anyway. Now it’s time to free yourself of the relationship fully, because you don’t need someone who’s in a relationship reaching out to his exes. And if you have any thought of reconnecting with him, which is exactly what he’s doing now (or at least it sounds like it), this is likely who he’ll be with his other exes, so keep that in mind.
If he is still with the other woman he left for, remember that this is his M.O. This is what he does. So if you are with somebody who does that or has done that to reconnect with you, you have to believe that’s what they’re going to do with their exes when they’re with you. That’s important to keep in mind.
I believe it’s always better to have a real, honest conversation with someone rather than some arbitrary message that doesn’t relate to anything and only seems to plant the thought of that person into your mind. That’s just sneaky to me.
You deserve someone who honors you and doesn’t seem like they’re trying to trick you to get you to like them. You deserve an honest person who doesn’t spend their time reaching out to their exes.
