What is “breadcrumbing”, the emotional crumbs that some people use as a m...

sahida652

The conversation moved to another place and now they have been talking on Instagram for weeks. Every now and then, when you post a story on this platform, he leaves you an emoji. And when you share a photo, he doesn't just like it, but he also leaves you comments.

There are times when he sends you a direct message saying good morning. And other times he sends you photos while he is at work to show you something about his daily life.

You think that since he's hooked on you on that social network, and you like his personality, it's time to take the next step . You ask him out, to meet in person with the intention of starting a new type of relationship.

Then he gives you the runaround. He says he's very busy, his schedule WhatsApp Number List is full of commitments, and he even says he's sick. He can never meet up.

Even though he doesn't accept your invitations, he continues to interact with you in the same way on social media. And you keep responding to him, hoping to one day see him outside of cyberspace. But that doesn't happen.



A couple on the screen of two cell phonesImage source,Getty Images
Photo caption,Social media encourages behaviors like breadcrumbing because they make it easier to communicate intermittently with others.
If this story—which is a hypothetical example — sounds familiar, you may have been a victim of what some psychologists call breadcrumbing .

According to Raúl Navarro Olivas , a professor of Psychology at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, this is a pattern of behavior in which a person shows interest in another intermittently but constantly, without having the real intention of making an emotional commitment or establishing a formal relationship.

It is also a practice of manipulation .

“The person who breadcrumbs sends signals to another person because he or she wants to have their attention or intermittent reinforcement. They seek, with messages that are inconsistent over time, to ensure that the other person is always present,” says the expert.

Its origin, although it cannot be identified, is known to be not current. What is recent is the use of the term breadcrumbing .

"There are many terms appearing, especially in the English-speaking world, which we then bring to Spanish-speaking countries, but we don't have a way to translate them exactly. This sometimes makes research difficult," he says.

In addition to breadcrumbing , the professor refers to concepts such as ghosting or love bombing , which are used to encompass certain behaviors that, while not new, are enhanced by social networks.