[I]f she has a vision of a shared future that doesn’t resonate with you... exaggerating your feelings in order to preserve the status quo would amount to “breadcrumbing”: leading her on, and preventing her from moving along with her life. The prototype breadcrumber is the manipulative cad who just wants to keep all options open on a Friday night. More typical breadcrumbers, I suspect, are driven not by cynicism but by uncertainty, and by a desire to avoid conflict....
Breadcrumbs. I tend to think of Hansel and Gretel dropping breadcrumbs to mark a path that leads back out of the forest. But breadcrumbs fail as path markers because the birds eat them. But there's also the idea of feeding a person mere crumbs. Isn't that usually seen from the point of view of the person offered the crumbs? You're just giving me crumbs! I don't think I've seen it from the perspective of the person hoping to get what they want by only giving crumbs. So I don't think this is a good buzzword — not unless it's used by the person who's rejecting the offer of crumbs.
Googling, I see that it is, in fact, a well-established term for manipulating someone. Why are people letting themselves be manipulated by metaphorical crumbs? I'm blaming the victim here.
Posts
32 comments:
Crumbs are left to mislead or manipulate in contemptuous appeal.
We just saw Gone With The Wind at the theater last week. Ashley Wilkes was a breadcrumber. How had I never heard that term before?
"I'm blaming the victim here." That made me laugh.
Breadcrumbing you say? I can only imagine what getting breadboxed would be like, or, worse yet, getting breadfruited. Sounds painful, and what a mess.
Dumb term. Probably started with gamers.
It's a poorly derived term, IMO. I think 'stringing someone along' is a far better one, because it employs the notion of a tether - in this case a metaphor for an emotional connection that is sustained for the purpose of preserving the relationship, but possibly for reasons other than romance and commitment.
'Breadcrumbing' is a nice single word for the texter's benefit, like 'Gaslighting' - but it doesn't have as strong or obvious a connotation.
His girlfriend told him she loves him. We don’t know if she actually does. Maybe he’s being fed the breadcrumb.
Another term for leading someone on. Nothing new here.
Shorter article
- my girlfriend said she loves me and I am not sure I am there yet - what should I do?
- dump her immediately so she can move on to a better, more fulfilling relationship, you piece of crap cis-male jock-type trying to keep your options for getting laid on Friday night open --- just like all of you did to me back in college...
Throughout my life I have said "I love you" to dozens of women with varying degrees of certainty. Some I was very sure, like 97%, that I had a genuine emotional connection, and there definitely was. Others, it was like flipping a coin. I am certain that I love my wife 99%, but the only people I love in the unconditional way soap operas have conditioned us to love are my children.
The problem in my mind is modern relationships. They are difficult. It is unfathomable the number of variables that can come up that will fuck with your life and the things you thought you loved. And you know what? Women won't admit this but it's the same for them. They say "I love you" in the same way that I do or men do, but our society doesn't allow what is totally logical to be obvious because fuck men, that's why.
So I have done what so many men like myself have done before, I have said "I love you" to many women without meaning it. I have said it to get them in the sack. I have said it because I like hanging out with them more than I usually would other women. I have said it only a few times because I really really meant it. But the fact remains, until I consummate my vow not to leave my wife and she consummates hers not to leave me until death, it will always be 99%, or 99.9%, or whatever percentage figure you could choose to represent Schroedinger's Marriage.
My children are the only ones who get 100% unconditional-here-is-my-kidney-and-I-will-love-you-even-when-you-hurt-me-and-put-me-in-a-home "I love you's". The best anyone else is getting is 99%. And I think that's pretty damn good.
Well the songwriters in the Brill Building had an answer to "bread crumbing" in their song "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow". Teen angst was real in the early 60s.
And then the pill came along and casual sex got easier and more frequent. Last night my wife and I had dinner with some friends. One couple in the group had been married 54 years--and the wife said that she and her future husband had been in a "relationship" for two plus years when she finally asked him "Where are we going". What was his reply--my wisecrack was that he'd probably said "we're going to the restaurant." Well that wasn't the answer to the question that was asked. And all's well that ends well-and they got married.
Now long married myself, my wife and her car navigation system engage in "bread crumbing" that drives me wild. We might be going to somewhere 20 miles away from our home. The Los Angeles freeway and surface street system offers a lot of different ways from Point A to Point B. Sometimes the "little lady under the dash" makes a silly instruction--or leads you on a convoluted route. My wife faithfully takes each instruction one at a time--without looking ahead at the queue of instructions to see whether the proposed route makes sense.
That's "breadcrumbing" for oldsters.
Breadcrumbing.
How crummy.
Anyone who does it must be a crumb. Or even a crumbbum.
“I think I love you, so what am I so afraid of?
I'm afraid that I'm not sure of
A love there is no cure for
I think I love you, isn't that what life is made of?
Though it worries me to say
That I've never felt this way”
...I am certain that I love my wife 99%, but the only people I love in the unconditional way soap operas have conditioned us to love are my children.
RSM hits it out of the park with this description.
I don't think that "breadcrumbing" is a good term to describe leading someone on when you're not really serious about them. Everyone associates a trail of bread crumbs with Hansel and Gretel and that's not what the bread crumbs were used for.
If the man is looking for a wife instead of a just a sex partner, and if his conclusion to that point is that the woman would make a good wife and mother, then the obvious right move is to profess love in return. If she really is good wife material, he will come to love her.
And if he isn't looking for a wife, he'll lie to her no matter what my advice might be.
Yes well love isn't a feeling. If you don't take your child to the dentist people will say that you don't love him.
The victim doesn't know they are the victim until the truth comes out. The behavior of someone who thinks you are the one and someone who wants to keep you around so they won't be lonely/until the find the right one, can be the same.
When I hear "breadcrumbs" I think of web navigation. It doesn't lead you on, it makes it easier for you to go up a level. I mostly see it on shopping sites now.
When I say love in this article, you will take it to mean the pleasant confusion which we know exists. When I say passion, I mean passion. - Thurber, Is Sex Necessary
RCOCEAN II:
Anyone who does it must be a crumb. Or even a crumbbum.
Most of them are really just flakes.
One more reason to stick to a paleo diet.
But what can I do?
I'm lonely too. And it makes me feel so good to know
She'll never leave me.
There are times when the World gives you more than you asked for. But more often, the World gives you exactly what you will settle for. If that is some little crumbs of bread, so be it.
But to me, "bread crumbs" are the notes I take when I am trying to build some new piece of software, so that, in the unlikely event it all works, I will be able to do it again.
table scrap more appropriate?
Eat the bread and leave the crumbs.
Offer crumbs to gain the chick's attention.
Leave a trail of crumbs to direct, misdirect, "maldirect" to a chamber of abortions... and a pot of witch's stew, too.
To me it’s trying to keep a way to go back if you fear moving forward. I think of the opening of Annie Dillard’s “The Writing Life”:
“When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year. You make the path boldly and follow it fearfully. You go where the path leads. At the end of the path, you find a box canyon. You hammer out reports, dispatch bulletins. The writing has changed, in your hands, and in a twinkling, from an expression of your notions to an epistemological tool. The new place interests you because it is not clear. You attend. In your humility, you lay down the words carefully, watching all the angles. Now the earlier writing looks soft and careless. Process is nothing; erase your tracks. The path is not the work. I hope your tracks have grown over; I hope birds ate the crumbs; I hope you will toss it all and not look back.”
Women can say I love you and mean it. One day at a time. They can say I love you every day for 40 years, one day at a time. And the next day they can say it and not mean it at all. Everyday they can say it and mean it, but they always mean it when they don't love you. And they may never say they don't really love you even if they say they do, every single day.
It’s just that it's up to you to figure out if it's true or not, one day at a time.
And now there's this long line at the gonorrhea clinic.
The Faith of the Canaanite Woman
(Mark 7:24–30)
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And a Canaanite woman from that region came to Him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is miserably possessed by a demon.”
But Jesus did not answer a word. So His disciples came and urged Him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
The woman came and knelt before Him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
But Jesus replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
“Yes, Lord,” she said, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
“O woman,” Jesus answered, “your faith is great! Let it be done for you as you desire.”
And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
It's a bad term. Not only because it's out of step with its historical meaning (a subtly marked path to safety), but because there are already perfectly good terms for what its new meaning describes.
Here's a similar ethical quandary that many a man has been confronted with:
"Does this dress make me look fat?"
Is the man who responds with a reassurance "breadcrumbing?"
The "breadcrumbs" are meant to be a lure for hungry birds. If a person says I love you back and does not mean it, that is like setting a lure for a needy person because only a needy person will fall for that disception. In a way it's an insult, worse than saying I do not feel that way but I do like you.
When a person professes their love that doesn't mean they expect to be loved back; they really would like to be loved but what they really want is clarity. Are my feelings for this person appropriate? I'm willing to risk rejection because I'd rather be clear about this relationship and I want to know if my feelings are reciprocated.
Usually as I understood it, you don't say I love you to anyone unless you believe the other person loves you. My personal code when I was dating was to not stay involved in a relationship if I felt the person liked me a lot more than I did them. I thought it was unfair to use someone for the flattery my ego, knowing they liked me.
I thought intimate sexual relationships were past the need to lie about "love" because of the whole concept of FWB "friends with benefits." It's acceptable to like someone as "a friend" and to have sex and not have a romantic commitment. I don't see the point of lying about love. In that case that wouldn't be about getting sex but about some kind of emotional ego trip, reflecting a narcissistic need on the part of the liar.
Post a Comment