Transcription
Hi everyone, and welcome back to this series, sort of a narcissistic abuse handbook. It's a review of many of the terms you often hear people talking about in videos or when you read blogs or articles. And I did this series with the hope of bringing clarity and clarification on these terms. Not only will it give you knowledge about what these terms are, but some of these are techniques that you may use or things that may happen to you. And with greater understanding, you may be in a better position to cope with them.
So today, we're gonna take on the concept and the topic of breadcrumbing. So let me think about breadcrumbing. Let's, let's take a step back. And when you look at your narcissistic relationship, are you ever shocked at how so little that they give you go such a far away? Are you ever surprised at how just a tiny little bit of validation from them is actually enough for you? Think about it. A relationship with a narcissist is a famine of sorts, because all validation, awareness, empathy, kindness, respect, compassion, reciprocity, mutuality—all of it goes out the window in a narcissistic relationship. The few times you get any of it, you gobble it up because you're starving. You're satisfied with these teeny tiny little scraps that you get. A friend of mine once called it living on crumbs. And when you're starving, those crumbs are gobbled up and cherished because you're so hungry.
I have worked with countless clients and heard numerous stories who will run excitedly into one of our sessions or consultations and say, "We went away for the weekend. He didn't ignore a meal during dinner, and he asked me if I wanted a glass of wine, and he put down his phone." And they were like, really excited about this. And that, that little bit, that thing wasn't enough for them after months of neglect, after months of not being seen. That little bit, putting their phone down during dinner, this was enough. And in this way, narcissists are able to do something called breadcrumbing.
Breadcrumbing is a process that often follows the process of devaluing. It's a bit like a person trying to attract a duck out of the water or something. I remember doing that as a kid. You lay a little trail of breadcrumbs to draw the duck back out of the water, draw the duck out of the water and follow your around. They just draw breadcrumbs, put little psychological breadcrumbs to draw you back in. And of course, to a narcissist, you're not more deserving of anything but the breadcrumbs. You're not deserving of anything more significant. God forbid they make a major shift and actually value you or encourage you or respect you. That's the whole loaf of bread. That's not coming. Their devaluation and their contempt of you means that you will really only be worth a few scraps or a few breadcrumbs to draw you back in. And you want to know the worst part about all of this? It works. So those breadcrumbs are actually enough to draw you back in for many people.
The process of breadcrumbing is viewed through a lens of hope. That one night at dinner where your partner is not on his phone, that one day you visit your mother and she doesn't criticize you during the entire day, that one day your toxic friend actually listens to you talk about yourself without making it about her. You take that one day and it gets interpreted as, "Maybe they've changed." And then as they throw you more breadcrumbs, you hold on to them as something so old, precious evidence for your faulty hypothesis that, hmm, maybe things are getting better. Maybe now my partner gets me. Maybe now my mother gets me. Maybe now my friend is cool. It's interesting, honestly, how stale the breadcrumbs can be, and yet it still works because it really does still work.
Now, in general, narcissists are quite contemptuous of intimacy and deeply close relationships. They tend to sneer at how vulnerable you need to be in a relationship and the vulnerability that a relationship actually requires. So part of the process of breadcrumbing is the fact that they really don't do the things and won't do the things that are important to do in a relationship. So after the love-bombing is over, and I know many of you didn't experience love-bombing, so even if it ever happened, but if after it's over, then you're gonna slowly see that the relationship will slide into devaluing and then maybe even slide into discarding. And then you start getting by on less and less in the relationship, less validation, less presence. But they learn early on that they can get by by only giving you breadcrumbs, and you learn early on to subsist on those breadcrumbs.
This point about breadcrumbing is one that I really, really tried to make in my book, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" And talk about is like the one way that the narcissistic relationship can often trick you is when you have the coincidence of your needs aligning with their needs. It may be that at a moment in time, especially early in the relationship, you may have had like a shared goal, or you have something that they need, or your excitement about something that they really want. I don't know, like something like a new house or a new opportunity is harnessed, your enthusiasm is harnessed to make it happen. But it only, the chip is only working because you are onboard with them. Once that is no longer the case, that your needs are no longer aligned, they're not gonna be so interested anymore. Then it becomes a world of breadcrumbs. But because there was a moment in time when it really felt like it wasn't just breadcrumbs, you get confused.
Breadcrumbing typically looks like the opposite of love-bombing. Love-bombing is loaves and ovens and bakeries full of bread. Breadcrumbing is really sparse. And as a result, breadcrumbing isn't at all about grandiose gifts or experiences. When you're being breadcrumbed, it might mean that the thing you get is that for a few days, they may stop doing that one thing you keep asking them to stop doing, whatever that may be. I don't know, stop having drinking so much after dinner, or I don't know, stop cursing, or whatever. Or they offered to do something that is such a simple courtesy that even a stranger would do it for you. But because these simple courteous gestures have often been missing from your relationship, the presence of these gestures can feel like a new dawn in all kinds of hope in the relationship. And sadly, because of the hope that keeps narcissistic relationships afloat, you know, I say it's all about hope, that's why people stay in these relationships. You bite, you nibble on those breadcrumbs, you start to follow the trail of breadcrumbs that they are leaving for you.
And sadly, breadcrumbing may happen exactly at the time in the relationship, just when you are getting better at boundaries and you are engaging less and pulling away a little bit. Maybe you're even just sort of getting a little less interested, or maybe gray rocking. It can be so enraging to recognize that your narcissist actually does notice the subtle stuff you do. They just only notice it when it is convenient for them or when your behavior is inconveniencing them. So a lot of people saying, "Is this person even know I'm alive?" Oh yeah, they know you're alive. They know you're alive when noticing you is in their best interests. So just as you are finding your strength in this relationship, maybe even setting boundaries, that's often when the breadcrumbing begins. They start giving you the crumbs that are just enough to plant a seed of doubt in your mind about the relationship. Just when you were ready to really step away from this relationship in a meaningful way, they sense that you are gonna step away and figure out that they can keep you in the relationship with very little effort. There's the breadcrumbs. And once that doubt gets activated, their breadcrumbs may be just enough to keep you in the game a little bit longer. You learn to live on crumbs.
I've seen firsthand how breadcrumbing has literally resulted in narcissistic relationships lasting for years longer than they really should have. You were already onto them, but just those little breadcrumbs would keep you on the chain. And it's amazing how people can adapt and learn to live on the narcissist's little bitty scraps. Once the narcissist learns that they need to give you so little to keep you, that's all they're gonna do. They're gonna give you a little. And they are so masterful at figuring out the very minimum amount to give you and still keep you on the chain.
Now, over time, when you are in a narcissistic relationship, you learn to do most things by yourself. It's amazing how often people, I guess, I've just kind of learned just to do everything on my own because I might as well be alone. And the fight is often not worth it on the mundane tasks of life, like emptying the dishwasher. And it may not even be worth it on the big-ticket things, like helping you out on raising the kids. You have to learn to be self-reliant in these relationships, or you will absolutely go insane waiting for them to do the things that need to be done. So that means that breadcrumbing can also take the whole form of them helping out with simple household tasks, like simple errands, or simple responsibilities with the pets or the kids. Here's the thing: these are the things they should have been doing at a minimum. They shouldn't be getting a medal and a parade for emptying the dishwasher or cutting the lawn. But after not having had that support for years, even if they just do it once, you're almost startled, like, "Wow, they went and did that." And it becomes one more way the breadcrumbing happens, just doing the basic simple things that they should be doing as a person would in a relationship.
Narcissists are arrogant and audacious enough to even use their breadcrumbing to guilt you. They'll say things like, "I offered you a glass of wine last night," or "I gave the baby a bath last week," or "I remembered to mail that package back of that thing you ordered," or "Don't you remember I picked you up from that airport that one time?" It's as though those actions that they engaged in cancel out your ability to ask anything further from the relationship. And a lot of people fall for it and say, "Yeah, I guess they did once pick me up from the airport."
Breadcrumbing is much more common in intimate, yeah, sort of romantic relationships, like marriages, boyfriend/girlfriend, and fiancee, fiancee kind of thing, where partners just try to keep the other partner around just as they feel like they might be slipping away a little bit, or just because they want to keep a partner around, but they don't want to put that much effort in the relationship. It's like they like the idea of the relationship, maybe they don't like the idea of it, but they don't want to put that much work into it because it's narcissists don't.
But breadcrumbing can happen in other relationships. Narcissistic family members, especially parents, can capitalize on the fact that kids will accept the smallest, tiniest breadcrumbs from their parents just because they are their parents. You know this if you had narcissistic parents as a child. If you had a narcissistic mom or dad, you know that you could go for weeks on just one decent hour with that parent who couldn't be bothered giving you the time. That hour where they might have actually listened to you, or liked the picture that you drew, or I don't know, laughed at a joke you told, or read you a book. Kids are remarkably susceptible to breadcrumbing because they just want to be seen and noticed and loved by their parents. And that can set a really dangerous precedent. So fast forward that, fast forward that childhood breadcrumbing into an adult, into adulthood, and your parents, even when you're an adult, can get away with breadcrumbing you. You are still content if they give you one compliment in a sea of invalidation. That dynamic of trying to please your unpleasant, frankly, unappeasable parent can be a really tough dynamic to shake. You know, and in that way, a narcissistic parent can actually breadcrumb you with things like compliments, little compliments, or memories, or even guilt. "I sacrifice so much for you. I did so much for you." And on and on and on. You know the drill.
If you come or grew up in a family system in which breadcrumbing, just getting those tiny little bits, was the norm, then accepting breadcrumbs as an adult can feel like you're getting enough. You could get so little in a relationship and you're okay with it. You actually get used to living in an emotional famine. And that idea that emotional famine is precisely what a relationship with a narcissist is all about. It's an emotional famine with a fair amount of manipulation thrown in.
Now, even in the workplace, a narcissistic boss can sort of breadcrumb you with foolish opportunities. I don't know, letting you go on some silly business trip and letting you fly first-class, or putting you in a nice hotel, or giving, or on the other extreme, just giving employees a crappy pizza party or something like that, just as they're gonna screw with their work schedules. In these little ways, when you have an employer that is so invalidating, who is typically really nasty, a slice of pepperoni pizza on a Wednesday afternoon can actually feel very special.
So why do they, why do narcissists breadcrumb? Everything comes down to their inherent devaluation of intimacy and devaluation of close relationships. Instead of doing the deeper work and sharing their deeper selves in a relationship, what happens is breadcrumbing. In essence, it's sort of a communication of their general sense of contempt for human relationships.
Now, in addition to all of that, narcissistic relationships are often a bad series of bad precedents that happen over and over again. And because the other person in a narcissistic relationship is often confused by the cycle of love-bombing and devaluing and discarding, if you're in that kind of cycle, if you're in that kind of relationship, it's easy to get accustomed to getting less and less from a narcissistic partner or a narcissistic person of any kind in your life. Over time, then before you know it, you really do get accustomed to living on breadcrumbs. And then over time, are so confused and so gaslighted that it starts to feel difficult, if not impossible, to ask for or even believe you deserve anything more than those breadcrumbs.
Because narcissists have such diminished empathy and because they are so entitled, it means that they often don't feel like they have to offer you anymore. And voila, before you know it, the relationship is in essence sort of running on fumes, more breadcrumbs. And you know what? It's an interesting, it's so, it's almost so basic when you understand narcissism. Basically, narcissists are just too entitled to feel that they really need to expend that much effort in a relationship. Once they have you, making an effort in a relationship is just not something they feel they need to do. And that's something a lot of people will remember after that love-bombing phase, like, "It's just when they thought they got me." Or some kind of, "Oh, they're there anymore."
Now, in order for any of us to defend ourselves against breadcrumbing in any kind of narcissistic relationship, the most important thing, and this is a hard one, is we need to know our own value. We need to learn to have realistic expectations as well. We're in a toxic relationship, you need to be realistic. And you need to see the breadcrumbing for what it is. Maybe a day of breadcrumbs becomes a decent momentary break from the relationship that's really impoverished and doesn't have anything going on. And that's typically manipulative. What you've got to do is not generalize from one day of breadcrumbing and think that this relationship has changed significantly. See it as a break in a rather bleak space. But on that higher level, you need to be aware of your own value as a person. You all of us deserve better than breadcrumbs. You deserve big, sumptuous loaves of bread, big, sumptuous meals that are that are really what is represented by a healthy, respectful, and compassionate relationship.
So here's a thought: why not just grab a broom, sweep away those breadcrumbs, and start holding out for a full, rich relationship, which is what you deserve? I hope that this video clarified what is meant by the term breadcrumbing. It is a theme that repeats in all kinds of narcissistic relationships. And when you hear it, don't sort of say, "No, what are we talking about? Are we talking about some Hansel and Gretel here?" I mean, I guess the witch did that to them too, didn't she? Which was a narcissist. She breadcrumbed them into what was a rather perilous fate. Let's make sure that doesn't happen to you. So pay attention. Make sure you're not breadcrumbing, and also not being breadcrumbed, I should say. And also, please stay tuned to this series. If you haven't already, please hit the bell and subscribe to this channel. You'll keep getting not only notifications about this content coming out regularly, but all of the videos of all the lives we have coming out. Thanks so much.