All about breadcrumbing

Breadcrumbing is on the rise in the domains of dating, friendship and careers. We speak to relationship coach Katie O'Donoghue on what it is, why it happens and how to stop following deceptive crumb trails.

- KAYLA WRATTEN

As our lives become more and more entangled with our digital personas, it makes sense that a whole new world of online social behaviour is cropping up. Over the past few years, we've cycled through the dating concepts of ghosting, catfishing, and benching, while dealing with roaching and email phishing in the workplace. But there's a new contender on the rise and it applies to every social domain, from the illusive world of dating to friendships and careers.

It's called breadcrumbing and it's everywhere. When someone breadcrumbs you, they string you along by feigning interest in you - whether as a romantic partner, future employee, or close friend. They'll drop small crumbs of attention in the form of an email, date idea, or social media interaction without committing to you or your plans. This tantalizing trail keeps you hot on the heels of the breadcrumber, even though they have no intention of maintaining a real relationship with you. In other words, a breadcrumber is all talk, no action.

Have you ever swiped right on a dating profile and found yourself in a flirtatious conversation that leads... nowhere? Days of drafting witty replies, scrolling through their pictures and tossing around hopeful date ideas can often end with an uncertain sizzle instead of that putt-putt golf standoff you were promised - only to hear from your match again weeks later, without any explanation for their sudden disappearance. Katie O'Donoghue, relationship coach at The Indigo Project, explains that this behaviour is widespread and normalised in online dating.

"Thanks to technology, people have access to a new person at the swipe of a finger, and so it's almost too easy to keep multiple people interested at the one time, which might be their reason for breadcrumbing you," she explains.