I recently was reminded of this experience when I read an article with a glossary of online dating terms.  Breadcrumbing is not new, and exists only too well outside of the online experience.

Here’s Annemarie’s story:
“At 57 and after many ended relationships, I had finally reconciled myself to the probability that my ‘relationship cycle’ was over, and was very happy with my life, my friends and family relationships, and my work.

Then he came along!

He was a client I had done some consulting work for, with the prospect of more to come.  After several weeks of meetings and signals from him, eventually he asked me for a date.  I had chosen to ignore the signals for some time, but I admit, I was attracted, even though (I thought) he wasn’t my type!

He seemed totally smitten, at first, and I too was amazed at the feelings, I thought I had forgotten, but were aroused in a most powerful way!

After what I realise now was only about 2 or three weeks of bliss – he started to pull away – and even though I asked him a couple of times over the ensuing weeks if he had lost interest, he assured me not, and that he would call me soon!

Well of course, apart from work communications, that didn’t happen. He was always too busy with work, or sport, or family; and I ended up feeling like an idiot, and especially at my age, that I should have ‘known better.'”

My Reply:

I believe that for many of us, the desire for that deep, personal intimacy of a one-to-one partnership persists throughout life.  Whatever else we have achieved in our lives: economic independence, raised families, successful careers: I believe we were built for intimate companionship, and for many that goes beyond friends and family, to the one-to-one relationship I describe.  As the wife in the movie ‘Shall We Dance’ said: “Someone to bear witness to our lives.”  Someone who’s the first person you go to to share the everyday with, the happy, the funny, the sad. Physical intimacy, the need for touch, for everyday normal conversation.  This is all about being a living, loving being, and not about ‘neediness’, as one determinedly independent female friend of mine insisted!

So, for someone like Annemarie, when the possibility of this is opened up, (and I know Annemarie, she is open to possibilities, which I love!) she was brave enough to ‘explore.’

However (and Annemarie has allowed me to share more of her story), as things progressed, she realised that this man had ignited all the bad old toxic fuses that had been characteristic of her old relationships, and she had once again fallen for an ‘unavailable man’, very much an outcome of her earliest years with an unavailable father and narcissistic mother.

Fortunately, being much older and wiser, and confident and content in the life she had built around her, she recognized the situation, and instead of trying to fix it, and be ‘good enough’, she high-tailed it out of there with lightning speed!

This is not to say that she did not feel hurt by the affair, the empty words and the humiliation she felt, but she was able to pull out quickly, and not subject herself to months or years of pain she had experienced in the past!

She was even able to preserve the working relationship, and told me recently that ‘he didn’t even seem to notice that our affair was over – never says anything about it!’

Annemarie is still happily single, and still happily open to possibilities!

for more on this go to my coaching page DiannePoveyCoaching

and to my colleague Helena Hart Helena Hart Coaching