I saw the post on Breadcrumbing a while back and I was wondering why it sounded so familiar to me only to remember this particular situation that had me so messed up for a long time. I'm still in therapy for the backlash of it.

Back when I was young (17) and dumb and (Fill in the blank with the rest of the phrase), I started dating this guy we'll call him Johnathan. He was 19, sweet, nice, funny, ultimate package (at the time). We met while we were both enlisting in the military. I was enlisting in the Army and he, the Air Force. We became friends and then decided to be exclusive. He took me to my senior prom, we saw each other every day before we shipped out to basic, even went on a quick mini vacay out of town the week before we left. It was perfect in my eyes.

In basic training, you have limited access to outside communication so we wrote each other letters. I actually still had his letters until about a month ago when I burned them, for some reason I couldn't be bothered to burn them sooner. They were just put away in a box somewhere in my house. So for 10 weeks that's all we had. In tech school (job training), we had a little more communication. It wasn't much, but in my mind "we're both so busy so it is what it is".

When we finished training, I came back home to MS because I was National Guard, but Johnathan went to Florida for his duty station. No big deal. We made plans for me to come see him for his birthday a few weeks later, I paid for my plane ticket, he picked me up, and it was a week of just fun in Florida. We even almost eloped, but something in my gut told me, "nope, don't do that. Just wait on it." So we didn't.

Not even a month after I made it back to Mississippi, little homie started dropping off the face of the earth like this was cool. He'd go days, weeks, without answering a phone call or a text, but then would pop up out of nowhere like it was all good. I explained away everything like its no big deal. This went on for about 3 or so months. After that, I got straight radio silence 10 months before we were supposed to get married. Plans had been made, things just needed to be paid for. I know, I was an idiot. It took a lot to learn.

It wasn't until I was invited on a trip to Florida (Two years after we started dating mind you) with a friend girl of mine, that's when shit hit the fan. I went, had some fun, tried to ignore the fact that my supposed boyfriend thought it was cool to just drop off the face of the earth like that. I snapped and told her I'll be back, I'm taking a drive. I drove to the Air Force Base, remembered where this dude lived, knocked on the door and told him we needed to talk. He took his time answering the door. When I walked in, I saw the evidence of another woman and I had seen enough. Cool bro. You found you another woman, but you couldn't be bothered to tell your fiance that you didn't want to be with her anymore? That was too much?

He fed me the bullshit of he was just scared of getting married, and he didn't know what to do or to say and didn't want to hurt me. He loved me, but just needed to take some time to figure himself out. I took the bait. I was pissed, he knew I was, and he gave me what I wanted to calm me down. He said give him some time to sort himself out and we'll make it work. So I went back to Mississippi a happy woman because I thought I had made some good progress in this. I thought that was what strong women did. As soon as I left his presence, I received only more radio silence. He would shoot me a text every now and again, but after I got comfortable with talking to him again, he was a ghost.

He did that to me for about two more times over the span of two more years, and I hated myself for allowing it to happen. I only stopped it because every time he did it, he was with a new girl, and he would cheat on that girl with me. The last time we were in each others presence, he was telling me that he had a baby on the way. And I wasn't going to allow him to defile me any further, especially knowing that he was doing another woman dirty who was carrying his child. The breadcrumbing hurt me to the core to the point where I now have some serious insecurity issues. Hell, I'm married with my own child, and I still have the occasional fear that my HUSBAND may think I'm not enough for him. It took me a long time to bring myself back to some type of sensibleness, and therapy was a huge part in that. I just wish I had recognized it sooner so the damage could be minimized.