You were almost over it. You'd stopped checking her profile, you were seeing other people, the gap between thinking about her and not was getting wider. Then she texted something light: "haha this reminded me of you." You replied. She replied once. Then nothing for two weeks. Then a like. Then another text from nowhere.
None of it is enough to act on. But none of it lets you fully write her off either.
Each individual crumb is completely deniable. A text, a like, a reaction to something. None of them commit to anything. But the pattern adds up to you not having moved on from someone who isn't pursuing you. How does that happen from a series of individually harmless interactions?
Because you can't tell from the crumb whether it means anything.
A "this reminded me of you" looks the same whether she's genuinely becoming interested again or just sending a casual message with nothing behind it. You can't distinguish a crumb from a signal. So each one restarts the question: was it actually as dead as I thought? Is something shifting? You can't fully move on without answering it, and the crumbs keep the question open.
Her position is simple. She's not interested enough to pursue anything but she doesn't want to close the door entirely. Each crumb costs almost nothing (a few seconds, a casual text) and keeps you available if she changes her mind. Often there's no strategy to it. She enjoys the attention without wanting the thing itself.
The asymmetry is what keeps it stable. She pays almost nothing to maintain it. You pay with your attention and the time you spend in low-grade uncertainty. Apps make this worse. Liking a photo or replying to a story takes no effort and doesn't count as real contact. Each crumb stays just below the threshold where you'd feel justified asking what's going on.
Dominated strategies
Responding to every crumb. Each response signals you're still there. From her side, a response confirms the crumb worked. Nothing changes except your waiting period resets.
Reading into the timing or the type of crumb. She liked something, she watched your story, she replied faster than usual. None of these tell you what she wants. You end up interpreting noise as information, which leads to more waiting.
The move that produces actual information: ask directly. Not aggressively. Something like "are we going to actually hang out or is this just how we talk now." She either steps up, or she gets vague, which is also an answer. Either way the ambiguity ends.
The other move: stop picking up the crumbs. If she reaches out with something more direct, you learn something. If she stops entirely, you also learn something.