Have you ever been talking with someone, over the phone or via messaging, for a long period of time, only for them to drop the partner bomb on you?

What is a partner bomb? When someone tells you, out of nowhere, that they are dating someone, or that they’re in a committed relationship while they’ve been chatting with you. Chances are relatively high that we all know someone who has experienced this first hand, especially with today’s various social media sites allowing for different kinds of messaging.

This is not a gender specific phenomena, both men and women are guilty of dropping the partner bomb on unsuspecting innocent bystanders. There have been countless instances of someone thinking that they were getting somewhere with a possible romantic relationship only to be bludgeoned by the partner bomb. If leading someone on, regardless if it is a man or a woman on either end, is your vain attempt at getting attention than you should do us all a favor and just get a pet.

Dating is difficult to say the least. To put it bluntly dating is a masochistic trial of errors where we are forced to try over and over again to make connections with people we don’t know. The process is made all more complicated and painful now with the introduction of these attention seeking partner bombardiers. Will we waste weeks at a time talking to someone, thinking that we are moving closer to our ultimate goal, only to be bashed over the head with the knowledge that they are in a relationship with someone else already? Are we all auditioning for front row seats in the friend zone now?

If you want unconditional attention and love while you’re in a relationship with someone, then do us all a favor and get a dog. Rather than leading someone on, sending them pictures of yourself in the hopes of keeping their attention, then just do the right thing and keep your selfish tendencies to yourself. Dating someone already and they’re not paying sufficient amounts of attention to you? Dump them and find someone else. Rather than inflicting the death of a thousand pictures on some naive bystander just do us all a favor and keep your narcissistic tendencies to yourself.

Granted if someone makes the assumption that they’re getting somewhere with someone else just because they get a risque picture sent to them via message then they are, technically, at fault because they are making an assumption in the first place. But, regardless of this assumption, this growing trend needs to stop for the sake of our collective sanity. Keep your attention seeking needs to yourself and, if anything, get over yourself in the process. Your arrogance and ego are hurting other people who aren’t prepared for the partner bomb to level their self-esteem.