ve come so far to be let down. I basically thought my life was sorted and I had everything; I’d never have to date again. But it would have been worse had it happened a couple of years down the track.”
'HURT, ANGRY, CONFUSED'
Relationships Aotearoa counsellor Cary Hayward, who has spent 25 years in the business of broken hearts, says a sudden breakup is very rarely a snap decision. “Often one person has been feeling unseen in a relationship for a period of time, and they will feel that they’ve tried to flag that there’s a problem and that the other party hasn’t responded to it adequately, or at all. So when it comes to the point where they want to separate, it comes as a shock to the other party.”
The person who has made the choice will usually have been contemplating it for a while, and will have already begun to withdraw emotionally, Hayward says.
But for the one who is left behind, their life is crumbling.“They might feel hurt, angry, confused, sad, all that sort of stuff, and they’re suddenly finding themselves struggling to catch up with what’s happening. They can feel terribly powerless – they’re facing this horrible circumstance that something they really don’t want to have happen is going to occur.
“People can feel quite stressed when they’re in that space, and they’ll often try to do whatever they can to save the relationship.
“Along with the grief, they will be beating themselves up with, ‘What could I have done differently?’” he says.
“They’ve often seen the signs, but they don’t respond to their significance. Then they think, ‘I really wish I had taken this seriously early on.’
“But, look, it doesn’t matter what side of the fence you’re on – separation is one of the most challenging things an adult will ever go through.”
'OMINOUS FEELING'
It’s been more than 20 years since she was jilted, but Suzie, 54, still wishes she had acted on her gut instinct that something wasn’t right. She had always wanted to be a farmer’s wife, so when she met Andy, everything seemed to be falling into place.
But his mother was not so happy. She organised an engagement party to which Suzie wasn’t invited.
“I mean, you have no idea how snooty his mother was. What kind of person doesn’t invite the bride to her own engagement party?” she says.
During other parties on the Waikato family farm, Andy would flirt outrageously with other women. Another time, Suzie was presented with a prenuptial agreement – which had her name spelled wrong.
Then, one weekend, she went to the Waikato farm with an “ominous feeling”.
“[Andy] took me to the pub to have a few and I completely wrote myself off... he just plied me with drink. On the drive home, while stopping to throw up, he told me it was over. When I arrived at the homestead I remember getting out of the car on all fours throwing up dreadfully. I was out of it on gin – it was just terrible.”
She was devastated, her pride completely destroyed. But things would get worse; just two months later, he phoned to say he had knocked up one of the local girls and was getting married. Also, could he have the ring back to fund their honeymoon in Fiji?
“That was it. I told him to get lost and I sold the ring.
I took great pleasure in doing that,” Suzie says. “I can’t tell you how long after that I had another relationship, but it was a long time.”
Suzie says she has been “very blessed” with her two young children, whose father she is no longer with, but she doesn’t have a lot of time for men.
“From my experience, women are always the ones to concede emotionally. Men have got bigger egos, it’s a fact – we have to pander to them. I’ve been out with a couple of guys but not for long periods. The only thing they’re good for is sex.
“The last guy I was with was 51. He was always complaining about his bones when he got out of cars and things like that. I thought, s***, I’m not in that league, I need a guy at least 10 years younger than me.”
The last time she saw her one-time fiancé was in a newspaper photograph a short while ago. He had won a local dog trial competition. “He looked terrible. He looked really aged and I felt really glad.”
If someone is having doubts about a relationship, fair enough. But why let it reach such a crescendo before calling it off?
“These people would be having doubts anyway, and the doubts build up to a point,” says Professor Fletcher.
“In the case of the golfer [Rory McIlroy], he obviously got to the point where he thought, ‘I can’t do this, it’s not going to work.’ That can take courage, of course, to call it off in that situation – particularly if you’re a public figure like him.”
SHE CALLED IT OFF
Deanna, who didn’t want to use her last name because her husband is a public figure, knows what that is like. She was just a few days away from tying the knot to her Canadian fiancé, in Canada, when she decided she couldn’t go through with it.
It cost her and her family and friends thousands of dollars in cancelled flights and hotel bookings, not to mention the now-useless shoes and dress.
It was a heart-wrenching decision to make, but it helped that her parents were supportive, she says.
“He was a really nice guy and I think if I had gone ahead it would have been all right, but there was something missing.
“I guess if you can imagine a life without someone, you probably shouldn’t marry them. I felt really, really bad. I mean, how do you tell someone that? But I look back on it and kind of think I saved myself a divorce, or an unhappy marriage.”
Six months later, she met her future husband, with whom she now has two children, a four-year-old and a 19-month-old. “Every now again I wonder what my life could be like, and then I’m so glad.”
For people who have been ditched, particularly when the stakes are so high, it will be messy. But, says Fletcher, most people will be able to move on. “If they are basically a secure person, they will bounce back. The vast majority of people will get over it, and they will go on to form another relationship.
There will be a bit of a scar left, but people are amazingly resilient, even when tragedy strikes. People can recover.”
Names and places have been changed.
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What do you think of the "Game Over" T-shirt?Related story: Anti-wedding T-shirts in bad tasteI tend to be more of a solo player, even within MMOs (unless I have to PUG a PvP for some gear or points or something), so a game like this would be pretty tough to play. I am wondering what the AI is like. Would you be able to play this as single player and spout out commands to the computer (or console) and have the AI take care of things for you for those specific duty stations?There are examples of successful games that do use different maps though.

War room uses a map focused on the artic pole, which I believe is also the map the united nations uses in its logo (or very similar).

Trajan also features a map that is clearly not a mercator projection.

Pax Pamir 2e features a cloth map that actually aids in comprehension of the geopolitical situation by abstracting the map to very simple shapes.

These examples are immediately readable after a brief moment of surprise at the world being portrayed differently. I am sure there are many more as well!"We should take a vacation," Kaname said.
Sousuke looked up from his cards; they were all gathered round a table in one of the parlors in Helgramways, playing poker at two in the morning. "What's a vacation?" he asked.
She stared at him mindlessly.
"That was a joke," he said. "I know what a vacation is."
Kurz laughed. "Man, you should have seen the look on your face," he said to Kaname. He stared at his cards. "I still think we should try strip poker."
"Having seen you naked, I wish to save everyone else's eyesight from that horrible fate," Melissa said to him.
"Nudity is best saved for a private rendevous between a man and a woman," Munchausen said. "But yes, I think a vacation would be good."
"Says a man who went to school in a soft-porn shadow," Kurz said.
"Now, now, the Monde-Hisame school provides a very good education in all the arts of the gentleman," Munchusen said, taking a sip of his wine. "Which one of us is asking the ladies to take off their clothing, hmm?"
While Kaname was reluctant to admit it, she had to agree with Munchausen. For all that she couldn't approve of a school like