Getting Stood Up on a Date
You showed up and they did not, and they never explained. Getting stood up is a fail that combines rejection with humiliation in a public setting, which is the worst possible cocktail. Fifteen thousand points lost because the damage is twofold: they did not value you enough to show, and they did not respect you enough to cancel. You sat at a table, or a bar, or a park bench, and you waited past the point where waiting was dignified, and the waiter eventually asked if you were expecting someone, which is the moment the aura left the building. The deeper fail signal is that you trusted their word, which means your trust calibration is off, which means you will be slightly more guarded on the next date, and the next date will feel that guard, and the cycle compounds. The recovery is to leave the venue the moment it is clear they are not coming, to not wait for an explanation, and to treat the absence as the answer. The aura returns slowly, usually through… Getting Stood Up on a Date is a romance event in the catastrophic tier, worth -15,000 aura points. Compare it with The Teacher Reads Your Essay to the Class and Closing a Deal Everyone Thought Was Dead, or browse the full aura events index to see where it ranks.