Susie, 26, still remembers the day she met the love of her life, Adrian.

It was Sept 18, 1997. She was hanging out with her Anderson Secondary schoolmates in Ang Mo Kio Central when she saw Adrian, who was from Deyi Secondary.

Susie, nicknamed 'Pocket Venus' by her friends because she was pretty and slight, was instantly drawn to the lanky, rakish boy.

They romanced each other through secondary school and polytechnic, where she studied business and he took up computer science.

The relationship endured while she did a business management degree at a private school and he was doing national service.

When she started work in a manufacturing firm, they moved in together. Adrian took up a business course in a private school.

Last year, six months after Adrian graduated and started work as a business executive, he suggested that they stop pouring money into rent and apply for an HDB flat.

It wasn't the 'sweep-you-off- your-feet proposal' that Susie had always dreamt of, but she happily agreed.

They set a date to wed on Sept 18 this year. But just two months later, Susie noticed a change in Adrian.

They would usually have dinner together before returning home to watch their favourite TV shows.

But he began rushing back to log onto his computer to play Second Life, a digital fantasy-land game with more than 13 million registered as 'residents' worldwide.

He was soon spending four hours on Second Life every night, until 2am.

On weekends, he played for eight hours at a stretch, stopping only for toilet breaks.

At first, his excuse was that he was in the process of fashioning his avatar and building his online 'home'.

When he showed her his avatar - a strapping blond man - Susie couldn't help but laugh.

In real life, he was reed thin.

But she was less amused when a few weeks later, she caught him 'dancing intimately' with a buxom female avatar. Adrian shrugged it off as 'just a game'.

At least he was not in a real karaoke bar chatting up nubile hostesses, he said.

Things went from bad to worse when he spent almost all his waking hours online.

Each time Susie chanced a peek at the screen, Adrian's avatar would be cavorting with the same scantily clad female avatar on the beach or in a nightclub.

She implored Adrian's best friend, also an avid Second Lifer, to help put a stop to it.

But what he told her broke her heart - Adrian's Second Life partner was a 20-year-old South Korean girl in real life, and Adrian had been in contact with her on the phone and via e-mail.

That was when Susie called off the wedding and moved back to her mother's flat.

She had half-hoped Adrian would plead with her to stay. But he didn't.

When Susie confided in her friends, they couldn't fathom how she could lose her fiance to a game. They advised her to return to him, saying he would outgrow it soon.

But, for Susie, it had gone too far. She has heard that Adrian plans to visit his Second Life girlfriend in Korea later this year.

In between wiping away her tears, she said: 'When people ask me what happened and I start telling them, it hits me how ridiculous the whole thing is.

'I feel like such a loser - losing my fiance to someone he met in a virtual world. It's all so unreal.'

Sitting alone watching TV, Susie wonders if Adrian will ever regret trading real-life love for a pixellated fantasy.

'I fantasise sometimes that when he meets the South Korean girl, she will turn out to be a major disappointment.

'Then he will come begging me to take him back. But by then, I would have found someone better - maybe a tall and good-looking man like his Second Life avatar.

'That will be sweet revenge.'

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on Apr 20, 2008.