We live, many of us, in highly policed societies where sanctions exist for the most minor infractions.
We might have to pay close to a month's salary for dropping a napkin in a park or driving at 22 miles an hour down a clear dual carriageway at 3 am.
But there is one area in our regulated world where few laws exist.
In relationships, unless there is violence or egregious abuse, there are no rules to speak of.
We can, with impunity, spend eight years with someone and then, just as all their other options have closed, politely tell them that we've fallen in love elsewhere and walk out by nightfall and there is nothing the forlorn party can do other than weep and lose their minds.
But, even if no legal sanctions exist, this does not mean that notions of right and wrong cease to apply.
There are a host of rules around ending relationships that all decent people understand and hear, framed for our consciences, are eight of the most important.
1. Hurt them unbearably if you need to, but don't, in addition, steal any more of their time than necessary.
It's particularly unkind to pretend not to have noticed that a partner might have only a limited window in which to marry, start a family or reconfigure a career.
The first instant that you realize it's not working is the instant to tell them it's not working, not after the return from the holidays or towards the end of next year or maybe the year after that.
