Be Honest and hurt no one

It's another sad tale but, as always, the caveat has to be that we are only hearing one side's point of view about the situation.

If Sorrento's friend did stuff like ringing the girl's local police etc etc he was going way too far and it's possible that kind of frantic attitude was what drove her to want out. We don't know what had gone before. While far-fetched lies aren't good, it does sound as if he isn't the sort to just accept a 'sorry but I don't want to continue this' and leave her alone.

Feelings change, even when you wish they hadn't. You can't -make- someone be with you if they don't want to. That would be wrong, however upsetting. Fact of RL - fact of SL. Happens to us all.

As for the poll, IMO you can't tell the truth and also never hurt anybody. You can try to 'do as you would be done by' but that could still hurt someone else anyway, and even the best of us fail at doing our best sometimes.

And guess what - 'friends' will decide not to believe you even if you DO genuinely have problems or health issues that take up your time. I found that out a few months ago when someone inworld sent me a msg enquiring where I'd got to, so I replied and briefly explained. A couple of weeks later I was unceremoniously kicked out of all their groups and apparently deleted from their friends list.

*shrug* Who needs it?

--
Aes

Really digressing a lot now, but here's a quote about telling the truth from Bertrand Russell's marvellous book, The Conquest of Happiness:

I once in the course of a country walk saw a tired fox at the last stages of exhaustion still forcing himself to run. A few minutes afterwards I saw the hunt. They asked me if I had seen the fox, and I said I had. They asked me which way he had gone, and I lied to them. I do not think I should have been a better man if I had told the truth.
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It sounds like #1 You are very much in love with this person yourself and would love to jump into the "lost loved one's" place. But he doesn't want you...so you are frustrated and are reaching out for validation.

#2) This guy has mental problems or is very immature to take the actions he has, then keep whining to you about it. Probably not worth your consideration unless you love the OC-type.

#3) Its best to always keep in mind that SL is a simulation of RL, and there are troubled people traveling in both. Its usually a good idea not to let SL cross into RL, although it does occasionally work out for the best, but mostly not.

I love that. Thanks for sharing it. Made my day.

My pleasure. It's from one of my favourite books.

I personally think lying about anything is bad. If someone can't bring themselves to tell the truth then "nothing said" is better then a lie. Or, just tell them that you can't talk about it now. I realize sometimes that it is hard to tell someone why you don't want to be with them, but an out and out lie just makes the situation worse.

This isn't a poke at you Tarina, it is a swing at lying. I have never understood why people do that.

How can anyone conclude the guy is immature or mentally unstable? He found out someone he cared for deeply had cancer, and it appears he later found out they didn't have family to help them (even though that was a lie too). What would you have done? Hypothetically, if my g/f told me she had gotten extremely ill and had no one to care for her, I'd be on the first plane out of state to help her out.

Dunno what is with this rash of posts that seem to bash the guy and try to justify the girl's actions. What she did was pretty low.

Let's flip this thread around and say it was a guy that was cheating on his g/f and instead of telling her he pretended to be his "brother" and told the poor girl her love had died in a car accident. I wonder how many would post "but we don't know the guy's side of the story" or "well she was probably psycho so it was better not to tell her".

Hi, Sorrento

I'm posting this without reading the other responses so I apologize in advance if I'm repeating a sentiment.

I agree with you 100%. Yes people get hurt all the time, but it's the deception I abhor. (Which I now state on my profile.) I am so very sorry this happened to your friend and sorrier still that he was banned from SL.

I've been online since the early 80's, primarily on IRC (Internet Chat Relay) prior to coming to SL. I too have been lied to and had someone who ostensibly cared for me to "disappear" and when I finally made it clear to our group of friends I was moving on, he miraculously "reappeared"...with a new gf. Some of those experiences hurt more than others, several I met RL. Online dating is an "experience" for sure.

The issue about having liver cancer goes back to how I feel about deception, and such a cruel one as that. In my time online, one woman faked her own death on IRC. I went to her "memorial" but by that time she had been found out that it was all a huge ruse. She received a permanent ban from that channel.

On SL, a man I knew who was in a closely-knit rp group had a "friend" that none of us had ever met come to our home and tell us our friend had died in a car accident. This man had done some questionable things on IRC so our group was mixed in who believed this story and who didn't. I didn't, but checked the obituaries in his local newspaper just in case.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, the "dead man" reappeared and said that his brother was using his SL account for awhile, HE was the one who died in a car accident and this unknown "friend" thought it was the man we knew and owner of the account. (Head spinning yet? lol)

None of those stories heals the heartache your friend is feeling, but I and others have been there in one shape or another and eventually the pain will subside.