Long Distance SL Relationships

I'm just wondering about the experiences people have had with long distance relationships in SL. Have met the most entrancing girl, and we have had a great time together recently
...we have talked about partnering and both of us like the idea however she lives in England and I live on the west coast of North America...a time difference of 8 hours. For those who have been there before...Can it work? ...or is it just too much?
btw I am referring to a solely SL relationship here (although I suppose one never can say for certain what will happen in the future) ...and also this may have been discussed before but I did a search for long distance SL relationships and nothing specific came up, so pardon me if its an old topic to some of you out there.

If you want it bad enough, anything is possible. Including long distance relationships, they happen all the time. It can also go much further then sl but that outcome is up to the two of you.

Long weekend rendezvous work nicely and you get to spend all or most of it inside. All you'll spend is travel fare and sweat.

It's all up to those involved but it can work.

Aside from all of the inevitible "SL relationship = evol" crap people will throw in...I'll give this input:

I watched a friend of mine (nice lady) get involved with a nice man in SL...she in US (central) he in UK.

I watched her attempt to change her life to accomodate his time time schedule...she slept a few hours in the afternoon, and a few more hours in the evening, and spent as much SL time with him as she could.

I listened to her stories of home life - it began to disintergrate...last I heard, her husband and she split up...divorce proceedings to begin soon.

I won't say it's a direct cause/effect situation, but if you two intend to spend a lot of time together, someone is going to need to change their life to accomodate, I fear.

Hell...I find a 2 hour time difference to be more than enough of a challange...8 hours boggles my mind.

Do you want a real life relationship out of this? If it's a SL relationship, the only thing you'll have to deal with is the time difference, since geography is unimportant. I guess I'd try to schedule time with her when you can both be online and be clear about your expectations in the relationship. If she expects you to be on at 3:00 am when you need to be at work at 7:00 am, that's not really fair. look for blocks when you can be together.

If you want a RL relationship, it's going to be tougher to find time to spend together. If it were me, I would want her to be close enough so I could see her fairly regularly, but that's me.

If you want it to work, find a way. Anything can work between any two people if they want it badly enough.

Feel like I am posting a bunch tonight! lol

My (freind) is 13 hours ahead...but it is working out fine. in my mornings I am able to talk to her with skype and in my late evenings.....we are able to see each other.

Ohhhh Claire......how could you?????

I agree. Finding someone who you care about, who cares about you is a special thing. Don't let distance be a reason not to give it a try and then wonder 'what if...'

Still carrying a flame i see

~Lana

Maybe she was not happy with her RL marriage, and decided to look somewhere else. Instead of looking in RL, she looked in SL. But wouldn't not consider this situation as a general example.

I find it very sweet that the first posters were all men...
See? Don't believe the hype, deep down, they're all just big lovey-doveys.





I hope she finds you to be just as 'entrancing'. Don't think too much about the future, it'll come soon enough. As long as you're both having fun and are willing to make concessions when it comes to the time difference, enjoy. When you start expecting things to go a certain way, sure enough, it goes another... One day at a time.

Aw shucks, now you're making me all embarassed. My initial reaction to the OP's question was "Don't do it." But then, I'm a cynical, jaded woman, heh.

Well, what I should have said was "they're all big lovey-doveys except Trout."
I just read the other thread and I wasn't even mentioned in his long list of deserving flirts...
Ricardo, yes. Me, no.
What am I? Chopped liver? Or bacon-lard roll up thingy?
Maybe I should start thinking about being a little more jaded...

Hey, I have been hustllng Trout for a month now and havent gotten anywhere with him. Throws Trout at Isa, have fun catching him honey.

staying together will depend more on your willingness to keep with it, and coinciding times on... yeah that's pretty much it... and remembering to have time to yourselves... huh, kinda like real life.

Meh, I'm now officially jaded. I don't want him anymore.

So shall we go dancing instead *wink*

I'm west coast usa, my SL partner is in UK. We have a few rules we set up before we ever got close.


1. SL is SL..not RL. SL will never be RL. SL will only be SL.

2. RL comes first, that is RL jobs, people, family, friends, etc.

With those two things in mind, we have a very wonderful, ideal relationship. We may never meet in real life, we aren't making any plans to. Neither of us will "move" to join the other in real life, it just cannot be that way. We both compromise. As I can be on during my day, which is his evening, which is when he is on, then we don't have to work around each other's schedule. We could wake up tomorrow and SL would be gone, okay yes, we'd be sad, we'd probably email, and find another way to keep in touch, but neither of us will sacrifice our RL for SL. It just can't happen. At least we have SL though.

That exact difference can be managed, and is managed by a few of my friends. It more depends on your actual availability schedule. The time difference for my and my guy is only 2 hours, but his work schedule actually causes more conflicts -- I kind of feel like I'm dating a UK guy sometimes. We adjust to each other because we care and want to be together, but you have to agree to times that work for both of you.

I didn't list you because I was at work and the sound of my heart beating as I typed your names would have disturbed others. I would have been so distracted that i wouldn't have gotten any work done at all, and I would lose my job, then my home and be left on the streets, a shattered, broken-hearted wreck of a man, crushed by the weight of unrequited love, tormented by dreams of desire, and possibly set fire by a bunch of no good street punks.

Either that or I was drunk again. I can't remember which.

/me rolls up her pant legs as it's getting quite deep wheres she's standing

~Lana

*passes over a few shovels and boots* that should help

Hey - I'm in trouble here. I'm digging like mad and the hole just keeps getting deeper! I'm just trying to convince them not to start pouring concrete in on top of me.

When I come out in Australia, I'm running for cover.

My RL lives 3 hrs away and visits on weekends, holidays, times off etc.
They are my partner in SL, the 1st other only inet connection besides email or IM in 5 yrs.
We have great RL visits,
it's the SL ida know if we will survive some times, lol they have a prim/creating addiction!

MY SL SO is on the West Coast US, and I am in the UK. It can be a pain, and you do end up having a few late nights, but it can be done.

I Recently went to the US and was on PST for 17 days. I took the laptop and we had a whale of a time being in the same time zone - but it made both of us realise that we do really we given the circumstances

You never know til you try, if you both want it and are understanding enough it's cool.

I do hate being on GMT though - the majority of my friends are in the US. Interestingly enough when I was in the US my friends on the East Coast got a taste of how it was for me .. so it was a good learning experience all round

I am in the UK, my SL partner is on the US West coast. we have never found the time difference to be much of an issue. I get up early, we have some time in her evening, I go to work, she goes to bed. I get home from work around the time she gets up and we have time in her morning/my evening. I go to sleep, she goes to work, and is home by the time I wake. It does help that she works part-time and in the evenings usually. It also helps that I am a naturally early riser, my day tends to run from 5am to 11pm these days. Occasionally if there are things we really want to do in SL I will be up in the middle of my night, but generally we stick to fairly set times and neither of us has a problem with getting enough sleep.

The biggest difficulty is that I am living in 2 time zones and have been known to use Pacific times when talking to people in RL here.

We started as purely SL with no intention of it ever being more. Now, we have met twice in RL, and by the end of the year I expect to be over there to marry and to stay. Purely SL relationships are quite possible, and some people make them work for a long time, but we found it became impossible to resist finding out the answer to "What if...?". It worked for us, we both feel that we have found the person we've always wanted, but it often doesn't work. But if you both are happy with purely SL, then good luck to you, and don't worry about the timezone thing, if you want it to work, it will.