Probably the best on the topic of online relationships... just very well done.

Wow - how come this doesn't get read and passed around LOTS more? Very cogent, very clear, very useful.

http://theclahax.blogspot.com/2008/05/love-virtually-version-12.html

I had the pleasure of bumping into Thecla at a place I frequent and DJ at the other night and she passed me a copy of this. Definitely one of he best written pieces on the subject I have seen in my nearly 3 years now in SL. Worth a read, especially considering all the threads I'm seeing here recently on this very subject.

here is my version..
Don't do it..it gets gamed way to much

I met the love of my life in SL, sometimes you need to follow your heart.

Much easier to read your version anyhow.

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I guess it does work for some people.

I always kind of wonder what the ratio of "now happy Single People going from SL to RL" is COMPARED to say .. "number of marriages destroyed" because of these sorts of affairs.

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The big rule is don't date someone online who isn't looking for the same thing you are .. whatever that is.

Very cool if you want you make your SL experience SLmatch.com.

Eveline, thanks for sharing this. It's so good I'm going to ask the author for permission to hand it out in my Sex Ed classes.

That is well written. I haven't really explored much of that type of stuff here but I did have a Summer of Love but what I experienced was a lot of really unsatisfying and awkward poseball "roleplaying" due to personal things but there is few I felt something deeply with and when things just didn't work exactly as I like their was sadness that my expectations of situation didn't happen. When you interact with FD you're interacting with as close you can the real human behind the screen, I am not the type who can be someone else no matter how hard I try. I appreciate the friends I have here who I can be who I am and say what I need to say, and they still like and accept me. My experience in SL and especially those close relationships and majority of mine love exist but not the sexual type, masturbation and pose balls just aren't involved but even though sex isn't a part of it there is Love and caring.

The piece is way too long for me to bother reading but, if it emphasises the most important thing (imo), then it's probably a good article.

To my way of thinking, the vast majority of the 52% of respondents in the Metaverse Messenger's poll *didn't* fall in love in SL - not even if they took their relationships into other remote methods, such as webcams. They fell in 'strong desire', which is quite different to love, and is fuelled by the inability to touch - the remoteness. It is just too easy for such emotions to take hold and fool us into thinking they are something that they are not.

Online relationships? Is that that same as military intelligence?

Both are oxymorons ?

Phil, and interesting way of thinking - so you feel that physical proximity and touching is a requirement to love someone?

I haven't read the whole article yet, but I think love is different for different people - and that it's quite possible to fall in love with someone who is remote...

The inherent danger, as I see them, with online romantic relationships, is that you are not falling in love with the real person, but instead an idealised view of the person, created either by the way they project themselves online, or your own wishful thinking.

For that very reason, and due to various disappointments, I have said that a face-to-face meeting is an absolute pre-requisite before starting up any real romantic relationship, even if it starts online. Saves a LOT of disappointment, that.

A relationship is any connection, association or involvement.
I don't see the connection. LOL

You could say the exact same thing about RL dating though. How many abused women say "he wasnt like that before we got married"

*waves to Eveline*

Thanks! Very well written.

Yeah, good point.