Love in SL?

o.O Links on how to verify if you are really in love?

---

I found love in SL.

Something scientific for me to understanmd what and why it's happeneing. This still is very bizarr to me

Wolfie

It's no different than RL love. The only difference is she's on the other side of a computer...

You meet someone, and fall in love with their mind, and personality, or at least what you think is their personality. It's tricky, knowing someone over the net, but it's the same in RL more often than not too. It's just you fell for who she is, is all.

1 No, you are completly healthy
2 people bond by communicating, chat is exactly that
3 nope
4 Its called flirting i think...

How your mind interacts with other minds, by SL or RL doesent matters.
We consider love between two people in weehlchairs wich pretty much have no way to "interact bodily" beside maybe touching hands as very romantic, right?

Hi Wolfgang, welcome to one of the most significant nightmares of SecondLife.
I've been away this past week but why am I not surprised to find this thread on my return? Cos I've been contributing to posts like this that materialise every week or two since my SL indoctrination 7 months ago.
I myself found my partner through a text only forum back in 98. We are both now in SecondLife and because we still live a short mileage away, use the world for sharing our time when we are not physically together.
Wolfgang, you say you are married. Marty and I think someone else expressed their concern that your SL time might detract from your real relationship. Believe me I know how inviting and how attractive bonding new friendships in-world can be but do take good notice of this. My RL/SL partner can be jealous of the time I spend with others even when both in-world. We have had heated exchanges on the lines of 'it's only pretend' and 'it's a real person you're spending time and emotions on' to the extent that our RL happiness has been threatened.
What does your wife think about it? Have you discussed this with her?
I have RL friends I've brought into SL and they are all married. One on their second marriage, one with problems. One says it's a game. It isn't really. It's far too real to be associated with such a frivolous word.
Think very carefully before you put your real life happiness at risk.

Feline, it's good to hear from you but yes, we ARE sad to hear of your misfortune! I'm sure even those who posted their warnings to you secretly hoped you would find true happiness. I know I did.

I take my hat off to all the couples here who have met and thrived. It can work. That in itself throws the ball straight back up in the air. No simple answer. No yes or no. A recent thread asked what SecondLife is and many posters put some apt and true categories to it.
Try 'a loaded gun', 'heartmaker/heartbreaker'. One thing for sure. For true love there must be absolute honesty inworld and outworld.

Wolfgang,

If you are commited to your wife of RL then I advise you end this virtual relationship now before real damage is caused. However you justify this relationship to yourself there is a pretty good chance that your wife will not understand in the event she found out. If she found out the extent of your relationship with your pixelated friend the odds are that she would see it in black and white.i.e. that her husband is spending his free time romancing another person online. If you are commited to your wife and kid/s then I see you have 2 options.

1) End your virtual relationship immediately and chalk it up to experience, not to be repeated in future.

2) Spell it out to your virtual friend that you have no interest in any sort of romantic relationship with her and that nothing will ever come of your online friendship but that you could remain friends. Basically spell it out and dont lead her on. If she is still displaying jelous tendencies then Mute/Ban

Either way you cannot keep stringing her along.

The above is advice aimed at someone who is in a happy rl relationship who blindly stumbled into an online relationship without realising it. If your marriage is not happy and you are activly emabracing this relationship then obvously that's different.

If you have a stable relationship in rl then it's not worth the possible hassle. Ive been walking around SL for a long time now and I still have the genital capacity of an action man. I deliberatley go out of my way to ensure that friends realise our relationships are purely platonic. Ive learnt some lessons the hard way and it's just not worth taking the risk.

Hi Bilbo

Very good post this. Thanks.

I start realizing at this stage it's not a game at all. It's two people liking what they read from each other. The way that person reacts to situations in-world, how that person treats the other and third parties. The style of comunication, attitudes, and so on, yes it's so real. I haven't told my wife which is already an indication that it's not just a game - it's a virtual love affair.

She hasn't been online since Saturday morning - I miss her

Wolfie

Ahhh romance.

Just a few points I'd like to make:

1. New and shiny romance always carries the strongest allure. Whether one is currently in a relationship or not, if someone comes along and turns your head, you will be caught up in the fever of the relationship (however it is defined, be it friendship, romance, or lust) for up to three months. After three months? Assessment time -- the relationship will continue or not depending on many factors beyond the scope of this comment. The point is: when it's new and shiny, it feels like the be all and all and damn it hurts when it comes crashing down. Reality is: you'll get over it if that happens, we all do.

2. There are RL relationships that do not suffer from SL romances. There are RL couples who already have an "open relationship", therefore an SL romance is quite fine under those guidelines. HOWEVER, honesty must be the root of all such relationships, and potential partners in SL must be aware that the other is happily involved in RL, but polyamory is OK. The SL person may decide the relationship is then not worth pursuing or will do so at their own risk. Bottom line: it's all on the table and all parties involved responsible for their own feelings.

3. And then there are those who believe "what happens in SL, stays in SL". The relationship is real enough in SL, emotions are involved, and at the root there is a deep sense of caring. However, they have no desire to transition the SL entanglement to RL by way of meeting in the flesh etc. This one is difficult because emotions are still involved. Again, honesty between involved parties is important, especially when coupled with the above.

That's my observation and experience. Personally, I am of the 2 and 3 persuasion above.

It sounds to me like the original poster and his SL girlfriend have very different levels of expectation as to what each should commit to. And that could hurt both the SL relationship and the RL marriages or relationships of the people involved. Honestly, if you are married and she starts insisting on crossing the line between "what happens in SL", and "What happens in RL", then it's time to call it quits. I have seen RL marriges destroyed by a fantasy on-line relationship. To me, that is an unacceptable risk.

If two people can firmly agree where the boundries are, then you can have a very healthy and seperate SL-only relationship. My SL Partner and I enjoy each other's company immensely in SL, but if we ever met in RL (unlikely, as we live thousands of miles apart, in dfferent countries), we both know that it's strictly "just friends" between the Players, and that I am happily married and monagomous in RL.

If those two people can NOT agree that "it stops at the keyboard...", then my advice is that you have to choose which is more important to you - your RL marriage or your SL fantasy girlfriend. For me, it would be no contest. My legally married spouse wins, hands-down, without a second thought.

If two people are both unattached in RL, then there is no more harm in that becoming a RL romance than there would be from pen pals becoming lovers. You need to be cautious and actually meet the person, determine how much of what the correspondance said was true and how much was fantasy ("well, she did fudge a bit on the weight and measurements info she sent, but she's still cute" - versus "Ummmm. Oh geeze, my sexy 18 year old girlfriend is really a 50 year old fat guy from Detroit!".

But in your case? No, If you are married but she wants to carry it farther, it's time to call it off.

I had to chime in on this one. Like Bilbo, I met my current RL husband in a chat room 7 years ago. It progressed to everyday chats, phone calls, a visit (we were in separate countries-USA/UK), a lot of immigration hassle and finally, a marriage w/ children. When he started on SL last November, it created problems for us in the beginning. I know how real an online relationship can become.....a marriage resulted from one, after all. I wasn't happy, but I started sitting with him and watching him on SL, and at least while I was there, he let women avatars know that he was married and his RL wife was watching...lol. I also found that the world fascinated me, and wanted to play also.
I started on SL in February, and we play together only. There is no difference for us between our RL relationship and our SL relationship. There have been some issues even with us playing together, some jealousies here and there......but I would never want to play separate from him on SL. It's way too dangerous, Wolfgang.
Feelings resulting from online relationships are real...and can be hurtful. Your RL wife obviously has no clue, and you need to consider if you want to jeopardize a marriage. Unless she's an extremely understanding person, she can, will and should view your online relationship as a threat. It's also obvious that if she were the "understanding" type, you would have already told her about your online "relationship". Only you can decide what will make you most happy....but keep in mind, your virtual relationship may not be based on honesty, so do you want to jeopardize what is real for what is, right now at least, a figment of your imagination?
I wish you the best of luck in whatever you choose to do! Some people juggle these things well, and if you do, i hope it all works out well for you.

I met my current girlfriend with whom I am currently living IRL in SL. We were homies for a while but knew what each other looked like. We talked a bunch of smack and got into trouble together for a while. Once we both had an interest in each other we took it to the phone almost immediately. a couple weeks later she came and visited me. We both eventually moved to the same part of the country for employment and personal reasons.

Yesterday we celebrated our 1 year anniversary and everything is great!

Since our relationship was gradual and didn't really have an official starting point we decided to mark it by the day she moved here. We've known each other for a little over a year and a half now.

I totally didn't expect it to happen and have been pretty anti-internet-hookups ever since there was an internet to hook up on.

I think what makes us not shrink-worthy is the fact that we turned it RL pretty early on. There was no SL sex (other than a joke we played on someone) and no grand illusion or fantasy to be had.

We're both no-bullsh@ type people and figured we might as well get that step out of the way first so we don't get burned after having an emotional stake in it...which is the big problem with internet hookups these days. We're both obviously good judges of character!

The way I see it is as long as you're being honest about who you REALLY are and the other person is doing the same then go for it!

I am very honest to her, hope she is as well.

Wolfgang

Wolfgang, I assume that with "her", you mean your SL girlfriend. However, from what I can read and the way I understand it, you're not being so honest to your RL partner...

Anyway, you can only hope your SL girlfriend is honest too... And, god, I hope so for you too. The reality, however, is that this is not always the case, and you never will be sure, unless you have solid proof of that.

And so, as stated above, assuming your RL relationship still means something to you, would you really jeopardize it for something so volatile as an SL relationship? I believe some are serious and can lead to something solid and everlasting in RL, but I think the vast majority aren't...

In any event, I wish you the best of luck, but think carefully before you act... [but hey, who am I to say something about that? :/]

I think Wolfgang's already made up his mind where he's going with this, and is just wanting us to validate it.

Enjoy your SL relationship Wolfgang!

I will keep it strictly separate. I think I am strong enough for that. We will see..as sombody infamous from my country said in the early 40ies: I don't know where this is going to end but I promise you it will be very interesting.

Wolfgang

I'm a newborn (less than a few days active) and just found this forum today, wish I would have known about it from the first. As a married person in RL, this is the scariest thread here...SL is full of temptations. Thank you to everyone who posted, I will go back to reading now. And good luck, Wolfgang.

If you think this is the "scariest thread" here, you haven't seen anything yet.

Actually that is not true, I have had a roleplay character natually and organicly fall in love with another. Even as a player it was unexpected, simply a matter of how the two fictional personalities intermingled, and for the course of months these characters said they were "only friends", where their interaction clearly stated otherwise. Other characters around them picked up on this and often teased these characters with "Are you being honest with yourself?". As players with no real emotional connection other that the fellowship of being roleplayers we decided to take the roleplay to the next level, they reveiled there feelings, and long story short these characters are now married have a 14 Month old daughter between them, still raise and guide a 14 year old feral adopted daughter, and live there lives. This however is not as relivent to the topic as this is mutual fiction between two people with little emotional attachment other than enjoying roleplay.

Now on to my tale of woe. Yes I to fell in real love over the stream of electrons and light though copper and glass we call the internet. Her name, her real name was Ana, unlike some examples given I knew a fair ammount about her RL, infact we chatted about it a lot. We both shared a passion for roleplaying and Evenescence, she had a difficault life in Chile and I was always willing to offer my ear, I thought in friendship and perhaps that is how it was in the start. This continued over the period of several year, and were my first experiance with such feelings so they went largely unnoticed to me under the guise of deep friendship. In time she met another guy online, started e-dating, I was a little jelious of course but didn't really think much of it till after the fact, I was in a way happy she was or at least seemed to be happy. He moved her up to Canada, they lived together for a time, got married and seemed happy, but a few month after that she was murdered, supposedly by her husband. It was not until after the shock had worn off, not so ironicly at a moment I was listening to our favorite band, and her death truely hit me did all the peices finally fall into place and I realized how I truely felt about her. It toor me appart for the last few years and only recently have I let her go and allowed myself to consider other women for companionship without feeling that some how I was violating my feelings for her. I chat with her mother on MSN from time to time, infact I should make it a point to do so again soon as I have been avoiding/dreading it, but at the very least I should ask how little "Juju", the young daughter Ana left behind, is doing.

Well, I guess there is my take and my person story on how emotions over the internet can enrich your life, or harm you.

Agreed! Wolfgang, MARRIED IS MARRIED. What you are doing in SL now is cheating on your RL wife. How would you feel if you knew that your RL wife was having a relationship with another man in SL?

I agree with the post about getting to know who someone really is here. You get to know their mind, and witness how they would choose to be in RL if they could.
I never thought I would fall in love here, but did hook, line and sinker.
It is now spilling over into RL and we will meet soon. I am just glad to have met someone like this and feel without SL, I would have never had the opportunity since we are in different countries.
Yes .. there are strong emotions tied to being in SL. You are putting forth your inner self and that can be a very emotional thing.
Even if the worst happens, and we break up, I have had more fun (laughing) here than I have in a long time. I will have been well worth it.

Just a couple thoughts.
Is it possible that you can feel somewhat romantically towards someone outside of a marriage in a virtual realm, and have that *add* to your life, not detract.
Is it possible that this gives you something that RL does not.
Is it possible that this is no different than indulging yourself in a fantasy.

I really think this is all between you and your wife, possibly your SL friend too.
Many people can't conceive of caring for more than one person in a romantic sense.
Some people can't handle having more than one relationship.
Hell, a few can't even have friends outside of a marriage.
What works for you may not work for me. Your wife might see this as cheating, she might not. I can imagine being in a stable relationship and having friends online whom i care about simultaneously. When you start opting for the virtual over the real is when the problems strike.

Jealousy of other female avatars is not a good sign. I'm not saying this isn't perfectly natural however. If she's had your undivided attention, and is not confident that you would choose these others over her, is a recipe for disaster in SL. Sure you have a wife, she knew that and sees that as zero threat in SL because she knows your wife doesn't play, won't take "you" away in "there" and has nothing visual to target her jealousy on. She's just an imaginary foe who takes you offline occaisionaly for now. The longing to be special to you, to be your one and only in SL, to feel validated and to belong are also natural. I encourage you to explore those feelings with her.

As many have said, and i'm sure you already know, it is quite possible to make those brain connections with pixels in ways we are unfamiliar with outside of a 3d chat environ.
You are immersed in communicating with someone who has no body language, using an avatar who gives you a false sense of security and self confidence. We all do.
Good luck in sorting how this fits into your RL, and discovering the vast array of emotional pitfalls that only SL can afford...(like, 'is he/she on your list?', 'have you been taking me off of visible?', and that sort of nonsense).

Having been around the online scene since BBS days, I've gone through it all.

Everyone deals with these things differently. Everyone sees these things differently. There's no hard and fast rule about what marriage means, or what SL or roleplay means. There is only one rubric:

What do you FEEL this is? (and also, what does SHE feel this is?)

If you are hiding it from your spouse, your heart is leaping up in your throat every time you think of her, and you find yourself willing to risk RL things for her -

This is an affair. Do not kid yourself, and take responsibility for it one way or another. If you're okay risking your RL relationship for this, fine, but don't be surprised when it blows up in your face and you have to reap what you have sown.

If you are not okay with risking your marriage, time to end it.

That's the bottom line.

And I don't expect anyone to take this advice. Nobody ever does.

Okay... forgive me ... I haven't read the entire thread so I may be repeating here.

You need to put the brakes on partner. For many reasons... first and foremost if this is your first online emotional experience AND you are married in RL.

While I agree, it is very possible to have real emotions in a virtual environment there are several differences. I'll touch on some of my philosophy here in a bit but what you need to know first is the following...

A) As much as you /think/ you know this person... you don't really /know/ them, at least not in a true sense as you would in real life.

B) You have a real life. Second Life should never take priority over your real life, especially when what you are talking about also includes another person who is indeed real and has real feelings also.

C) Your wife and her boyfriend absolutely will not recognize a difference between Second Life and real life.

There are many things that go on between two people in real life that will not go on in second life. Thins such as body language, voice inflections and mannerisms. What we are doing in second life is essentially reading text. Psychologically we are also filling in certain "blanks" in our mind that we aren't getting in the virtual environment such as body language, voice inflections and the like. Those subconcious things are generally going to be "positive" because we want that person to fit an ideal. An ideal that the user behind the avatar may not meet. Not to mention there are many avatars out there that are far from what their user really is, do you know for sure that "she" isn't a "he" for instance. Unless you've asked that direct question I would'n't take that information for granted.

Essentially what it boils down to is that you are gambling your real life situation based on a fantasy. Does that mean it's impossible for people to fall in love on SL and meet RL and be perfectly happy? Of course not. But the difference is that single people have nothing to lose in that situation. You on the other hand have another person involved and that is your wife, not to mention her live in boyfriend. Do you or "she" have children also? You also allude to a "crisis" situation on her end. How many times have we heard that story? Not to mention the most extreme case where a friend of a friend of mine fell in love (probably much like you) and he went down from OH to FL to meet the love of his life. He got off the bus and met her. She took him to where she was staying and her real life boyfriend suddenly appeared. Then both she and her boyfriend beat the shit out of the guy and stole all the money he had taken for the trip which was all cash of course. He was beat pretty severly as well.

Now, I've certainly fallen in love online myself. But you need to be cautious and responsible. If you, sir, wish to meet other people, then you need to decide if that desire is great enough to end your marriage or not. If you want to meet other people, at least have the decency and respect to ask for a divorce because you don't love her anymore. If meeting new peopel isn't what you want. Then let the online "love" go, because while true love is possible on line, it's a much riskier proposition on line than off line.

I agree with the latest posts. Even though this is a "game", if you are having a relationship with someone on SL, but are married in RL, then it is just like an affair. I think that a lot of people justify this same scenario by saying "its just a game" and its only "role play", but being in love myself on SL and seeing how it affects me, I think it is cheating.

This is not to say that what you are doing is wrong for you. Only you know what your RL situation is, and a lot of us get caught off guard by falling in love on SL. You probably didn't expect this to happen.

However, just be prepared for how it will affect your RL relationship as you have to cover up the "whole truth", and are emotionally attached to someone else.

As for the jealousy ... that behavior is destructive in RL and on SL. Either you trust someone .. or you don't. I personally would not be involved with someone who can't trust me.

Just my thoughts