Have you cheated on your RL partner with somebody in SL?

Does your partner in RL know that you sleep with people on SL?

Do you think this is acceptable in a virtual world?

Do you have a serious partner in both RL and SL?

I am looking for people willing to be interviewed for a new magazine for Second Life that is being created. I would be very willing to hear your story, and share it with other people in SL. If you want to chat, then reply to this and we'll get in contact.

Thanks a lot,

Arwyn

Bumping pixels isn't sex, and I feel sorry for anyone with such an unsatisfactory real life sexlife that they would equate the two together. So the answer is no, no one has ever cheated on their real life partner in SL because that is physically impossible.

Cyber "sex" for want of a better word) is more like co-authoring a porno script together than actually having sex as such.

Perhaps then, not sleeping with a person, but in a relationship with, a person you call a partner, when you're with someone in RL?

I completely disagree with you. Not because pixelsex is real sex, but because cheating is not synonymous with physical contact. Cheating is having a kind of contact with someone else against the explicit or implicit agreements you have with your partner. For some that includes kissing, for others it doesn't even include RL sex, and for others yet it even includes 'co-authoring a porno script' aka cybersex. It all depends on the kind of relationship you have, how much room it allows, and whether you feel the need to hide your activities from your significant other (best indication that something is not quite right that I know of).

To answer the OP:

Yes.

It is in my relationship.

No (only in RL).

Arwyn - I know what you are getting at. I personally have not had pixel sex with anyone. I have however created friendships that could be, and probably would be, viewed by my RL wife as being 'innapropriate'. Not sure I could contribute to any 'material' but feel free to contact me if you'd like.

Conan - 'interpretation' is subjective and I would bet you 10-Trillion Lindens, and win, that my RL wife would have a far different view than you. While she's off in bed I'm down on a PC IM'g with a real person on the other side of an attractive representation of a person and we're spending virtual time with each other... makes no difference is the time is spent having pixel sex, dancing at Phat Catz or sitting on the couch of my SL apartment doing nothing.

You've lost me already. There is no cheating without physical contact. If you can cheat in your head, that means every single person in the world cheats every single day of their lives.



I agree, Turbo. It makes no difference. Because none of it is cheating.

You should probably have caveated all of that with "in my opinion"

Many people's partners would consider something like phone sex to be cheating, and cyber sex on SL isn't much different from that in many respects. There's often far more to it than just writing a porn script and fair play to you if that's your own personal definition of it but obviously one person's definition will never be the same as everyone else's (nor will everyone's personal definition of what constitutes "cheating"...

Pi

The definitioon of cheating is about as clear as "Broadly Offensive".

Again.... 'personal interpretation'. And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the vast majority of wives of male SL users would take some issue with their husbands bumping pixels with Trixie Sexypants.

You too!! She told me I was the only one!!!

See!?! She's a cheater too!

That would be superfluous - I'm saying it therefore it must be my opinion. Whose opinion did you think it was?

In other words, if it ain't white, it's black?

That's a really silly and rather meaningless thing to say.

More like, if it ain't sex then it's not cheating.

Maybe the topic of the article is not 'Have you cheated?' but, 'Is it cheating on your partner if you have 'sex' on Second Life?'

Cheating doesnt mean anything by itself.

What means something is if you and your spouse would think you are cheating.

And those who are religious in a sense your religion intrudes on your sex life, what Dogma thinks is cheating, I suppose.

It may also matter what a divorce court would think is cheating if you live somewhere that requires/ takes into account fault. Of course this is usually a religious based definition.


There are people in this world who can have real life sex with people outside their marriage and the partner will watch them do it. And they dont consider it cheating. So the definition can vary widely

If you know or even suspect your spouse would be disapointed by what you do online and you do it anyway - of course there is an issue there. It would be silly to deny otherwise.

Emotional infidelity is still infidelity, and sometimes it's worse for a relationship than what you seem to view as the 'real' thing. I'm not talking about random contemplation regarding what x-person would be like in bed, I mean being involved with them beyond friendship, to the point where you're shutting out your significant other. That definitely happens on SL so, even if it never gets RL physical, it IS possible to cheat via pixels.

And nearly as many of those same husbands who rationalize there cyber affairs away becuase they "arent" real.

Of course Studies indicate that it may be that as many or more of the wives are "cheating" online than the husbands.

Newsweek did a pretty interesting article on it a couple of years back, that as many as 25% of women had online dallyances outside of their marriage at one point.

Noooooooooooo not that again, these forums really make my brain hurt sometimes!

Has anybody been 'cheated on' or the other way around that wants to be interviewed for this article then? Or do you know of someone who might be willing to be interviewed? I appreciate the feedback from you guys.

Arwyn

Whether or not it's cheating depends on what the rules are to begin with.

There is no cheating without *contact*. That contact does not have to be physical. What you are doing here, is lumping fantasy together with on-line contact. The difference is of course that with on-line contact there is a real person at the other end of the line, who is not there if you merely fantasize.

What *kind* of contact constitutes cheating is completely dependent on the implicit and explicit agreements partners have about that. In my own relationship, cybering and pixelslapping do not constitute cheating. In fact I have a lot of freedom with physical contact that for most couples would constitute cheating, but does not constitute cheating in our relationship. Some tolerate little, others tolerate much. For some the physical is most important, for others the emotional. Simply said: there is no true definition of 'cheating' other that the definition used by those in the relationship. After all, it's the people in the relationship who made a commitment to each other, which means they get to decide what goes or not.

So Suzy, in your relationship with your partner in RL, they know that you cyber and pixelslap with other people and is okay with it? Did you guys talk about it first? Or do you presume it's okay, without mentioning it?

I think what is important is how the hypothetical RL partner feels.

Ms. Hazlehurst is not an adulturess, as her RL does not have issue with her SL relationships.

I hate to stereotype, but the notion that a romantic relationship cannot exist without the existance of certain physical acts is, well, a rather male outlook. As someone said, most wives would not like to find out that their husbands are sneaking off to have a "no-touching" romantic relationship.

A fellow who sneaks off in the back room to play at "pixel sex", knowing full well his wife would be hurt to know he does that is, in fact, cheating. Excusing that by saying it is merely "mutual pornography" does not address the reality that he is being deceitful in a relationship that should be founded on mutual trust.

Cheating is an extremely subjective concept. I'd probably go with a definition that if you're doing something romantic/sexual with another person behind your partner's back because you know they wouldn't approve then you're cheating.

Whether or not you personally consider an act cheating or not cheating isn't terribly relevant since a relationship involves two people and your partner has to feel the same way about it as you do.