relationships

Last year, right around mid-August, I met a newcomer at a music show. I meet a lot of newcomers, altho I haven’t been going to Help Island, and I spend a lot of time answering questions and giving out help packages [just let me know if you want one]. He and I seemed to establish an instant rapport and we spent a lot of time together. Yes, I knew he was married in RL. But we ended up partnered in SL and for four weeks, I was very happy with him. We spent all of our time in world together. In different time zones, we sent each other snapshots constantly if we were in world and alone, showing each other what we were doing. We talked in IM/chat during the day. We talked on the phone. We emailed back and forth. It was intense — yes there was some “textual intercourse” [great phrase, thank you Sam] but it was the emotional ties, the feeling of being wanted/cherished/belonging that were so compelling. It ended badly — seems that his wife felt that an SL affair/relationship was infidelity. She came in world and made sure that I knew just how she felt. And there were a lot of problems for both of us afterwards. I have no idea how his life has gone since then — all contact was severed — and he left SL, altho his wife created an alt because we apparently share many of the same tastes in SL and she wanted to be anonymous. I can only wish them both the best. Me? I went into a RL depression/funk that I only started pulling out of in the late spring.

My experience has impacted how I relate to all men in SL. Many of the people that I meet and keep company with are married in RL. I have been in many discussion groups on the subject of SL VS RL marriages — and yes, wondered how many times his wife was there too — and I have not reached a conclusion as to whether an SL relationship is adultery or not. I have seen other SL relationship impact RL, and I have seen ones where the spouse doesn’t care what their spouse does in SL and I have seen ones where one spouse is lying to the other about the emotional and physical impact.

As a widow, I don’t have the issue. And I have no regrets. But I do wish that things had turned out differently, and I am hyper-sensitive about being the “other woman”, and it continues to impact every relationship that I am in.