Selina Green (co-owner of Publishing & Book Islands) hosted an event about Second Life Love at the recent SL Book Fair. I, along with the 40 or so other avatars who attended, enjoyed a very interesting debate regarding Second Life Love.

So what of Second Life Love (Slove)? What does it mean? How do you fall in love with an avatar? Do SL relationships affect RL?

I’m sure for many of us when we sign up for a Second Life account the idea of falling in love with someone seems far fetched and something you’d hear on a late night news report, along with stories of evil, ex-gambling, terrorists that seemingly run about our grid.

Plain fact however, if you stay in SL long enough and spend time building friendships someday, sometime something will go further. Many people play Second Life to escape RL in some way. Many of us may look different to RL people but we often wear our hearts on our sleeves.

I don’t profess to have the answers, but in asking some pertinent questions it might provoke you to think a little bit more about your actions and your loved ones in real life and Second Life.

How exactly do you fall in love with someone in a virtual world, someone you have never met?

Personally, I can give AN answer to that question as I have done it. Trinity doesn’t look like the real life me, however she is me. She has my personality, my feelings, my heart and my soul. I was very lucky to meet Aimee Trescothick, initially as a friend at the original Lava Pit a long time ago. Through various reasons after the Pit closed our paths crossed again. We began to develop a friendship, mutual understanding, respect and ultimately love for each other.
How did it happen, honestly, I don’t know. We shared many common interests, sense of humour and love for shiny guns. Over time instead of casually chatting we looked forward to seeing each other. We watched out for the other one logging on and doing more and more together. I would assume most other couples who meet and fall in love follow this similar path. You enjoy spending time with someone, you lean on them for support, and you express hopes and fears. Eventually something shifts in that relationship to something more, a lot more.
Okay so what next? Well of course you chat in other places, exchange phone numbers and learn even more about each other. Pictures, everyday life text messages all go towards growing a bigger picture of someone.

Then you meet. No, I am not going to go into details, that’s between Aimee and I, but from personal experience meeting was everything we thought it would be, and more. However, I know we are lucky.

Aimee and I of course are also lucky in the fact neither of us had a real life relationship at the time. I know lots of SL couples that have RL partners. Is that cheating? Surely for most (besides xcit’ing sex) SL relationships are on an intellectual and emotional level. Some would argue passionately that of course it’s cheating; however some also argue that SL relationships actually help RL relationships. Second Life has been accused of causing Real Life marriages to break down. Surely if you are married in real life there is a fine line between what is acceptable even in a virtual world? In this world you can move in together, build a house, live together, have a baby and also get married. It is the closest thing you will find without actually being together in real life.

I have fairly recently had the pleasure of becoming friends with a gentleman called Peter Stindberg. Without going into details, Peter is married in SL and in RL to someone else, as is his SL Partner. Peter is in a far better position to give a different opinion on RL/SL cheating than I am, here are his thoughts: