Friends & lovers, the ups and downs of Second Life.

It’s easy to believe that because the eyes looking into your are pixels and not real that you can hide your true feelings from those you have become close to.

It’s easy to believe that what is created in SL, be it a building, a piece of furniture, a gadget, a relationship  or a friendship has less value than it would have in real life.

It’s easy to believe that it’s all just fantasy and nobody can really get hurt.

It’s easy to believe all those things, and there have been times in my SL life when I have believed all of them. I know now though that none of them are true.  I had to learn the hard way, by connecting, by feeling, by opening my heart and by hurting and being hurt, by trusting and betraying and being betrayed, by loving and by leaving.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that behind every Avatar in SL is a real person.

It’s easy to forget that those people think and feel and react in the same way in SL as they would in the same situation in real life.

These are the things we must remember most of all.

I’m as guilty as anyone of making the mistake of saying something spiteful or foolish in SL and not considering the impact it may have on the person who the comment was aimed at. The Computer monitor seems to act as an invisible field between the real me and the real them, it’s only when something happens and you realise that you have made a “real” connection with someone, a friend, someone you’d just been chatting with who suddenly is having a problem and you realise you genuinely “feel” concern and love for them, that you realise… real friendships, real connections of all kind are very possible in SL and not enough people remember that.

It scares some people, it’s more than they bargained for and they don’t know what to do with it and they try to sabotage it or just run away from it.  I don’t understand why because to be me it is a beautiful thing.  Some people embrace it too much, mistake what it is … they confuse affection with desire, usually if desire is something they are craving.  It can get messy as in real life, and it was be wonderful too.. as in real life Like it or not, SL is just like RL in more ways than I can begin to describe. Why? because it is real people behind it.

My Sweetie Monty and I met online 4 years ago, and in RL 3 and half years ago, we know the power of the written word, we know the magic of a connection made between two people before they’ve even been in the same city as each other. We know the joys, we know the pitfalls, we know the pain, we know the ecstasy. We still make mistakes, we still have many lessons to learn but we have promised to learn them together even though in RL we live many miles apart.  As a symbol of that, as a step towards our future together, I’m very very happy to announce that Monty has agreed to be my Partner in SecondLife. 

We won’t be having an SL “Wedding”, our RL connection would make that a little too wierd for us both, we have made our vows to eachother every day of our relationship. Despite the physical distance between us, those who know us consider us very much a “couple”, a partnership and we simply wanted to bring that into Second Life.

I am am very lucky woman…  and I get a ring