Infidelicious

Dear Auntie Anneka

I want to know your feelings about SL online relationships of married people that are not married to each other? Is it infidelity? Do you think you can play this game and simply remain good friends and not cross boundaries? Just wanted your thoughts.

Thanks many times over.

Dierks


Dear Dierks

Thank you so much for wanting to seek me out for help and advice. This is certainly and complicated and thorny issue. And one that I am sure I will not get to the bottom of in the limited space here.

I try not to judge others. After four failed marriages I am certainly not in a position to. Although only two of those divorces were directly due to Second Life, I guess. And even with those two, it wasn’t in Second Life where the relevant spouse at the time caught me in flagrante in that motel room. True, I had met them inworld, but that’s not important. I digress…

Online relationships – an area fraught with danger, mystery, intrigue, excitement, danger, excitement. I can see how the idea might be enticing. Especially if you’re lonely, your work-obsessed husband spends long hours at the office, drinks with his colleagues till all hours and then comes home and passes out on the sofa. For some it would be an attractive idea.

But as the judge said to me at the divorce proceedings for my second, no third marriage – you made a commitment for life, not just until you got bored. I have learned since then that infidelity is in the mind as well as the body. Do we cheat on our spouses when we imagine ourselves with the sweat-stained buff gardener or when we actually have him ravage us in the tool shed? I think it must be the former. And thus, following that logic, getting your avatar down and dirty with some random foreign stud you met at a club who doesn’t speak English but so eloquently propositioned you must also be classed as crossing the boundaries, as you put it.

In my youth, I would have answered otherwise. But I was in denial, acting on a whim and following the devices and desires of my wanton flesh. Now, in later life, I see the error of my ways.

I do think we can play this game and remain good friends without the torment of sexual desire. It’s just bloody difficult!

Blessings
Auntie Anneka