Sam had met someone, and it was getting serious.
It started out as a friendship, as many relationships do. But gradually Sam's feelings for Kat, a beautiful, smart and confident woman, had turned romantic.
Hang on — there’s a catch. Sam and Kat met in the virtual world Second Life. And although they shared all kinds of intimacies in Second Life, the real people have never laid eyes on each other.
That didn’t seem to matter to Sam. He fell pretty hard for his avatar sweetie. They bonded intellectually, emotionally, and yes, thanks to Second Life animations, even physically.
Here’s where it gets complicated. Unlike his avatar, which is female, in real life, Sam is a man. A married man. And the person behind the blonde, curvaceous Kat? Married. And, quite possibly, a man, too.
(As you might imagine, some people interviewed for this story did not want to reveal their full names. Some gave us their avatar names, while others went with pseudonyms.)
Sam knew from the outset that he had no intention of ever meeting Kat in real life. So although he acknowledges feeing some guilt, he didn’t see the online affair as being as damaging as a real one.
“With Second Life, there wasn't the fear of a real-life physical attachment,” he says. “The fear of someone calling me up at home.”
For many folks, the arms-length quality of in-game romance is what separates a (fairly) harmless experiment from actual infidelity. If these intimacies, no matter how personal, never translate into a real-world meeting or real-life sex, can it be considered cheating?
The majority of people who responded to the MSNBC.com/iVillage Lust, Love and Loyalty survey think it can — although that characterization tends to skew along gender lines.
Sending a sexually flirtatious e-mail to a co-worker? Just over half of men — 53 percent — think that’s cheating, as compared with 73 percent of women. Ratchet that up to online talk or “Webcamming,” and the cheating meter ticks up slightly: 57 percent of men think that’s a no-no, while 77 percent of women do.
Even Sam wasn’t sure how to term his relationship. After all, he was role-playing.
“It’s a 3-D avatar having sex with another 3-D avatar,” says Wagner James Au, author of the Second Life blog New World Notes. “What looks like a hot blonde babe could be a 60 year-old man in Milwaukee.”
But at some point, Sam’s in-world relationship with Kat began to intrude on his real life. A recent family vacation was punctuated by furtive Second Life meetings with his avatar girlfriend.
“I dreamed up any excuse I could with my family to tell them I needed to get online for a few minutes here and there,” he says. “It was pathetic.”
That’s where the lines get blurry, says P. Shavaun Scott, a marriage and family therapist from San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Would you be upset if you found out your significant other was having an online affair? * 5903 responses
Definitely. Cheating is cheating.
58%
I'd be upset, but I don't think an online affair is as damaging as a real one.
30%
I'm not sure.
11%
thanks to my friend 'FATE' for this xoxo
