SLUniverse Forums

Brig McD

I think the most important aspect of an SL partnership is to clearly state what your expectations and limits are.

Do you want to keep it SL only or do you want to allow bleeding into RL? And if you do allow bleeding into RL, how much?
Do you expect your partner to only spend time with you or do you offer the freedom for them to spend time with other friends?
How much time are you willing to commit to the relationship?

If you can't agree on these items, the relationship probably won't work.

Karl Herber

I think I've come at the whole SL relationships thing backwards-way round from everyone else. I have had an online relationship for over 3 years, it didn't start in SL but we brought it into SL as soon as we found it. During most of that time I've not had a serious RL partnership at all, so there's been no doubt or confusion as to whether my SL/online partnership is "real" or not - it most certainly is. Even though we're eight timezones, 5000 miles, a continent plus an oceran apart, we've already met in RL, will be having another holiday together in July.

Now I also have a friend in RL, that I introduced to SL last year, and recently that RL friendship has morphed into a serious relationship. My online partner is cool with it, so now I apparently have two SL partners, one of whom is also now my RL partner.

As for the avatar identity issue - I tend to look at avatars for the most part in SL entirely at face value and treat them as such, and treat them as though they are just what the avatar appears to be. If I were entering into a romantic or sexual relationship with the expectation of meeting that person in RL, then it would be a different issue but since I'm never going to meet the vast majority of them in RL, it really doesn't matter to me whether that good looking tanned and muscled guy is in RL a fat fifty-year-old or not. In any case I spend half my in-world time as a blue horse, so it would be hypocritical of me to expect everyone else I meet to conform their avatar to their RL selves.

-Karl.

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Horse Tales - and - Free For Men

Brenda Archer

I think it still is. I don't mean to say SL only relationships are not real, they are. But it seems like an artificial limit to keep them only in SL if you don't need to.

I might feel differently if I had a RL relationship, but I don't. I'm happy to admit that I always leave the door open to the possibility that good friends I have online might eventually become good friends in RL too.

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Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre,
Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois. - Denis Diderot