Blogger Mix And Match: "Mixing RL and SL – The dynamics and pitfalls of living and playing in SL with your RL significant other"

I participated in the Blogger's Mix And Match, allowing my neglected blog to receive a much needed new post and a good dose of something that I know nothing about, playing SL with a RL partner. That matches my post to Vint's blog about Non-profits in SL, another topic I know nothing about, but still wrote far too many words regarding.

Cat Magellan, owner of the Get A Second Life blog, wrote this wonderful post about her meeting, falling in love, and relationship with her partner. Thankfully, she didn't write in Portuguese like the rest of her blog, so I could read and appreciate her story.

Merrick Thor of the N0nslensical blog suggested the topic.

Without further blabbering by me...

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I wish – for the sake of my readers – that I could write a spicy piece about love, disgrace, sorrow, treason and flying plates and knives, but my impressions about the subject are boring, since my story is plain and simple. However, lately, I've found out that it was a very rare thing, so maybe by telling it, it may help some people. Or maybe not, who knows? These things don't depend solely on us…

Starting from the beginning,: one day I entered the grid and blogged about it on my RL blog. A lot of readers followed me. Some of them were bloggers and blog-friends for a long time. So, I've entered the grid and soon, some friends were sort of around. Everybody knows how this works: people get together and start exploring. And doing talking, a lot of talking.

To cut the story short and because 99% will remember that the same happened to them at some time or other, and know how things get going in SL, I became very close to one of these friends. We would walk around, talk, find places, talk, meet people, talk, discover things, talk and then, SL offline, send emails, then talk on the phone and write a lot of weird stuff on our blogs. And one day, with no fuss, not telling anybody else, no parties, we became partners on SL. And very very close friends in RL. We wanted to meet each other, but we lived on different countries, so that was quite difficult to implement, and we continued to talk and talk and talk (and not getting enough sleep…). For a long time we were friends and virtual lovers. For something like 8 or 9 months.

Let me tell you, it's hard. Very hard. Being together everyday and, at the same time, being apart, kills you. It's a very difficult mixture to manage; the completely stupid total happiness and the angst of not knowing. Oh, you know, you are so sure that this is the person you imagine it will be in RL. We started by playing houses in SL, we bought land, then a sim with some friends. You know your partners' favorite curtain colors and you know your partners' soul, inside out. Yes, you are completely sure…except for that 0,000001% of probability that there will be no "klick", no pheromones kicking, no hearts beating fast when you meet face to face. This is all very well, the soul side and soul mating stuff, but RL is made of more than that, let's be realistic.

Well, we survived all those months. Not without efforts, not without guts. As time went by, the more anguished we became. In the end we might as well had forgotten the whole thing, give it up, maybe it wouldn't be worth it. Your friends support you but tell each other you have gone nuts and need medication. I guess that what kept us both going, besides the romantic feelings, was our very strong friendship. We would dream about perfect encounters, but then talk about how we felt very openly with each other. We were very honest, from day zero. That's something to keep in mind, if you want to survive something like that.

Finally, D-day arrived. We met. We survived the first terrible five minutes and the next few hours just talking and looking at each other. And then it seemed like we knew each other forever. We became partners RL, till now. We are together for almost 2 years. We still do not live in the same country, we both have our lives quite settled where we are. We speak every single day, we spend all our holidays together. Some months ago, we found out we were speaking about SL too much. Funny this and a danger to a relationship: we meet in SL and speak about everything possible, and then we go from there and talk about SL most of the time. My partner almost left the grid. I took SL more slowly, and things started working out better for us from then on. Of course, all of this is not without pain or fights: we are an absolutely normal couple who gets mad at all the routine stuff. We argue about, well, almost everything, it seems. We also laugh a lot. Guess we are on the right track here. :)

Oh and btw…he's arriving tomorrow. :D

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Thank you Cat for the wonderful post and good luck with the relationship.

Speaking Of Bad Grammar And My Love Life...

Speaking of bad grammar and my love life, for some reason, Power Source blog is running a poll, "Is Veyron and Tiessa a Item?" First, it should be "Are Tiessa and Veyron an Item?" I have to have top billing, my adoring fans expect no less. And second, the post is Power Source's 69th post, an amusing coincidence.

Now, if she'd only stop following me around and saying, "Wanna fcuk?" all the time...

And I thought she was angry at me for the last one...

The Adventure Continues

Second Life can be the most sublime of places at times. One of the neighbors of my first land is a girl who is in a wheelchair in Real Life and loves that in Second Life she can fly and walk. I have friends in Second Life that are disabled, suffer from MS, are deaf, or are shut-ins for various reasons. All of them can live a rich life in Second Life, abandoning their limits or problems when they log in. This is one of the things I love most about Second Life.

Then there are some who are very self-centered for various reasons and cause turmoil in the lives of those they purport to care about. They bring jealousy, selfishness, rumor-mongering, and worse into Second Life. While professing to love or care for others, they instead allow their own petty worries to mar the lives of those they most wish to be near. Upset and melodrama occur all around them. Like in Real Life, these are the people who spoil the fun for the rest of us. I pity them, they often lead sad lives consumed by their problems. In a perfect world I could help all of them, as it is, I can only help some of them, because helping them exhausts me.

Through all of this runs the relationships that we build in Second Life, the friends and the sometimes more than friends. The infatuations, the moments of lust, the camaraderie, and the sharing of common burdens and experiences enrich us with their variety. I am surprised at how attached I am to some of my friends when I consider I've never met them in Real Life, only chatted with them, and only shared part of a virtual world with them.

This past week has been filled with highs and lows, combining all of these experiences into an emotionally uplifting and draining week, not fully cathartic, but close. I learned that someone I know suffers from severe head trauma with blinding headaches and basically "lives" in Second Life because of this Real Life condition. The actions of a few drama-laden individuals caused lots of commotion in the group of my closest friends in Second Life, my friends at Paradise Lost, hopefully everything will return to normal there eventually. Finally, a growing infatuation/friendship of mine changed dramatically last night. She changed, wanting more from Second Life via her craft, and isn't satisfied with the relationship that I thought was blossoming.

I wear my heart on my sleeve, I can't help it. I enjoy the rush and the excitement of love and the learning about someone on a deep level. That also sets me up for a lot of pain. Each time the relationship ends, I'm crushed. What surprised me most about this one, is that its in a virtual world. I truly looked forward to spending time with her, flirting, talking, etc. it felt electric. Now, she's moving on and I'm faced with the loss and the emptiness that always follows. I didn't think my feelings were so intense about someone I met in a virtual world a month ago, but when she told me, it was like the floor fell out from beneath my feet and the world was no longer stable. No one was more surprised than I was about my reaction.

Now, I'm usually pretty bad about break-ups, I don't take rejection well, and my usual responses include anger, the cold-shoulder, pathetic attempts to convince them to continue the relationship, and worse. Contrary to historical record, I'm trying to change that behavior of mine. I would truly like to continue to remain friends with her, I value her insight, her humor, and her experience; I just hope the awkwardness of the change in the relationship doesn't prevent that. Having seen what self-centered behavior causes in the prior days of the week, my usual responses of causing drama to deal with the pain seem trite and highly unappealing. I've abhorred drama for years now, but have been unable to fully wipe it from my palette of reactions.

It would be easy to sulk, to take out my pain on those around me, to be angry at her, to beg her, or to do any number of stupid things. I plan to remove those options from the ones I will do, but that leads to a huge uncertainty in what to do next. The obvious actions to further my self-centered concern are removed and a new vista rises before me. Unfortunately, I don't know what to do next and my fear of losing what remains of our friendship is paralyzing me. I don't know what the healthy actions are, what is too much or too little.

So, if I seem a little unlike my normal self for a while, its because I'm growing and changing. Internally, I know that all good things must come to an end eventually and that a virtual world seems to have even more potential for rapid and unforseen change. On the bright side, all bad things must come to and end as well. If Paradise Lost recovers and returns to the way it was or better is unknown. If my friendship continues or gets better is unknown.

What is certain is more pain and more joy will happen, often in unforseen ways. The stable will crumble and the unstable will turn out to be made of firmament.

No matter what happens, no matter how much I dislike change sometimes, the adventure will continue and I look forward to what will happen.

If I keep telling myself that, someday I might believe it.