Relationships

Profile from a Secondlife Resident

A friend of mine suggested I search for this profile recently... and I've had a couple of days to think about it now.

You see, I know this avatar. I say avatar not person, because after meeting this avatar as a newcomer to Secondlife and spending some time around them in world... I knew that I had only learned a very few things about them.

This avatar is intelligent (very)... they were fun to be around... they tended to be manipulative... they were certainly generous to me.

They were also secretive (that's not always bad!)... and near the end of my business/friendship I can say very stubborn.

Now most if not all of these traits can be a road map to success in both worlds we *live* in.

You know, the fun things are so easy to write about... the words flow easily... I never have to deal with my own feelings other than those feelings of joy or perceived accomplishment.

Let me go back to mid 2007 when I had been in Secondlife just a few months. After finally figuring out my hair/hat {no laughing..only took three weeks!} I went and found an island parcel I wanted. Next came a custom house and all the high prim high dollar furniture I thought I needed...{and then more and more land/prims }... and then? Yes, like many others I wanted to share this wondrous life with another. Secondlife has a few things about it that aren't true in real life. One is time compression...stay a year or so and look back. Another is how our feelings seem to work... lets call it feeling compression for lack of a better term. Feelings of love, care, compassion are magnified... I'm not educated well enough in that field to explain why... but I've seen it in both myself, and so many others. I've seen people give their hearts to another here only to find that the other wasn't what they purported to be. I've seen real life marriages fail because the partner involved in Secondlife made the commitment to the Secondlife relationship the primary relationship. There have been times I've counseled people to not establish real world contacts to further the role play that they find so intriguing here. There are documented situations of serious real life dangers in some of these contacts... never mind the emotional damage that seems to stalk almost everyone that pursues romantic interests. When I read the profile above I am saddened... while that avatar and I did not part as friends, I certainly take no pleasure in seeing that text. I won't slap my leg and say to myself ..."Damn it, I told them so...I told them that would happen!". I'm human, and have quite a temper... but give me a few days to work on almost anything and I almost always manage to do and perhaps think the right thing. Today I sometimes wonder what I would do if Riggly ever returned in world. I suspect I would greet her with a hug and a kiss for old times sake... and follow my own advice. Advice is so easy to give... and usually worth just what one pays for it...but here's mine, and yes it's free. Please don't let me read your profile someday and have it look like the one above. Today I do have loving relationships in Secondlife...I have a very few that I know some of their real lives...some of their real life problems. I have none that I think I'm romantically *in love* with. And so it goes My love to all, brinda Namaste