I’ve been checking out my fellow Second Life bloggers since I started this journal; an easy thing to do with the tagging function of WordPress. And I’m becoming convinced that gridbloggers (a new term! a neologism!!) prove something of the exception to Sturgeon’s Law that 90% of everything is crap. I’ve read only a few posts that were bad so far.

I found recently an article on Karasu talking about “Ethical Dilemmas.” In this piece, Kara talks about how she has fallen into a heart-tugging quandary. She has “a good rl including a committed relationship” (sic). She had no plans to get into a commitment on the Grid — and yet has acquired herself a companion for whom she feels deeply. She goes on to ask the questions many another avatar has pondered since the Grid first rezzed into being, and even more questions besides. Should I tell my RL lover? What do I tell my RL lover?? If you have no real physical contact, is it really sex — or even a relationship? And what about if you’re a member of more than one virtual reality world, and have a lover in each of them…? [1]

Partnerships and Second Life marriages are talked about in each of the three general guides to the Grid I’ve read. Each book cautions the newcomer to one degree or another [2]. But you never know entirely what will happen until you experience it yourself. Many Residents no doubt treat SL as the ultimate in safe sex and casual, throwaway relationships. Indeed, I suspect that’s why the sex trade is so popular in-world. But others travel the Grid with no more intention than to meet people…and then meet one that seizes their heart and mind. This, of course, is the normal way of things; but what if you’re already committed to someone else — someone far more physical and present in your life?

Then you must weight the costs on your real life of pursuing this other romance. Shakespeare said it best in The Merchant of Venice, when the suitors examined the caskets in the lottery for Portia’s hand in marriage. The casket of lead was marked, “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” If you love, truly, it can only be given in full, risking your heart, mind and soul for the sake of loving the one you choose. Can a person divide their love [3] between two — even if one of the two is only an avatar in a virtual world? Remember that there’s a real person on the other side of that avatar, with real feelings. Just as important — perhaps more so — there is a person out there in Reality with you now, and you promised to give them all that is you already. No action, except perhaps the most trivial, is without consequences. And love in any form is far from a triviality….

I know my choice already. I have been long committed to someone in RL, and I choose to keep that commitment alive and thriving. I have even designed a gold wedding band that I wear to illustrate that patently to anyone I meet in SL. To me, to do otherwise is to play false to my SO, and would lead to pain and regret on far too many levels: emotional, physical, spiritual, maybe even the karmic level. And so I also choose to go no deeper in SL than friendship, keeping the main aspects of my RL personality separate from my avatar for the most part, even to my gender and sexual preference. It may erect walls between me and online acquaintances — some may even accuse me of lacking trust and honesty — but, for my true love’s sake, I take that hazard.

For you, the choice may be different. Each person approaches life, even Second Life, differently. Just be aware before you move in to that romantic condo on the “tropical island” with your pixelated god or goddess — what are all the ramifications? To you, to them…and to the others in your life. I wish I could offer another, easier answer; but such answers come from the head, not the heart. And the heart has a damnable habit of following its own rules.

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[1] Kara’s blogging partner, Zasu, has since written a followup on the same blog.

[2] Ansel Gasparini does it most strongly, thoughtfully and thoroughly in his book, tying in the interviews he takes with Jade Steele, Kymber Schnook and others to his theme. I agree with his arguments.

[3] Love as in érōs, the physical, sexual (and possibly romantic) aspect of love, not philía or storgē, love for family and friends (which can be divided among many). See Wikipedia.