Funny thing about having a Second Life is that it can be so much like all the good parts of Real Life (tm) without the negatives. In both there can be dancing and sightseeing, sporting events, movies, books, concerts, there are good friends and good conversation, and there is flirting and romance and even sex.
But in SL there are no dishes to do, no laundry or cleaning, no house painting (unless you count building textures), and landscaping and repairs don't involve getting messy or dirty or tired or sore. No one has to make the bed. Taking out the trash is just a click of a button. In SL with the right partner there can be very good sex--even if it is in the form of mutual masturbation.
One of the most obvious things most people notice right away about SL is that, although it removes the bumps and discomforts of RL, it also has it's own brand of limitations. In SL I can fly, in RL I am afraid of heights; in SL I can breathe underwater, in RL I can't even swim; but in RL I am an excellent dancer, have been a professional bellydancer, in SL (and for me here is one of the disappointments of SL) I am frustrated by the limitations of what a script, a dance pole, or a poseball will let me do.
SL relationships also suffer from similar deprivations. The lovely folks at Xcite! and Strokerz have given us virtual genitalia, love animations, and sex toys. Those things, together with a sexually experienced partner who has good narrative skills, can be very stimulating, but there is one significant element missing. Human touch. The feel of your lover's hands running over your flesh. The touch of your lover's mouth on yours. The soft, salty taste of skin. The sweet hot pleasure of penetration. These are things that cannot be replaced by virtual games. Or can they?
Now there are people working on the technology to provide some of that. Believe it or not, this is a serious field of technology which is called "Teledildonics." Now you can buy a kissing phone that will give you a kiss matching the kiss of your lover on the other end. You can get a shirt that allows you to feel hugs from your distant partner. And (no shit!) there are electronic vaginas and penises through which you can stimulate each other to orgasm!
doubt that anything will ever replace the desire for real human touch, and I am sure most of us don't have the funds to invest in an arsenal of electronic devices. But there is a trend for relationships begun in SL to escalate to higher and higher levels, including spilling over to RL, and maybe this sort of electronic toy is the answer to keeping your RL and SL from overlapping or worse from colliding.
Now I am not saying you shouldn't mix SL with RL, that is of course a personal choice. The difficulty is making that choice reasonably and rationally, and--being human and fallible--if we aren't careful we can make choices that affect us or our RL loved ones badly.
The press is full of articles that bash Internet relationships. There was the story of the fellow who spends nearly 20 hours a day in SL neglecting his real wife for his SL wife. Even if you are single you can make choices that turn out badly, like the chick whose ex-online lover killed himself leaving her with no closure, or the one who is moving to the city of her Internet pal but fears becoming a homewrecker. And, when online lovers do meet, there is the issue of possibly spreading sexually transmitted diseases from meeting online partners for a quick tryst in RL.
What we never seem to hear about in the news are the many couples that meet online and then succeed in establishing solid RL relationships. I can think of a half dozen among my friends and acquaintances in SL alone. In an SL interview with Reuters SL News Center, Internet entrepreneur Arianna Huffington has even noted that:
A lot of people who want to explore different possibilities, they can now do it in Second Life instead of, say, leaving their wife—fulfilling some other fantasy. Why not experiment? I think Second Life will save marriages.
And she may be right. While many people push the online envelope into their real life, there are many more who are perfectly happy having their cake in SL and eating it in RL, too--taking the stimulation they feel by sex in SL back into improving their real live relationships and experiencing with their real partners that experimentation they have been able to explore online in a safe environment first.
So once again it all boils down to choices. Have SL sex? Why not. It is safe and it can be fun. Is it cheating if you are already RL married or committed?--only you (and your partners) can decide that. (Hell, I have one RL girlfriend who considers her BF looking at porn magazines a form of cheating.)
Should you meet that online partner in RL? Now you need to slow down and think it through. There are a whole lot of "what ifs" to consider. If you are committed in RL will it hurt that relationship? Maybe a Same Time Next Year scenerio will hurt neither of you, but what if one of you wants more and the other doesn't? What will you do if you don't like the real person as much as you do the avatar? If he/she finds you unattractive in RL? Or, worse, has lied about his/her real self? These are things to consider before you let that second life collide with your real one.
The bottom line is that there are many wonderful things about Second Life worth exploring and enjoying--especially safe virtual sex--without worrying about how much better it could be in RL. Maybe we need to take each for what it is worth. Enjoy RL for RL's sake, and enjoy SL for SL's sake. I can dance in SL for or with a partner and enjoy it for what it is--virtual communication. And I can dance in RL with or without a partner and enjoy it for the exercise of my talent as well as the potential for human touch. These worlds may touch for me someday if I find the right partner to dance with in both--and I do mean "dance," in the ballroom and in the bedroom, with a partner who I trust in both RL and SL.
On the other hand, unless it is right for both of us, these worlds may forever stay separate. It really doesn't matter as long as I make the choices wisely. In the meantime I intend to enjoy each venue for all it has to offer.
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