The how’s, why’s, and WTF’s(?!)
of Second Life affairs…
I’ve often wondered
what drives people to have affairs, both in Second Life, and Real Life, so I
did a little hunting, and spoke, anonymously of course, with a few SL residents
who were game to talk about their game here in this virtual world.
I thought asking the source, the ladies who provide these
services themselves, would be more fruitful, but I was amused to discover that
if you’re not about to pony up a bunch of Lindens, their customer service
skills drop considerably. Way to bring ‘em on back, girls, your rude is so
sexy! I quickly realized I wasn’t going to get a serious, or intelligent,
answer from any of these digital ladies of the evening. The only real answer I
got was, “It’s kind of easy, if you pay for it, what you are paying for is no
drama. You get what you want, you get
the fantasy you want, then you get to go home and not deal with ‘OMG I love
you...’”
So after that failure, I asked a gentlemen who I’ll simply
call Toddrick, (To the actual gentlemen with whom I spoke: I apologize for the
ridiculous alias, but it’s the only way I can ensure I don’t accidentally use
your real name,) and the answer turned out to be rather simple, and universal.
Lack of proper stimulation in RL would play a major role, at least in
Toddrick’s case. His RL partner was not as sexually adventurous as he would
like to be in his relationship, and things became further complicated after the
birth of a child.
After an adventure in
RL role-playing left his partner with a sour taste in her mouth, fearing him
some sort of pervert, things suffered from there on out. It’s never been a
better time to be a human, since for the first time in history, you’re only
judged for your perversions if they involve societal taboos such as rape,
incest, or bestiality, in most parts of the world now. The frustration in his
words was evident, and what I saw was a man who had a genuine desire to be with
his wife, if only he could break her out of her shell and find a way to express
to her exploration and experimentation can be not only fun, but healthy in
keeping a sexual relationship new and fresh.
Toddrick admitted to a handful of affairs on SL, but that
he’d never had a full blown RL affair, just an episode of kissing a girl one
time, as his only RL extra marital activities. I found this even more
fascinating, because of the fact that one girl on SL with whom he feels very
close, lives close enough for him to visit, yet he’s afraid an RL meeting would
spoil the fantasy and mystery of this lady he finds himself so fascinated with
in SL. To me, this spoke of a man who cared greatly for his wife, while trying
to satisfy things inside him he didn’t feel comfortable satisfying with his
wife.
It seems, to me at
least, that maybe the tedium and mundanity of his RL relationship was a driving
force in his desire for SL affairs with other women. Throw in some self esteem
issues that made him feel like he’d maybe missed his fair chance to ‘sow his
oats’ properly, and you see a man looking for things perceived lost. When I
dive into the possible depths of this thought process, I become a bit lost,
because I’ve always been very forceful about who and what I want, thus
fulfilling my needs in RL. This makes it so I don’t seek outside attention from
others in either RL, or SL. The expression that comes to mind was one an old
friend of mine from high school spouted to me one day, ‘If you don’t feed the
dog, it’ll go next door.’
This has never been
more true than it is now, in a world where answers for your sexual appetites
are literally a click away, the doors have never been more open for exploration
in what a person, or couple, might find themselves into sexually. I thought I
would learn a lot about SL affairs, but what I really learned a lot about was
how many people in the world are left sexually unsatisfied in their everyday
lives, either from illness, or injury, too much demand on their RL time and
bodies with work and child rearing, or just a lack of compatibility in their
levels of desire for sexual exploration.
These reasons, and so many more, are
why people seem to be driven to affairs in SL.
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