This subject has been hanging around in my mind for some days already but it has not been easy to compile my own thoughts about it.
Anyway, first of all, my own conceipt of a virtual partnership is: each and every more or less official marriage/partnership/whatever that exists only for other people to think of yourself as a part of a couple, when in reality you don’t feel you are in a couple.
Difficult to understand ? So let me put it this way… as a girl on my mid fourties I had several virtual partnerships – in my First Life. In my Second Life, I was partnered only to Petros Miklos until recently, and we were also together in our First Lives. And that happened because I felt at a point that I could look ahead and actually see us building something together… for real.
What I mean is… no matter where it happens, if you’re not really strongly connected to the other part of the couple and feel you are both walking the same path, well… you are living a virtual partnership.
In Second Life, I see couples become partners every day and de-partnerising the day after and I just wonder… what is this ? A let-me-break-your-heart-before-you-break-mine sort of game ? In Second Life, I see people getting partnered with someone when they are supposedly madly in love with someone else in their First Live. On the other hand, I know a couple who is together for over three years now and they never got partnered n SL. And yes, I totally admire them. If you can’t actually have the whole person by your side, what really is the use of having his/her name on your profile ? And obviously, I feel exactly the same towards First Life… if you cannot count on the person who is supposedly by your side, why do you keep his/her name on your ID or passport ? Is it really that important that the world thinks that you’re married, partnered or something ?
Well, I’m afraid that doesn’t work for me. Of course, this is only my personal opinion on the subject. But as I don’t like to be called a “girlfriend” or “wife” of someone who is not really there for me when I need it, well I really find it odd to have, in Second Life, the “partner” field filled with a name of someone who, however close he or she might be… is not really with me. Someone I cannot call at any moment of day or night and tell how I feel, someone whose shoulder is not really there when I need it, someone who really doesn’t take me out for dinner and movies, for instance, someone who doesn’t really share those lil things of my daily life that composes the building of a real coupleship.
It’s probably my fault, that I don’t draw any lines between FL and SL and I feel them just as different parts of my whole life. The way I see it… if I am independent and self-sufficient enough with dealing with my own issues, so why do I need the world to think I am with someone ?
I don’t. And this is the reason why I don’t intend to partner anyone in Second Life – nor in my First Life, for what that matters. Because in fact… I am free, I adjust to situations as I can and solve my own troubles so why should I need a name attached to me when, at the end of the day, he/she is not really there for me when I need him/her?
For those things, I have my friends, to whom I turn whenever in need and whenever they are themselves in the mood to listen to me. They are also there to ask me to go out to theaters, dining out, etc. Plus,I think I grew used to sleep on my own in this large bed 😀
Call me selfish – I am, and proud of it. You don’t have to like me, or my feelings on the subject. I am sorry if that happens, it just means that in fact I was not able to put it in a way that you, my reader, can understand.
Summer's Way 