The nature of things......

Unlike those who came to SL for parties (sex balls! o.o) or to make money or to script or to further their gaming life, I came to SL to play with people. Chat. Talk and be involved in other lives.

Lately I have said, maybe too often, that I love reading profiles. I love to know what people want you to know. And I find it fascinating what people don't want you to know. I regularly check people's profiles to see if they have been updated too. I alter as little as a single word in mine sometimes. Just to change a nuance if I feel something has had a subtle shift. And I watch for those kinds of changes in the people around me.

So I am loving meeting and getting to know people in SL.

While I even enjoy watching people I don't much like, it has been enormously satisfying building up a list of people who I really do like and a subset of those who are now my friends. Real friends and not just names on my "Friends List".

Some points on relationships in SL and me:

• People in Real Life don't understand SL relationships
  
• I don't "get" marriage in SL
  
• I can't make relationships in SL fit the mould of RL relationships

So if I say.. one of my friends is furry and wears a nappy, I am expecting there to be consternation in RL. I don't expect that they will get it and please don't tell my mum!

Now, on marriage in SL. I just don't understand. What is it?
A promise of ...
a commitment to....
an acknowledgment of......
Maybe it isn't one thing for everyone. And perhaps that is why I don't understand it because there isn't an across the board definition to apply. From my perspective, with lots of years of real life marriage under my belt, I don't see a place for marriage for me in SL. Not using any of my RL definitions anyway. I guess having been married so long in one life, I am really enjoying being myself in this SL. But maybe I am just bringing too much RL to this?

And trying to fit some of the relationships in SL into one of the familiar boxes of rl has really caused me a lot of bother. So in a flying leap of faith, I have stopped trying!

Here is Lukos... he is my friend...the sort that doesn't fit into any kind of box I came into SL armed with but worth so much!