Where do these relationships go?

Second life has real people behind the pixels, real feelings, real emotions, real dependencies, and real broken hearts. All them bundled up into a condensed alternate reality. Yes there are those that just come in game to hook up and cyber away until they are all wanked out. On the other hand there are the deeply romantic relationships, intellectually and artistically stimulating relationships and of course combinations of all of these. In between all these wonderful feelings are emotions and egos. What is the long term impact on our psyche?

But what becomes of them. I believe that as we get older and remember what we have created in SL we won't remember that it was a virtual world. It will be just another memory on the top ten hit parade we play back as we recycle our memories. I am curious about what becomes of the relationships we develop in SL and how do they play out in or along side RL. What do you do when what your are experiencing in SL is more meaningful than RL. What does that say about our "Real Life".

I have friends in world that feel that SL and RL are separate, but that isn't really true. SL is just a subset of RL. RL may be kept out of SL but you can't do the reverse. SL is a part of our total life. We are in denial to think otherwise. What ever joy or pain we feel in SL are effect our real lives. In some cases it has built confidence and cause improvements in personalities and some others it may have done the opposite.

I have made some wonderful friends in Second Life. Friends I love spending time with. I never want to lose those friendships. I don't know if they would or could ever exist with out Second Life. I value them just the same.