Mithra Carteris a 35-year-old brunette with olive skin who wears revealing clothing. She's also not real. Mithra is an avatar in Second Life, the 3D virtual world created in 2003 by its Residents, or players. Mithra is controlled in real life (RL) by a woman in her late 30s who logs into Second Life (SL) from a suburban desktop.
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Mithra doesn't enter SL for three hours a day just to explore the colorful virtual world; she also meets male avatars and forms relationships with them. Mithra's RL husband doesn't know about her avatar. She says she enters the virtual world to have "close and very intimate conversations with men in SL." She currently has a "partner" (a sort-of husband) in SL whom she has had "sexual relations" with in the virtual world. But does virtual sex mean Mithra's cheating on her RL husband?
Dr. Kimberly Young, a social psychologist specializingin Internetaddiction and online behavior, believes the answer is yes. "Even in virtual worlds such as Second Life, it's still an emotional connection outside of marriage, which generally is the definition of an affair," she said.
Mithra argues that she has no intentionof meetingher SL partner or male avatar friends in RL. "I think of it as two completely separate worlds and don't consider myself to be cheating on my RL husband with my SL partner," she said. Mithra isn't alone in her thinking. According to a September 2007 survey conducted by Spunlogic, a marketing and technology agency, only 58 percent of respondents saw virtual-world interactions as unfaithful.
Nick Yee, who has studied the psychology of virtual worlds at Stanford University, says that romantic relationships formed in virtual worlds can lead to real-world ones. "It's absolutely common to meet in the physical world," Yee said. "The main thing I've found in these relationships is that they weren't looking for something romantic, and they just spring up for these players."
Increased time spent in virtual worlds like World of Warcraft or Second Life has become a concern for many spouses, including "Jennifer" (who asked that we not use her real name). This newlywed from California is familiar with the stress the second dimension puts on a relationship. "I know my husband isn't cheating on me in Second Life or in real life, but he spends so much time in the [virtual] world, I feel like he's cheating on me with the program," she said.
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