Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love

Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love

Sexuality  -  Playlist 105 Comments
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Ratings: 5.82/10 from 22 users.

Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace LoveThere is now a new world which has welcomed over four million inhabitants in the last three years. Its name is Second Life and it’s accessed through the Internet. Here in this virtual world, each inhabitant is an entirely unique avatar, a fantasy creation that’s usually taller, stronger, fitter, and more attractive than the person controlling it on the other side of the screen…but Second Life isn’t a game, it’s a virtual life fueled by real wants and desires. And for some, when life and love are less than perfect, the escape it offers can be more seductive than the real world.

Documentary series about everyday dramas. Carolyn is a 37 year-old mother of four in the midst of a passionate affair. She's spending up to 18 hours a day with her lover online on Second Life, the website. She has never met him, but, to her husband of nine year's dismay, she is abandoning her family and flying 5,000 miles to London to start a new life with her lover, Elliot. What makes this website, which has three million members, so compelling?

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Lynette Wood
Lynette Wood
1 year ago

This is an addiction. A monster that takes over. Turns a sane normal person who once had strong morals into something they dont recognise. These ones who are on these virtual reality sites, need understanding for what it is...a terrible insidious addiction. look up OLAG read it perhaps many of you will understand more

Bellios
Bellios
5 years ago

That's right. Emotional infidelity to the extreme. But it is worse when one is filming oneself naked and sharing. Web cam live sex too. Yeah, a portal to believe that relationships like that can become meaningful.

Hard to believe that a person can really care for the one committed to him/her by behaving this unfaithfully. Maybe being responsible in life has lost its lustre. If one enjoys being responsible in a relationship then this kind of infidelity will not likely happen.

But couples consent to this kind of behavior too. The man or woman in a face to face relationship having this kind of fun online. Taking advantage of the digital world. It is ruinous nonetheless. More evidence of how technology separates us from each other.

Tony Cinco
Tony Cinco
6 years ago

Second Life has been the bame of my marriage. My wife has been unfaithful online and it hurt me and our relationship as much as if it happened in real life.

alex latimer
alex latimer
7 years ago

Was that marriage worth saving??

alex latimer
alex latimer
7 years ago

Did you notice they didn't even look at each other while they were picnicking on Primrose Hill in London. (just like in the cyberworld) It was a farce from beginning to end. How could they expect to connect looking , and acting so differently from their avatars,with no background or history. Who would be fooled? The real question however is WHY. Poor kids and husband.

Hollis
Hollis
11 years ago

it would never work for me -- i like a small house, almost constant rain and grey skies, knitting, and conversation about philosophy, science, religion, and politics. i have a lot to say, but who would be interested? they're too busy flirting and having sex. yawn ...

Jimboyoyo
Jimboyoyo
11 years ago

I don't know how people have time for these make believe games

Lisa C
Lisa C
11 years ago

I have been on second life for three years but only use it occasionally.I am very selective who I talk with(I don't really chat with ppl much)and it's more an interest in what ppl create on there.I would NEVER regularly chat with someone else's husband or accept advances-ever.

If you allow yourself to use something like this to fill a void in your marriage....you are treading dangerous waters.Unfortuneatly I caught my husband talking with a woman on google+.and instead of being like Lee(the poor husband on the documentary)I took matters into my own hands.

I found out my husband had an email he didn't mention(he is not good at hiding things)I luckily entered with the password he uses for a lot of accounts.And found some chats and comments that were inappropriate.
It was obvious my husband was getting emotional about this woman who he said did not know he was married(who knows if that is true).I also got on his ipad and looked at the womans page and saw comments of a romantic nature.He left it wide open for me to catch.

So I got on his account and made comment on the womans page to make known he has a WIFE.My husband is angry with me(too bad)and the woman blocked him.He said he was about to end it himself but I doubt that.Had I not stepped in he would probably still be doing it and had threatened to try to contact her.He said I feared that contact...well,duh?I told him if I found out he did he would end up divorced(which would not bode well for him on many levels).He does not truly understand any contact with this woman would end our marriage or that what he was doing was emotional infidelity.

Make no mistake ppl, these online affairs can damage a marriage and end it because they get this fantasy in thier mind that it will be so much better than the real life relationship they have...and can also led to physical affairs in the flesh.This woman told my husband she wanted to meet him(states away).

Don't just sit there and do nothing ..like Lee...step in and put a stop to it and hope you can mend your marriage afterward.

KateHall
KateHall
11 years ago

I totally feel for the real life husband in the documentary. I have discovered my husband having a cyber affair on Second Life, and after a reasonable amount of investigation, I find that I feel violated, cheated upon and I do not know where to go next...confront him, or see a lawyer about a divorce, or seek marriage counseling or all of those. We've been married for 25+ years. His attachment to these cyber girlfiends does not seem to be a game, seems real.

chad maxwell
chad maxwell
11 years ago

good thing she's thinking of her family

RightwingHunter
RightwingHunter
11 years ago

Her husband is the perfect example of why nice guys always finish last.

T800System
T800System
11 years ago

That guy is the ultimate cuckolded husband. What the **** is he doing? I'd draw the line at having an online relationship with someone - let alone going out to meet them! If he had any balls he would divorce that b*tch straight up, proxy all communication with her through his solicitor and take custody of the children. Then he should find someone better to replace this selfish **** of a wife and help raise his kids.

Max Bretschneider
Max Bretschneider
11 years ago

Lee schould take a hammer and smash the computer to pieces!

LarrytheLayman
LarrytheLayman
11 years ago

He was in Love, then he saw her for real....

LarrytheLayman
LarrytheLayman
11 years ago

Man I cannot believe how weak people can be, can't be bothered to get off their butt and do something about their life. Oh well, the more they spend time in some virtual fantasy, the less competition in the real world.

LarrytheLayman
LarrytheLayman
11 years ago

Its funny, its obvious any one would want to live a life that was as easy as Second Life, but as we all know, its not real. It does n't even look good, the animations suck, and its limited in what you can do. Actually I think it would shell shock them if they could live in the Second Life world for a few hours, and find that things they take for granted in real life, would be missing, such as the five senses. In Second Life you wouldn't feel anything, since that isn't part of the program, no taste, when making love you would have no feeling what so ever, if the game even allows you to do that, seldomly you'd glitch and be bound to do anything the programmers wanted you to do.

LarrytheLayman
LarrytheLayman
11 years ago

LOL, I bet that guy thought that he was good at playing the piano

Ken JB
Ken JB
11 years ago

My and my girlfriend met in second life and we now live together in real life so i can relate.

m vanes
m vanes
11 years ago

Hi Michael,

Your last sentence is a bit of an open door and goes for anything you watch. We know that it’s always biased or even scripted.

Talking about the couple: I think it is very insulting of you to call a kind hearted man a milquetoast. You know as well as I do that even awesome guys and girls can lose their attraction for a partner and it is one of the challenges of a relationship (always bumpy!) to find each other back and move on, especially when kids are involved.

When you watch the last minutes of the documentary and see the man talking and the woman making scornful faces and showing her despise for him, it hurts me deeply. She has no idea how much he has held her high when talking about her “state” to the kids.

She’s one of the many second life addicts and has fallen into the virtual “real love”” trap. It happens to almost everybody in second life and is causing a lot of misery. Fortunately most people recognize the trap in time, but for many relationships in the real world too much damage has been done and they are beyond repair.
I wish this family all the best, and hope the kids will have 2 committed parents.

Sylvie

Steve Gordon
Steve Gordon
12 years ago

Final comment:This chick's husband really must love her. She's obviously psychotic, a fact Elliott recognized as soon as he clapped eyes on her, which is why he couldn't get rid of her fast enough. He implied that they didn't even have sex. Any person who is ready to abandon her kids for "even a 5% chance it might work out" would raise huge red flags with any sane guy. She's the most selfish, immature, obsessive/compulsive, narcissistic person I've seen in a while -- and how she inspired such devotion in her husband is quite beyond me. Her type will always cheat again and he's basically told her that he'll accept any bad behaviour on her part, but can you imagine the rage boiling up inside those kids?

Steve Gordon
Steve Gordon
12 years ago

Let me get something straight: these two are getting misty eyed looking at a book of computer graphics that memorialize an imaginary event that "took place" during a computer game and was "attended" by a bunch of other cartoons? That's what's happening here, right? Ok, just checking.

Steve Gordon
Steve Gordon
12 years ago

These people need professional psychiatric help.

Mistymoo
Mistymoo
12 years ago

Really strange

Tracy Willett
Tracy Willett
12 years ago

Most disturbing part for me was the comment attributed to the 13 year old son speaking to his mother that she would have been better off if he was never born. These children are being abandoned by their mother and I believe are at high risk of sucide in their teen years which we all know can be very difficult anyway. Putting her own "happiness" ahead of the mental health of her offspring is disgraceful.

Phil Ondusko
Phil Ondusko
12 years ago

STAND YOUR GROUND MAN! LEAVE THAT BITCH! Relationships are over rated anyway, just a pain in the ass

badrou zeggar
badrou zeggar
12 years ago

after watching a documentary about #SecondLife i realise that people withing this game are just id**ts...#LifeIsGood #SecondLife sucks

Matthew Sayers
Matthew Sayers
12 years ago

The best way to not become a victim of someone using that program is to buy a computer. Get on the same website. Find the guy or girl the person is messing around with and do one of two things. One is seduce your own significant other posing as someone else. Or disrupt their little romance by being a nuscience during their activities. Or act suspicious getting on your own computer on the same program and act secretive mimicking all of their actions by acting the same distant way making the other party more and more paranoid. Then have them come out with it.

Robba33
Robba33
12 years ago

Sadly, this is a marriage in crisis. People act out in different ways and fundamental problems are at the base of it. It is easy to throw out judgements, yet useless if you haven't been there yourself.

Mark
Mark
12 years ago

Unlike so many who've posted here that have a judgemental view of the marriage, I for one consider this a fascinating character study. It's quite apparent that the key issue here is "lack". Neither the wife nor her cyber-partner would feel so driven if they already felt complete enough within themselves, a cardinal sign that the comings and goings in their "real" life aren't satisfactory enough and hence the suffering(an earlier poster citing the Buddhist take on this). And the disappointment experienced by the wife upon meeting her cybermate obviously came from insatiable romantic fantasies so it was doomed from the start(quite possibly, she didn't want it to succeed anyway, realizing on an unconscious level that the transformation into another "real" relationship would be an overwhelming task, what with abandoning her family back in the States). Perhaps a happy ending is in sight given that her husband is so overwhelmingly forgiving though the ultimate "cure" for this would have to be achieving a genuine wholeness in her life so that the temptation to go astray doesn't arise with such fervor.

iheartjoel
iheartjoel
12 years ago

her avatar is very ugly. you should see mine.

Yusiley S
Yusiley S
12 years ago

Carolyns' story reminds me of that news report of two South Korean parents who starved their 3 month old baby because they were too busy playing and interacting with a online/virtual baby (its a game like SIMs where you raise and care for a baby as if it were real ). >_> Seriously, the clicking and plugging into the computer phenomenon has gotten out of hand these days. What's next... surgically implanting ports down along our spinal column like in the Matrix and plug ourselves into a computer to experience sex? Truly losing our humanity with all this immersion into technology. I can't wait till an asteroid or some natural phenomenon wipes the human species already before it degrades or embarrasses itself any further.

0zyxcba1
0zyxcba1
12 years ago

I'm probably in a minority, but I think easy-access, on-demand porn, apart from its primary erotic function, is kinda educational?and I do not mean the 'how-to' variety of education.

Not only does easy-access, on-demand porn provide for erotic discharge, but it also zooms, close-up, to view our neighbor's bedroom fantasies, wants, needs and desires, providing one with the smug, self-satisfying reassurance that you're no more boring than they are!

And the porn-industry, and the religion-industry, feed off one another.
Porn makes 'repentance' necessary.

I just love a church advertising salvation in flickering neon lettering atop a
stiff steeple and, inside, cajoling repentance for one's sins, preaching against depravities and sins of the flesh while selling same wrapped in brown paper wrapping out the door of the church's backside in exchange for thirty pieces
of silver, thus ensuring need for a return visit through its front end, for yet another injection of salvation?free, for the price of repentance.

Ye!
Slide to your knees on the cushion's ease and drop a coin in the poor-box, please.

0z

Steven MacDougall
Steven MacDougall
12 years ago

LOL! 10:53 he says they spent sometimes 9 hours together online, and that doesn't happen in real life. This makes me LOL so hard, this guy has probably never had a relationship or even a real job. XD

Sabin Russell
Sabin Russell
12 years ago

!!!!!

Sherry Roberts
Sherry Roberts
12 years ago

HAHAHAHAHA this made me pee a little

Sherry Roberts
Sherry Roberts
12 years ago

Hoe. fa. sho.

rishal_chandra
rishal_chandra
12 years ago

He so should have dump her ass she doesn't deserve a guy thats half as decent as he is and im glad she got shut down by that pomey bloke!

Mayra
Mayra
12 years ago

I don't have anything against people that start off their relationship online, but what that woman did is pathetic! She is just pathetic, and does not deserve the family that stands by her.

Michael Martine
Michael Martine
12 years ago

You guys need to move this off of Google Video, which is going bye-bye.

annemariemercer
annemariemercer
12 years ago

These are the saddest, most pathetic situations I have ever seen in my life. I think most of the people featured in this documentary have serious low self-esteem issues. It's just really, really sad.

Tamsin Spargo
Tamsin Spargo
12 years ago

That woman is disgraceful! Whilst living with her husband she pretty much turns him into a single parent, and obviously had a terrible effect on her children if they openly say that they are less important than her computer. If she felt depressed she could have found a much better way to overcome that, a way that wouldn't have devastated her children.
I feel terrible for her family. Her husband is a very loving, patient and forgiving man, I hope he finds someone else who actually deserves that.

redteddy
redteddy
13 years ago

Oh yeah and I do think Carol was completely selfish.

redteddy
redteddy
13 years ago

How funny. It was probably for the best that Carol did go to England. Now she can take a look at what it is she really has in 'real life' and realize its not so bad. She has a patient husband who loves her and the reality of life is that once you make certain choices it means closing the door on others. You can't have everything.

diana makustah
diana makustah
13 years ago

oh shut up everyone!! who are you to say someone else is selfish? you don't know her, you don't know the emotions she experienced on this game, you don't know what the other guy was saying to her, we don't know what she was saying to him! we're human and how she's respondin is human and many many people experience this same online relationship, it's not something you can control.......

susan
susan
13 years ago

I can see how this can be so alluring for the average person. Reality SUCKS! thats we we read books,watch movies, play video games,get addicted to drugs or commit suicide.

The bhuddists were right when they said life is suffering. The constant need for humans to find an escape from it is extremely understandable. Watching this made me visit the second life site out of curiousity. However the prospect of having to interact with others who are most likely too lack lustre or unintelligent to make it in the real world are probably just as perpetually beige in this virtual one and i'd have to bother engaging in communication with them. So ill just stay in my own wonderland. There i move all the peices on the chess board and the burden of human companionship vitually real or real in life hasnt the power to taint my never ending story.

You dont need second life when theres the glorious mechanism of the human mind, virtual reality is still reality. Daydreaming is the cure for that. what you have locked inside the imagination is true fantasy.The real door to freedom is a dream. All anyone needs is one good story. One good story to the imagination is like the big bang, it births an expanding universe thats yours alone to keep, its like your introspective love child.

Sarah
Sarah
13 years ago

Carolyn is being extremely ungrateful and selfish. She has a lovely, paitent, understanding Husband who stands by her side regardless of the fact that she doesn't seem to give him much love in return. I even bet you that he would defend her if he saw me saying this and she has several beautiful children. If you ask me, I don't see why she needs a second life. She has everything anyone could ever want around her.

Kaf
Kaf
13 years ago

What's a pity. Sade world. Getting out of it is difficult. No salvation outside!

ProudinUS
ProudinUS
13 years ago

What the **** is this? I wish they would've had this sh^t years ago.It would've spared me countless eposodes with the Misses. Hell, if I didn't feel in the mood that night,I'd just have her click on the web and have at it. That would be great! No more of her slobbering on me like a St.Bernard in heat. No more worthless conversations. What more could you ask for? As far as I'm concerned she needs a lifetime membership! Finally I have found my escape from a perverted wife who expects to have sex twice a month!

Tess
Tess
13 years ago

The Battlestar Galactica music made me lol

Adam M. Erickson
Adam M. Erickson
13 years ago

Is there a support group set up for this type of incidences.