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'Sex is a big facet of second life'

 

Amy Taylor's story made the national news

 

Avatars Grace and Tom kick back at the beach...

 

...then go for a spin...

 

...before enjoying a romantic moment in Hawaii

 

Tom and Grace snuggle up

 

Kristen and Steve with daughter Kira

 

'There was an instant attraction'

 

 

Kristen and Steve in second life

 

AS AMY TAYLOR DIVORCES THE HUSBAND SHE CAUGHT ‘CHEATING’ IN SECOND LIFE, WRITER MANDY APPLEYARD (RIGHT) REVEALS HOW THE COMPUTER FANTASY WORLD TURNED HER LIFE UPSIDE DOWN TOO

They were three of the weirdest months of my life. I went into Second Life – an interactive computer world where you lead a fantasy life through your own virtual character – feeling curious after reading an article about it. I expected to find a community of perverts and cyber nerds. Instead I ended up falling in love with a man from Belgium.

There are few boundaries in Second Life, so when I read the story of how a Newquay couple split up after she caught his alter ego cheating on her there, I wasn't surprised.

Amy Taylor, 28, is divorcing the 40-year-old husband she found having virtual sex with a prostitute in Second Life. As far as Amy is concerned, her husband was having a real relationship with the American woman whose character he was having sex with.

"It may have started online, but it existed entirely in the real world, and it hurts just as much," she says.

Have your say: sex online - is it cheating? >>

Second Life is like a three-dimensional, technicolour chat room where users live through a character, or avatar, they have created. Their avatar can get a job, buy a home, have a relationship and even children. As they move around ‘in-world', they meet and interact with other characters.

Within hours of joining in February 2007, I'd created my avatar, Grace. I quickly became hooked and was soon spending five hours a day online. I'm not alone in this. Second Life is a worldwide phenomenon with 15 million users.

No one was more surprised than me by the iron grip it suddenly had on me. I'd read the stories and seen the TV documentaries: Second Life was for the sad and desperate – a freaky cyber world where lonely outsiders could engage in the sex and companionship missing from their real lives. But then I too became addicted to living in a world where just about anything goes.

My main reason for going back was meeting the man from Belgium seven days after joining up. His avatar was called Tom, and we met on a beach after I'd been scuba-diving. He said hello, asked how long I'd been a Second Lifer, and made a joke about how bizarre my avatar looked.

I had orange hair and a face like a gonk, but felt so overwhelmed by Second Life that I hadn't spent much time on my appearance at that stage – Grace later morphed into a tall, slim, long-haired Lara Croft lookalike.

Tom's avatar looked like the bespectacled blond in Scooby-Doo, but he made me laugh, flirted a lot, and we had a whole new world to explore together. We went skiing, shopping for new faces and bodies, climbed a mountain and went salsa dancing. And all in one afternoon.

Within a week of meeting we were spending hours online together. We'd explore for a while, then kick back somewhere and tell each other about our real lives. We talked. And talked. Tom told me he was in a serious 18-year relationship, but was lonely and unhappy. I was single and living in Yorkshire.

Falling in love seemed faster and more intense than in real life – maybe because the anonymity encouraged greater openness – and the whole experience was so bizarre it took on an air of unbridled fantasy.

A month after meeting, we became intimate in Second Life. Given that Tom was in a relationship but that our coupling was only virtual, was it infidelity? Yes, we eventually agreed, it was.

Sex is a big facet of Second Life. There are countless places to have it – everywhere from beaches to sex clubs to ski cabins. It usually starts with text chat – players describing what they're imagining doing with each other in graphic terms. They can buy outfits to dress their avatars provocatively, or ‘skins' to make them appear nude. Default avatars have no genitalia, so users need to buy them.

They then find a place with ‘pose balls'. Commonly the female clicks on the pink ball and the male on the blue ball, at which point attached software will animate the avatars so they're cuddling, kissing, copulating, having oral sex, or whatever else their hearts' desire.

To the uninitiated, this sounds ludicrous. But to the millions of Second Lifers who engage in it, it's a vital part of the picture.

Many women truss up their avatars like porn stars in thigh-high boots, leather G-strings and fetish gear, and give them names like Babydollz and Sexilicious.

One woman told me she was a divorced 40-something mother of four grown-up kids, living alone in rural America, overweight and celibate for the last seven years. So she had invented an avatar who was everything she wasn't – 6ft, slim and a sexual predator.

As she put it: "I can be who I want to be here – it's liberating."

It wasn't like that for me, but then I hadn't gone to Second Life looking for love or sex. To me it was an adult adventure playground that was terrific fun. But I spent less time there as Tom and I began communicating in real life. We started emailing each other a month after we met in Second Life, and not long after that we were talking on the phone every couple of days. In April last year, six weeks after we met online, I flew to Belgium to meet him in person.

I was nervous that the spell would be broken. What if he was awful? What if I ended up dismembered in a skip? We'd emailed photographs to each other, but we were still in surreal territory. However, as soon as I saw him, I knew it was fine. He was tall, dark, and more attractive than I'd dared hope, and the chemistry between us was electric.

We were strangers, yet we already knew the most intimate details of each other's lives. We'd spent so long talking that it felt as if we knew each other better than if we'd met in the real world, with all its distractions.

We agreed to leave Second Life behind and spent the best part of the next year together, very much in love and intent on a shared future. We survived the difficult fall-out from Tom ending his real-life relationship. He was planning a move to England when, 10 months down the line, I decided to end our relationship. I felt the chemistry had changed, that he'd become too dependent on me.

Two weeks later, feeling lonely and sad, I decided to sneak back into Second Life for a quick look. I logged on and had a sudden impulse to see if Tom was in there too.

I was shocked to find he was, and that in his updated profile he said he was now "in love" with another avatar, representing a girl in America. I felt sick. He'd taken our break-up badly and he was free to do what he wanted, but the fact that he'd already hooked up with another woman in Second Life made a mockery of what we'd had.

I logged out and removed the Second Life software from my computer. That was nine months ago. There have been times when I've been tempted to explore Second Life again, but I won't. For me, one life is enough.

So is Second Life a bad thing? Not if it's lived honestly and responsibly, but all too often people abuse the freedom they find there. Dishonesty and infidelity have appalling consequences, even if they are virtual."

‘I didn't feel guilty cheating in Second Life'

Kristen Birkin was unhappy in her relationship when she began an affair on Second Life.

Her bullying boyfriend of 10 years had crushed her self-esteem, but online she could be sexy and super-confident Kira.

Within days, she met 48-year-old sales assistant Steve Sweet, who was also in a relationship. In the coming months, they spent six hours a day online with Kira and Steve's avatar Nik going for walks and dancing, before getting engaged – all before Kristen and Steve had even met. As their romance unfolded, they made love in Second Life.

"My friendship with Steve felt so deep and genuine, it didn't feel like we were doing anything wrong," says Kristen, 34.

Four months after starting the online affair, she split up with her boyfriend and she and Steve finally arranged to meet.

"There was definitely an instant attraction," says Kristen, a singer from Nuneaton.

Two weeks later, Steve ended his relationship with his live-in partner Susan, and moved in with Kristen. They married in May 2007, five months after meeting. Daughter Kira was born in February 2008 and they're expecting their second baby next summer.

However, Susan, 47, who was with Steve for 25 years, says she was devastated by his betrayal. She now lives in a small flat in Plympton, Devon, with her elderly mother.

"Steve threw away everything we had together. I became ill and depressed after he left," she says. "It has been incredibly difficult, but I'm trying to get on with my life and look towards a new future."

Have your say: sex online - is it cheating? >>

‘Online love affairs are worse than a one-night stand' says relationship expert Dr Linda Papadopoulos

"Cheating is in the eye of the beholder. Some couples have open relationships, while for others, just looking at another person – real or not – can be divorce material. Cyber infidelity, however, can often be more hurtful than a physical relationship because it's not a one-off drunken mistake. As it isn't based on anything physical, people invest emotionally in the relationship – and this can feel far more deceitful. Also the time the ‘cheat' is spending with their online friend is time they could be spending on dates with their real partner. The danger of cyber relationships is that they're a fantasy land offering you the potential to be someone you're not. And as these relationships aren't based on the real you, when they do branch out into the real world, research has shown that they tend not to last."

ADDIOTIONAL WORDS: EIMEAR O'HAGAN PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER BYRNE, JAMIE HUGHES, LANDMARK MEDIA HAIR AND MAKE UP: CAROLE MAYE AT NEMESIS