Uppity Women Blog

By now you’ve probably heard of the infamous “Second Life Divorce,” which hit the news late last week. Basically, a UK couple who met in a chatroom and bonded over their love of the game Second Life married and began to live together IRL, as the kids say. The couple, Amy Taylor and David Pollard, are known as Laura Skye and Dave Barmy, respectively, in-game. Taylor discovered that Pollard was carrying on an emotional affair with another player’s avatar (as well as the real person behind it) and she decided this breach of trust was too much, and filed for divorce.

Amy Taylor, 28, whose online alter ego is named Laura Skye, said that her husband’s virtual infidelity exacted a pain that cut as deep as any extramarital liaison. “It may have started online, but it existed entirely in the real world and it hurts just as much,” she said. “His was the ultimate betrayal. He had been lying to me.”

Second Life is one of those places online where you can be someone totally different, if you choose. You determine your appearance, and as if often the case with online communities, you can adopt a different persona. Pictures originally published by The Daily Mail show a vast discrepancy between their appearances and lives.

But it sounds like one thing remained the same, which is that Pollard seems to enjoy getting it on with ladies online. In the aftermath, Taylor said that “David had made vows to me when we married and promised to be faithful to me always. So even cheating online meant that he was breaking his vows.”

I think it’s impossible to say who’s at fault in a case like this, where the media and blogosphere is screaming at us to behold the next freakshow. And it does all read rather like he-said, she-said. Pollard claims Taylor had drifted away and was absorbed with her life in World of Warcraft. Taylor claims that she suspected something was up when her husband’s avatar was “wearing tighter and tighter trousers, with his shirts more and more unbuttoned” as well as being surrounded increasingly by babealicious avatars. But this case raises a few questions for me.

What is fidelity? The obvious answer is, “it depends.” Some people take a hard line on monogamy, meaning that anything beyond polite, casual interactions with others could quickly turn into broken vows. Others draw the line at print/video pornography, or online porn, which often has opportunities for more interactive components and in some cases, emotional engagement. Still others, and this is oversimplifying it, believe in a polyamorous approach, where you can love more than one person at the same time, as long as the involved parties practice good communication and attempt to be honest with one another. I believe that fidelity can exist in all of these situations with open communication.

In the case of the Second Life marriage and divorce, it sounds like both parties were unclear about what their expectations were. Apparently, Taylor expected singular emotional fidelity from Pollard. Pollard countered with “I only ever cheated on her once in Second Life - it was the first time, and I was caught. But when I tried to point out that it was only a game, she went absolutely bonkers.” It’s interesting to me that Pollard both acknowledges that it was cheating, and hedges with the fact that Second Life is “only a game.” This “game” is the same thing that he and Taylor bonded over, as well as where he met his mistress, a 55-year-old woman from Arkansas to whom Pollard is currently engaged.

The mistress online:

In real life:

Would it occur to you to discuss boundaries in virtual worlds with your partners? That was never something that really occurred to me before this case. Perhaps it would be a different case if worlds like these were more my bailiwick. I like chatrooms, but the boring old text kind. I love gaming, but mostly offline ones that I can play at my own pace. I have found it possible to form close relationships with people I’ve met online, but I would not want to conduct an international romantic relationship with little hope of being consummated in this way. Obviously, others disagree. Pollard calls his new fiancee, whom he has not yet met offline, his soulmate.

So what do you think? Is this part of your boundaries conversation with your partners? Is digital humping cheating for you? Do you think more open communication could have saved this marriage?