Ellen McCarthy is a wedding reporter for the Washington Post and she has published a book; The Real Thing: Lessons for Love and Life from a Wedding Reporter’s Notebook. This post is not going to be a review of the book, however there’s something in the book that stands out for virtual world enthusiasts.
Number 10 in the top ten reasons to call a wedding off is :
Your avatars got married in Second Life and that worked out, so you figure this will, too. It happened. I swear.
In isolation, this does not sound like a good reason to call a marriage off, indeed it’s not implausible for people to meet in Second Life and live happily ever after, it has happened, I swear. However if two people meet in Second Life and then decide to get married without spending any real physical world time together, that’s one hell of a gamble.
However to just dismiss a marriage because people meet in Second Life would be somewhat churlish. Ellen McCarthy hasn’t just made this up, she has interviewed people who got married and therefore at some point, a Second Life inspired marriage must have appeared on her radar.