JANUARY 13 "ARE YOU CHEATING?"
It's Sunday morning at 6 AM, and Dutch Hoorenbeek rolls
out of bed to check on his strip club and do some renovations to an outside
party deck. He then fires several tenants in his mall for not paying rent,
signs up four new ones, and transports to his office to spend some time with
his wife, Tenaj Jackelope. The thing is, in real life, Dutch Hoorenbeek is
actually Ric Hoogestraat, a call-center operator making $14 an hour. He's also
married to Sue Hoogestraat, not Tenaj Jackelope. Confusing? It should be. Turns out that Ric and Sue's
marriage is on the rocks. She contends that he spends more time online in
Second Life, a virtual universe currently home to 30 million players, with his
online wife. Sue spends her days in front of the television, while Ric is in
the other room running a virtual night club and consorting with his online
wife, sometimes for as long as 14 hours at a time on weekends. Although Sue Hoogestraat has attended "gaming
widow" support groups, she sees no way out. "Basically, the other
person is widowed," she told the Wall St. Journal. "This other life
is so wonderful; it's better than real life. Nobody gets fat, nobody gets gray.
The person that's left can't compete with that." Ric believes that what he's doing is harmless.
"It's just a game," he says. Experts, however, have found most
recently that feelings that people have online -connections with other virtual
characters, loss, friendship, and even love -- are in fact real emotions, and
humans don't have the ability to switch off between what they feel on- and
off-line. Addiction to online gaming is a common thread these
days. What appears to be on the rise, however, is a notion that people could be
cheating on their real-life spouses in virtual worlds. While divorce courts
don't currently consider such indiscretions adultery, lawyers appear ready to
change their minds on that. Could the courts be far behind? We must transcend this false notion that an affair
must be “physical”. If another woman,
man or cyber person has our affections, our heart and eventually our love,
whether we end up with them in bed or not, there is an affair taking place. The
question is not always “who are you sleeping with” but “who has your heart?” Is it the woman at the office, is it the man
down the street who always seem to be there in time to help when your husband
is not, it doesn’t’ matter who and where, what matters is do you look forward
to seeing him/her again? Jesus a very
long time ago taught, that there is far more to adultery, than the physical
act!
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