Dating inside of a videogame

Arianna and I met on Second Life in 2008. Here, your avatar is a blank canvas
which you can customize to fit the idea of personality and role you want to play.
Mine was not much of a stretch from my real life. I am a dubber, a voice-over actor,
so I soon got involved in reading groups, where many residents gathered to listen
to pieces of literature and sometimes, I’ll read stories they would write.

I was reading at this event in a beautiful land called SaliMar, when I noticed this
stunning avatar in the audience. At the end of it, we started talking. She was
Italian, just like me, and, as Arianna recalls, I started flirting with her. No wonder.
Arianna’s avatar was a model. But beauty is common in Second Life. If you can
customize yourself as you want, you bet everybody would make themselves look
great. However, the chemistry sparks from personality, not just beauty. That’s
when the avatar fades out and the person behind starts to appear.

We put together a virtual theater group and toured many lands in SL. Only months
later we started to see each other through Skype. We [hadn't] had met in person
yet. I live in Los Angeles, she was in Milan, thousands of miles apart.

Then the real test came: meeting in person. I flew to Milan; she was waiting at the
airport and then… the sparks! In SL, despite of having avatars we ended up
knowing each other very deeply and intimately. Ten years later Arianna and I are
still happily married and, last year, little Liam was born.
- Luciano, Burbank. CA