IMVU Familes
Families on IMVU are among the strongest relationships. There is an extremely wide variety of different types of families, much more than real life. And they can be much more powerful and more rewarding than you would probably realize.
Today my very best friend got married to another great friend. It was one of the happiest days I’ve ever had on here. I introduced them a couple months ago and knew as soon as the idea first clicked in my head that they would be an awesome couple. What I didn’t realize is how attached much a part of this new family and what an amazing feeling that would be.
It is one of the most amazing and special things I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of in the crazy world of IMVU. It’s not something I can really explain totally even to people in here. The best thing I can say about it is that if you stick around long enough and have the opportunity to be a part of a strong successful family, you have to take it.
The Online Evolution Process
There are no rules, but we all seem to go through the same several stages as we progress.
1. It starts with curiosity.
2. Moves into Playing.
3. Sometimes stalls a while in Sex.
4. Role playing can be a complicated mix of things.
5. Ultimately Relationships become the key.
It’s important to realize that most people are a mix of things. You can have fun playing or want sex in any of the other higher levels too. And role playing can take on a lot of forms, from vampires, werewolves, and an endless variety of creatures and groups. Relationships can also take on much more variety in cyberspace and they often progress at internet speed as well.
Probably the pinnacle of relationships is the IMVU marriage (although marriages like everything else here, can take a wide variety of forms), which was a very foreign or surprising concept when I first saw it. Sure it’s a virtual world (or “game” for the cynical) but the people are real. And if you’re not ready for it, the degree to which these sexy little cartoon characters get into your heart, will surprise you. These are real people and they can really get to you, in a virtual kind of way.
An easy test to see what stage (or stages) you’re in is to ask yourself, if IMVU (and every alternative) disappeared tomorrow, what would you miss most? If you won’t miss much, you were probably still in the curiosity stage. If you miss the rooms, furniture, dances and clothes, you were in the playing stage. If you miss the sex it’s pretty self explanatory what stage you were in, but if you’ve been here a while you’ll probably realize that the most important thing is the relationships.
Does a virtual relationship hurt your real life relationships?
That was an important question for me, being married and very worried about affecting my real life relationships and family. I have to admit that it does a little. But what surprised me, was how positive that can be. It does occasionally hurt it a little when my virtual relations are struggling. But at least for me, the ups were much more pronounced than the downs. And they never really competed or seemed as mutually exclusive as I was afraid it might.
I often refer to the Las Vegas rules, meaning what happens here stays here, but there is an exception, and that’s the warm loving feeling you get from the the love you can’t help but feel here. My Love asked me recently if I thought about her when I was with my RL spouse. I said that I didn’t really picture her, but I did feel her and her love, not only with my RL spouse, but in every relationship I have in RL or IMVU. You can’t help but spill that amazing loving feeling you get into everything in your life. I try to hide the tears, and share the love.
Can people really build real relationships with someone they’ve never met, never seen and never talked to?
Absolutely! You can not only build real relationships but can have even more powerful and deeper relationships in many ways. They do tend to be more fragile sometimes, and in some ways. It’s easier for something to get in the way at a great distance, someone to get jealous or distracted either in rl or imvu. The images on the screen are fake, but the people behind them are real.
So many things can go wrong.
Relationships grow faster in IMVU but they can also be very fragile. Your time availability may change, they get a new RL love interest, and all of a sudden you’re sitting here in DisneyWorld without your partner for the rides, and that’s no fun. Even just seeing them come in and not talk to you and not answer an invite can eat away at you and be incredibly painful.
Getting sick or even just having someone else in their family sick, can dramatically affect your relationships. The distance and detachment, makes it easier to talk about some things more than we do in RL, but that distance also backfires a lot.
You’re gonna get hurt
It’s just part of life. As the saying goes, what goes up must come down. And even a soft let down, will feel down and hurt compared to previous high you had. It’s not your fault. It happens to everyone. You really can’t stay on that kind of high forever. Take pictures, or videos and do your best to capture the feeling and memory of it. Try not to burn your bridges or make rash decisions when you’re going down. No matter how down you feel, you’ll feel better again too. What goes down also comes up. And the neat thing about IMVU is that you can sign out and spend time with your family and friends, or you can even discontinue the account and start over or walk away for a while if necessary.
Believe me, I can tell you this from personal experience and going through boxes of tissues. I can also tell you that walking away is hard, but it can heal faster than you realize or might expect too.
Making Relationships Last is the key
It’s easy to meet people and start new relationships in IMVU, but it’s also easy to lose them too. This place is FULL of distractions, and people just looking to cause trouble (called drama to make it sound acceptable). It’s kind of like trying to get your kids to study while they’re out of school, at Disney World. It’s also hard to impose real life rules on a world that’s not real, just like you can’t expect to behave like you do on vacation or even on vacation in Las Vegas that you do in your real life at home. IMVU is even further away and less real in a sense than a RL vacation. So take anything people say and everyone’s behavior with a grain of salt.
Don’t spill your guts too fast
Sharing is very sexy and brings a lot of intimacy. But don’t race to disclose everything too fast. The journey is the reward here. So don’t get too far ahead of your partner. Go back and forth with revelations and it’ll make you feel closer and more intimate.
The Magic of IMVU
One of the best things about IMVU is the variety of people you get to meet and the quality of friendships that you develop. I’ve made a in awful lot of friends here. And while some come and go some also stay and touch us very deeply. And this strange IMVU vision you develop here lets us look past the surface into their heart, in a way you don’t often get to do in the real world. Add to that sharing some tremendous emotional highs and lows and you start to see the magic of IMVU.
Virtual Relationships
It’s kind of ironic that someone afraid to even talk to people when she started in here is writing about relationships, but I guess someone has to do it. And I’ve made enough mistakes to give a few good ideas. Besides, there’s really no obvious source of good information on this, so I guess this is a good as any place else to start.
Friends
The most important thing you’ll develop here, after a little while here are your friends. The pixels may be virtual, but it’s a person on the other side of the pixels and the relationships are real. And be careful because they can be amazingly powerful actually, like a direct connection from your heart to theirs. To me that’s what this place is all about. Friends is a broad term that covers a variety of relationships. I have two wives, and certainly doesn’t seem strong enough. To call these people friends is like calling Picasso’s paintings. These are some of the greatest people anywhere in IMVU or anywhere.
