I don't know if any of you remember me, but a few months back I posted here because I was addicted to IMVU and was struggling with leaving. I was finally able to leave for good, disabled my account and stayed away all this time. The problem is that one of my friends who I had kept in contact with outside of imvu convinced me to try Second Life with her. She was bored with imvu and left around the same time I did. I didn't know much about Second Life so I thought there wouldn't be any harm in trying it out with her. After about a week of being on it, I could feel myself getting completely immersed in it. I was a fast learner and before I knew it I was buying a premium account and spending all this money on my avatar.
For the past two months we have both immersed ourselves in this virtual world and again I found myself neglecting real life and focusing on the game. This time around I was able to keep my real life job, but I have absolutely no social life. I would go to work and come straight home and get on Second Life until I passed out, then repeat the process every day. About a week ago I started to wake up out of my dream and realize that I was obsessed and that maybe I was hiding from the real world. I was able to be whatever I wanted in the game and compared to my real life, Second Life was amazing. I was hiding and I hated my real life. I"ve realized that I want to make my real life great and not invest in a virtual game.
I was able to start waking up because of my friend. She's my partner in Second Life and we went everywhere together. Well I noticed that she was spending a lot more money than me buying lindens and then she even bought some land. Being unsatisfied with the size of the land, she keeps upgrading to larger land and now she wan'ts a half sim. That's about $40 a week just for the sim rent, and not only that but she spends so many lindens a day buying furniture and clothes on a whim. Watching her do all of this is waking me up and making me realize that we really have almost completely abandoned our real lives and are living for this game. She never logs off, she stays up until she passes out by her computer and she expects me to stay online with her. The only thing that takes me off of the game is having to go to work, and when I'm at work I'm thinking about Second Life. I hate it and I've decided I don't want to do it anymore. Yesterday I was with her in our home and she was going around putting new furniture in it. I checked the time....and realized I had been standing there watching her do this for 7 hours...That many hours had passed by in the blink of an eye, just arranging furniture. This is not healthy and I tried to talk to her about it and tell her that I don't want to spend lots of real life money on a game, but she doesn't understand.
So I ended up falling asleep while she was messing around with furniture and it logged me out after several hours. When I woke up, I decided that I don't want to come back. I want to just walk away from it all. I haven't gone back in a full day which is weird for me and I know she will wonder where I am...If I decide to walk away like this, my guilt would eat at me because I will feel like I'm leaving her. She's my partner, my girlfriend on SL, not to mention we were friends for two years together just on imvu and skype. I don't want to hurt her and I keep thinking that if I disappear like that she will hurt and she will worry about me. But honestly I cannot keep doing this. If I tell her I want to leave she will just convince me to stay. I have been putting online things first for 3 years now and it's time to stop. I'm 27 and my life is just passing me by while I stare at my computer screen. I don't want this life anymore and I'm wondering if I should just live for myself, say a little prayer that she will be ok, and just walk away.
I looked around my house and saw all the laundry piled up...looked at my phone and saw no texts or calls...realized that I have no real life friends anymore; I alienated from them when I started IMVU. Knowing that kills me inside because I can remember who I was before I got involved with these games. I had wonderful friends, little get-togethers at my house every weekend, I was healthier, outgoing. I wish I had never found out about Imvu or Second Life because now I feel like a drug addict and I think the only way I can get better is if I just walk away completely. No contact with any of my online friends, because they will reel me back in. Any advice would be appreciated.