UK couple in real-life divorce over virtual affair

Wow that sucks. I guess the affairs of the heart are the worst ones really.

To make matter worse, his avatar got virtual herpes.

The fact that they met online makes this online affair a real affair in her eyes, I guess it's a good thing she found out before he had a real affair and brought home a std;  my question is why would a 28 year old marry a 40 year old that can only find women on line in the first place.  He's either rich and very ugly or just ugly.

Excellent.  This is better than the Onion.

Not to sound uncompassionate but HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA.

Weird. If someone can have that much of a "life" in a virtual setting, I wonder how someone would think they could be worth more in real life?

Or maybe this 40 y/o guy just wanted someone younger than 28?

"The couple met in an internet chatroom in 2003"

That's all you need to know.  Internet people are social deviants. 

I am feeling a fragment of hope for the future! While my husband was deployed in Afghanistan, he partook in online affairs, not through the mentioned virtual reality sites, but on the social networking scene, Myspace. These are very serious issues, and I am so relieved to see that someone other than myself is starting to acknowledge the fact that these "virtual" affairs, are so real, and have real world consequenses. This country and world is spinning out of controll with the technology that is given to us, and it is being made easier and easier for people to partake in these affairs, without having real world physical attachments. And yes... it hurts just as much. When my husband was telling these other women he loved them.... that was beyond pain, they were MY I love you's... they belonged to me! My husband and I are doing wonderfull and working on our marriage, and thank the sweet lord, he has stopped his online affairs, as well as alot of his internet use alltogether.
We both deleted our Myspace accounts, because of the effects that it has had on our marriage. He deleted his on his own will, and as time went by, the hurt was just so much from the past that I was considering doing the same. The thing that pushed me past my limit and made me swear off social networking sites permenantly, was an ad that popped up the morning I was considering deleting the account.... "Find other married people in your area who are out to have an affair" ... "looking for a one night stand?"..... It is a serious problem and is being portrayed to our youth that this is acceptable behaviour... when IT IS NOT!
Our cell phones have a feature on it for text flirting... this is not something that can be taken off the phones... how are people supposed to recognize these as temptations when they are so outwardly out there?!
The ease of online affairs, the virtual lives, the social networking affairs, the porn industry, all of these things are getting out of hand, and SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE ABOUT IT! Where did our morals go, and how are we supposed to instill morals into our children, when these anti moralistic things are flaunted in our faces 24 hours a day?!??!!
Keep these studies and articles going... maybe we can cure this disease.

Sounds like ol' Dave is the lucky one here and getting out of this relationship while he's still young. This woman clearly has issues, since pornography in all its mediums (text, print, television, film, computer) has long been a requisite staple of the red-blooded male. Men are visual, they like to look and they like to watch, that's just the way they roll. If this woman is jealous over a digitalized virtual "affair" she needs some kind of wake up call because that leash she's holding--and her psychological expectations--are wound waaaay too tight. If he were playing a war game and killing people, would she think he was a murderer or serial killer too? Time to grow up, honey, and join the 21st century.

So whats the big deal. I talked to my wife about this and she laughed out so hard. It's only a game and so what if it's a sexual game. Sex is a part of life. I have read about women who have divorced their husbands over a collection of Playboy Magazines. She should loosen up a bit and join him in the game. It could be fun for the both of them.

I am virtually shocked.

It sounds like both the husband and the wife need to spend a bit less time in the virtual world and a little more in the real world.  How can any woman feel jeolous of a virtual character?  Time to get real people.

Okay, this is just completely stupid! She should be glad that he is doing it in the virtual world instead of the real world.

For now, he can only get virtual STD's!

He should be glad that she is divorcing him, as he should find him a more open woman.

Darwinian natural selection at work.

This is stupid

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAA.... OMG are you kidding me!??!?!!

GET A LIFE!

"At one point she hired a virtual detective to test whether his avatar was cheating on her, after finding him at the computer watching his character having sex with a prostitute."

Virtual detective? Avatar? Man, people really need to see the sunshine a little bit.

Thanks for the hilariousness on this lovely Friday afternoon!

Everything is relative.  What's considered out-of-bounds in one marriage or relationship is perfectly allowable in others... phone sex, flirty texts, have both been cause for the break-up of more than one relationship, and they're no more "real" than email, instant messenger or chat in a game.  Considering their initial relationship formed over the internet, I'm not at all surprised that the woman in this article considers a second online relationship on her husband's part to be cheating - and really, for everyone who's saying that it wasn't a big deal because it wasn't "real life", if he's going to cheat online then "IRL" may well be next.

Didn't I recently read about adult couples in the UK adopting dolls and pretending they are real babies?