Terms of Endearment
Yes. I am one of those #FBPDA couples who write nauseating sweet commentary on public posts, or friends of friends if Facebook circles actually defined friendship in any real shape or norms.
Why bother? We are with each other literally around the clock. Why pollute the net neutrality with our te amo trivial? I suppose there’s many reasons. Not the least of which it’s part of our online culture and community. IMVU is up to the wazzoo with club etiquette. Like the bar at Cheers, everyone stops what they are doing to btb, tyt, hb, or htfb and they all know your name — or avatar alias as it were. The voice box protocol for luvu, ILY, lovesU, ilu anything but the four letter word which is taboo in IMVU ONLY couples are pretty well defined. And if you MISS that couple action your partner clicked on with your avatar … Because you are in another room (or dog forbid you looked away from the computer for a moment) then there’s hello to pay as they poof without a goodbye.
Even if you have more than one wife in IMVU, you treat the woman you are with as IF she was every woman in the world to you. Or at least one ava-playa once told me … During my time zone dance card with him.
So there is that. It’s part of our culture. But I also see it akin to taking “pretty pictures”. As a chronically sick chic who barely has energy to put a brush thru my hair as I twist it up with a hair twist tie … It’s good to take pictures when we don’t look as bad as we feel. Even if it doesn’t represent our norm, even if we had to take 224 shots to get one instance where the light hit just right, our eyes were not closed, our brow not tense with pain …. That one fluke where hey I don’t look half bad from that angle with the dog covering my age spots.
Pretty pictures help us remember … Even in a pain filled life that is limited beyond what most Harry, Dick and Mary Jane can comprehend … That we are still able to shine albeit briefly.
It’s the same thing with our copacetic coping banter. Our lives are HARD. The redneck and I have so many Swiss cheese moments in our past that it makes our current life a significant challenge. We began reading a book recently about high conflict couples. Because it was spot on and tuned in to things that happen in the dynamics of people who share an intense experience of Life on all levels.
It’s very hard. We we’re in an IMVU room this week where a friend was touting how Monks and I had been with each other six years. Seven, I corrected if you counted a year in IMVU before we took the plunge into the real realm. People always say we are an inspiration that we give them hope that true love can be found in the battlefield of broken hearts which is avatar ally.
Each time someone puts us on a pedestal, I tell them quickly that we are a WARNING SIGN. And that it takes incredibly hard work… Everyday.
Pretty pictures help ease the painful reality of a pain filled life. Just as the redneck and I share trite one liners that make our kids want to puke … Because it provides us with balance and perspective on the dark side of living life on the edge of not knowing what happens next. That’s not to say we are miserable most of the time, or that we each represent the thorn in each other’s garden. We in fact do spend most of our time laughing and sharing lyrical memories. But that’s because we work hard to make things look easy.
