When Nicole met Devin, he was causing a disturbance in her neighborhood. An instigator by nature, Devin was dressed as an albino squirrel — furry ears, tail and all, plus a red cape — and he and a friend were teasing a group of role-players. Nicole was working as a volunteer security guard, and she received a message about the two rowdy residents.
"He has a great sense of humor, but the people that he was expressing his humor to were not finding it so funny," she tells Mashable. Doing her job, she politely asked him to to tone it down a bit, but confided that she found the whole thing hilarious.
They started to chat and flirt, and began to bump into each other around the neighborhood more and more. "I was semi-stalking her, in a polite way," Devin confesses. Turns out, so was she. They went on dates, going to karaoke bars or simply hanging around with friends. Eventually, they began spending every day together.
Six months later, Nicole flew to Rochester, N.Y., to meet Devin in person for the first time. They've been a real-life couple ever since.
See also: Can Dating an Avatar Improve Real-Life Relationships?
Nicole and Devin met in Utherverse, an immersive virtual reality game in the vein of Second Life, in which users create avatars and interact with one another inside an enormous virtual world. A single mother with two girls, Nicole joined Utherverse as a player and then as a volunteer, policing the world for troublemakers as a "Protector" and helping to orient newcomers as a "Guide." She began officially working for Utherverse in 2008.
Devin originally signed up to have a laugh in the midst of a difficult divorce.
Humans fall in love a million ways online: being matched up on OkCupid or swiping right on Tinder, after chatting on Twitter or flirting on Instagram. For as long as there have been MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) such as World of Warcraft, gamers have fallen in love there, too.
One study found that adopting the persona of a dragon slayer or dungeon master paradoxically allowed players to express their truest selves, under the guise of anonymity.
Or, as Oscar Wilde put it, a century before Second Life, "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

A couple canoodles in Second Life.
Image: Flickr, Nebraska Oddfish
Utherverse was conceived in 2006 as an X-rated, next-gen dating platform — a Second Life for sex, essentially. It began salaciously enough as Red Light Center, a virtual playground modeled after Amsterdam's red light district. Two years after its launch, it counted 1.5 million members. Utherverse has since toned down the R-rated aspect with "Virtual Vancouver," a second world scrubbed of some of the racier content.
The benefit of dating in a virtual world over, according to Utherverse CEO Brian Shuster, is its potential for immersive, real-time interactions. "With web dating, people are sending emails back and forth, interacting in an asynchronous way. You don't get a feel for who the person is, you get a feel for who the person wants you to believe they are."
In contrast, a woman might meet a man in Utherverse while he's busting a move on the dance floor or laughing it up at at a bar with his friends. If she likes what she sees, she can initiate a private chat. "That's a much more natural and spontaneous indication of what a person is like," Shuster says. "Plus, you always look your best because you're avatars."
For a touch of the real deal, Utherverse users can also contribute Myspace-like profiles that feature real pictures and information about themselves.
These intricate virtual worlds offer much more than the potential for sex, however. Users in Second Life and Utherverse can shop, watch television, attend concerts, go dancing, play games, grab a coffee with friends, even attend classes. Some users operate businesses, which can generate real revenue. Real friendships are formed between people who may otherwise never have met. Users with physical disabilities can run and jump and interact in ways they might not be able to in real life. Hookups are pretty incidental to the experience.

An avatar reads 'Paradise Lost' in 'Second Life.'
Image: Flickr, Canary Beck
"Second Life was not designed as a dating site any more than the Internet itself," says Don Laabs, senior director of product for Second Life creator Linden Lab. "But if you look at the sorts of activities that go on in Second Life — people starting businesses, artwork, music classes — you tend to run into people who have common interests, that you might develop a bond with. That can also lead to romantic partnerships."
James Sun, co-founder of app Anomo, agrees. Anomo is one in a wave of anonymous social networking apps, and lets users interact through generic cartoon avatars; the app matches people up based on location and common interests. Users can chat privately and anonymously until they decide to reveal, or not reveal, their pictures and personal information.
Think of it as the anti-Tinder: all substance and no surface.
"We never want to be deemed as just a dating app," Sun says. "It adds the pressure of dating, which ruins the success of dating."
The motivations for dating within Second Life, Utherverse or Anomo are as varied as they are in real life (IRL). Some users want to indulge in a quick tryst in-world, while others want to move their romance out into the physical realm. Some are cheating on spouses or partners, forming intense relationships that may or may not move offline. Some are playing with their partners, in a spouse-sanctioned sexual hall pass. Some come with no intention of dating at all, and just happen to meet their soulmates.

One user's self-portrait in 'Second Life.'
Image: Flickr, Vimzo
The anonymity that makes Second Life capable of generating such deep relationships can also make it a very dangerous place to fall in love. You can never really know who is on the other end of an avatar, after all. For every person there to make real friends and connections, there are others who want to live a life that's top-to-bottom fantasy.
In Utherverse, Nicole has met women who were really men posing as women and men who lied about their identities. Before she met Devin, she virtually dated a man who pretended to have a brain tumor to garner sympathy from other users. A man whom Nicole considered a close friend faked his death and returned to Utherverse as a different avatar to watch the community grieve.
"By the time I met Devin, I wanted nothing to do with any of the members in a dating capacity," she says. "I became very cynical. Devin was the first person I'd come across in a long time with no red flags. He had nothing to hide. It still took him a very, very long time to earn my trust."
Driving to the airport before meeting him for the first time, Nicole felt sick. Several times, she pulled over at the side of the road to heave. She was nervous to meet the man she'd fallen for, sure, but she also had the practical fears that come with any in-person meeting of an online lover.
"I let a few of my friends know where I was going, what his name was, his phone number, because you never know," she says. "I might have ended up in a bathtub full of ice with my kidney missing. When two people get behind a computer screen, they can be anything they want to be."
"It's kind of like Catfish," says Laurie Davis, a dating consultant and the founder of eFlirt Expert. She advises Second Life users who want to meet their partners IRL to be extremely clear about this wish. "You need to be cautious, and make it clear from the pretty early stages that you'd love to meet in person some day."
As long as users set boundaries for their dating experiences, Davis thinks MMORPGs can be immensely rewarding. "While it seems that being behind screens limits your relationship potential, the truth is it teaches you a lot about the more intimate aspects of relationships, like handling other people's emotions. Ultimately, what comes out of it is confidence for your love life. You have more types of encounters to reference."

A romantic moonlit date in 'Second Life.'
Image: Flickr, Torley
For four and a half years, Nicole and Devin dated long distance.
As their relationship grew, they migrated off Utherverse, chatting via webcam and over the phone instead. Sometimes they would coordinate movie nights on Netflix, tethered by Skype. Occasionally they'd head back to Utherverse for a virtual date. "It was a place where you could pretend, for a short time, that you were with each other," Devin says.
Now that they're married and living together, they're not on Utherverse much. Nicole works there, hosting virtual meetings and events, so Devin will pop in now and then to catch up with old friends. In general, though, they'd rather be together IRL, plopping down in front of the TV or making dinner for the kids.
They both agree, the real thing is so much better.
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