A couple meet, fall in love in virtual reality

WASHINGTON - A recent study by four academics, including professors from Harvard Business School and Duke University, suggests that online dating sites regularly leave users disappointed because they present potential matches as a rundown of characteristics - age, race, religion, income - that in no way embody the full measure of a person.

Vitamins and laundry detergent, they assert, are quantifiable things that can be purchased with reliable satisfaction through the Internet. Romantic partners, they said, must be experienced to be properly evaluated, like a restaurant or perfume.

That would put Jill Stewman and Algie Bhoomz ahead of the curve.

Stewman and Bhoomz first "met" late last fall on RedLightCenter.com, a virtual-reality site designed to mimic Amsterdam's freewheeling red-light district.

Stewman, 36, was living in Portland, Ore., and, after hearing about the site from friends, logged on to just see what it was. Hours later, she'd built an avatar and begun to explore.

"To me it was really amazing," the marketing professional recalls. "Just being able to walk around - you're this little person and everyone's talking. Being able to walk into these rooms and clubs with music and people dancing."

Soon she was visiting the site every day. So was Bhoomz, 36, a customer service representative from Montclair, N.J. Both had virtual flings and flirtations with other avatars before beginning an online courtship of their own in January.

"We started talking and realized we had a lot in common," Stewman says. They would meet in the online world every night to send their avatars out dancing, chatting, playing games, and engaging in virtual intimacies.

The two also began talking on the phone and via Webcam for long hours. Because profiles of the people behind the avatars exist on the site, they had seen photos of each other and knew the basics regarding age, occupation, and location.

On March 16 their avatars were married in an online ceremony witnessed by 60 RedLightCenter.com friends. An additional 20 came to the reception, on a virtual yacht.

"We had the whole place sobbing," Bhoomz says.

"Yeah, we wrote our own vows," Stewman adds. "And they were pretty mushy."

Two weeks later, when Stewman's grandmother in Minnesota died, Bhoomz flew out to meet her there.

"It didn't really give me a chance to get really nervous and freak out," Stewman says. "I just went to the airport and got him."

"It was just like it was on the phone or on the game," he says. "We had spent so much time together between the game, Skype, the phone, and all that, that we pretty much knew everything about each other."

Stewman says the person she met in real life is "exactly the same person" she met online. On May 15 they finished a cross-country drive to move Stewman to New Jersey, where the two now live together.

Match.com and eHarmony aren't likely to turn themselves into cyber singles-worlds anytime soon, but Stewman's experience does support the academics' claim.

"I think it was easier than going to a dating site and looking at someone's profile and then you e-mail each other back and forth," she says. "The interaction is more there."

Bhoomz doesn't visit RedLightCenter.com much anymore, but Stewman still logs on to talk to friends. These days her virtual life and her real one are both, she reports, "pretty wonderful."