It takes a special woman to break up the marriage of a man she’s never met.
Linda Brinkley, 55, is accused of just that, but the twice-divorced Arkansas woman insists she’s no home-wrecker – although she does admit she had a romance with a married British man within the popular online game “Second Life.”
Five thousand miles away in Britain, Amy Taylor, 28, caught her husband David Pollard, 40, having sex with Brinkley – not her exactly, but her digital nightclub-dancing alter ego, Modesty McDonnell.
Now Taylor is filing for divorce, and Pollard and Brinkley, who still have not met in person, are engaged to be married.
“He’d told me his relationship with his wife was over long before I came along, and he’s been very honest with me. So I can take his word for that,” Brinkley told the Daily Mail.
“It’s amazing that we’ve found each other across so many miles, and we love each other very much,” she said. “It’s my dream to finally meet up with him, and it’s all because of the game.”
Taylor and Pollard were married both in real life and in the game, and the two spent hours living an online alternate existence in which the overweight couple got to be much thinner and more attractive than their true selves.
But when Taylor became suspicious of her husband’s infidelity, she hired a digital private eye to scope out his dalliances.
“I looked at the computer screen and could see his character having sex with a female character,” Taylor told the Daily Mail. “It’s cheating, as far as I’m concerned.”
Brinkley, who has four children from her two previous marriages, said she only started playing the game a few months before meeting Pollard – whose avatar’s name is Dave Barmy – last year.
Her avatar, Modesty McDonnell, works as a dancer in Barmy’s virtual nightclub, the Holodeck.
“I would say I am in love with Dave,” she said.
“I’ve been married in real life before, but they weren’t really good relationships. I haven’t had much luck until now.”
She insists that contrary to Taylor’s claims, their online romance was strictly PG-rated.
“We weren’t even having cyber-sex or anything like that,” she said. “We were just chatting and hanging out together.”
Brinkley is unemployed but plans to get a degree in religious studies – online, of course.