Zombi Rain

I'm on the verge of leaving (reluctantly) because of a chain of events thats left me feeling really confused about SL and the purpose of it. I have been on SL as the opposite gender - purely because I thought it'd be fun to build a character from scratch and to RP as somebody totally different from my RL. I've never used this alt gender to lead anybody on, get involved romantically/sexually or for any purposes that might be manipulative or cause hurt to others. I fell in with a group of people I really like and apart from maybe one teasing joke about me not using mic or skype, all's been good - have loved exploring and creating in this crazy, colourful world. Recently though, one close friend and member of the group has been hounding me for RL contact, getting quite angry, insisting on buying and posting me a head/mic set and hinting I won't be welcome anymore unless I engage with them in RL. Several of this person's friends have said they can sympathise, and think it's odd I'm not on Facebook or don't want to skype. The thought of starting over with a new AV seems depressing - all that time I'll need building it up with clothes/items, making new friends all over again etc. It realy makes me sad to think that I'll lose these friends, but their tone puts me off revealing my RL details, and part of me thinks that just quitting and restarting might be the best way round this. But what confuses me is, am I approaching SL the wrong way? I personally never cared if AVs were being controlled by men, women, old or young, or alts of each other. As long as there's no serious abuse, does it matter if some glamorous fashionistas are disabled men in RL, for instance? Or if somebody logs as 3 alts at once and pretends to be a family? I'm happy to buy into the immersionism, but this whole experience has left me wondering - do people really see what i do as fraudulent, or contrary to the spirit of SL? I log on to do the things I can't in RL, is it deceptive to want to totally leave my RL behind while I'm on SL?