When your object of love is an object

Who are we to judge relationships of the amorous kind? So what if the object of amour is, well, an object. 36-yr-old Berliner Michele Kobke was, for all purposes, in love with a Boeing 737-800 for the last 9 years, which she took to call ‘Darling’. This week, she announced that they have broken up. Darling apparently had no comments. Kobke had earlier described their relationship as sexual – but, as with all relationships, there were some problems: ‘I can only get close to him when I fly with him, or when I can get to him in the hangar, which has only happened once in my life.’

Being sexually attracted to an inanimate object rather than a person has a name – objectophilia. In the time of AI, when we hear of humans getting close to ‘non-sentient’ entities, Kobke-Darling’s love affair was refreshingly low-tech, old-style. Clinically called ‘paraphilia’, this is as natural an erotic love as it can get. ‘It’s like a normal relationship, we have relaxing evenings together, and when we go to bed, we cuddle and fall asleep together… When I touch his wings, I     immediately get sweaty palms and get excited,’ she had said. Interestingly, another case of a woman in love with an aeroplane is still going strong. Also from Germany, and also a Boeing 737 (‘Dicki’), 24-yr-old Sarah Rodo from Dortmund is a happy objectophile. We wish Rodo and Dicki happiness.