Uncle John really loves his favorite toilet (he calls it “Commodius Rex”). But now that he’s read about these people, he’s careful to tell us that he doesn’t love it that way.
BACKGROUND
Psychology textbooks are filled with cases of strange obsessions. There are people who can’t stop thinking about shoes, or food, or perhaps a…uh…close relative. But people classified as objectum-sexual are literally “in love” with inanimate objects. The term was coined in the 1970s by a German woman named Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer, who was—and still is—“married” to the Berlin Wall. “OS” people have deep emotional—and often physical—relationships with their…things. According to Bizarre magazine:
Look hard enough, and you’ll discover an Internet populated by tales of love affairs with objects. Joachim A., for example, confesses to his affair with a Hammond organ that began when he was 12. He’s now in a steady relationship with a steam locomotive. Psychology student Bill R. tells of his sexual obsession with his iBook (he defines it as a homosexual relationship, as he regards his laptop as male), and Doro B. talks about falling for a metal processing machine she encountered at her work.
Here are a few more matches made in…well, we’re not exactly where they’re made, but here they are.
Erika La Tour Eiffel is in love with—you guessed it—that big tower in Paris. It’s not her first OS relationship, though. She’s also a world-champion archer and credits her success to her ex-“beau”—Lance, her bow. Setting her sights on bigger and better things, the 37-year-old San Francisco woman now claims to be the wife of the Eiffel Tower. The two were married in 2007. Like most OS people, Eiffel believes in the concept of animism, the theory that everything has a soul—and, in turn, a personality. But the relationship is not easy, since her “husband” is solidly attached to the ground 5,500 miles away. Eiffel visits when she can but admits, “There is a huge problem with being in love with a public object. The issue of intimacy—or rather lack of it—is forever present.” To deal with these and other issues, Eiffel runs a Web site where OS people from around the world share their stories.
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“I love him as much as women love their husbands and know we’ll be together forever,” says Amy Wolfe, a church organist from Pennsylvania. The “him” she’s referring to is an 80-foot roller coaster called 1001 Nachts, located at the Knoebels Amusement Park in the Pocono Mountains, 80 miles from her home. After a 10-year courtship, they were married in 2009. Wolfe claims that their relationship is both “sexual and mental.” Like Eiffel, Wolfe must deal with being in a long-distance relationship. To cope, she has posters of 1001 Nachts on her ceiling and carries around some nuts and bolts that she picked up from the ground underneath the roller coaster.
“Vanilla” is a Volkswagen Beetle that has stolen Edward Smith’s heart. Smith is part of a subculture of OS known as mechanophiles, people who are in love with vehicles. “I’m a romantic,” says the 57-year-old Washington man. “I write poetry about cars. I sing to them and talk to them just like a girlfriend.” But that doesn’t mean Smith is loyal. Another feature of OS “relationships” is that they’re often not monogamous. Smith claims to have had, er…physical relations with more than 1,000 cars in his life, as well as several aircraft, including the helicopter that was used in the 1980s television show Airwolf. But Vanilla is his current main squeeze. (He previously had a five-year relationship with another VW Beetle named “Victoria.”) What does Smith look for in a potential lover? He’s not sure; it just has to “speak” to him. “There have been certain cars that just attracted me, and I would wait until nighttime, creep up to them, and just hug and kiss them.”
Nisan is a balding, heavyset 37-year-old Japanese man. Nemutan is a large, stuffed pillow printed with a picture of Nemu, a bikiniclad character from an X-rated version of the popular video game De Capo. The two first met at a Tokyo comic book convention in 2006. They became friends at first but then started spending more and more time together. Nisan took Nemutan on drives, they posed for photos together, they played at playgrounds, and they even dined together at restaurants. After three years, the couple is still inseparable. And now they’re famous, since their story was told in a 2009 New York Times article about “2-D lovers,” a growing subculture of Otaku—the obsessive Japanese fandom related to anime, manga, and video games. It’s uncertain how many people are 2-D lovers—they’re usually productive members of society—but they care very deeply about these characters. “Of course she’s my girlfriend,” says Nisan. “I have real feelings for her. People are probably wondering what psychiatric ward I escaped from. I would think the same thing if I saw me.”
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As outlandish as these “love affairs” might sound, psychologists have studied them at length and have come up with a few theories on why these people become so attached to their objects.
• They’re fetishists. Fetishism, a well-documented psychological phenomenon, involves being turned on sexually by objects or body parts—say, leather clothing, or feet. But OS people maintain that their relationships are more focused on love than on sex.
• Some research suggests that there may be a link between OS and a form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome, which results in the sufferer having difficulty interacting with other people. But many in the OS community are very social and don’t fit the typical Asperger’s profile.
• Many OS people suffered from a past severe emotional and/or physical trauma and are unable to form a loving bond with another human out of fear. Put simply, they may prefer to be in a relationship where the other partner can’t abuse or leave them.
• Some theorize that OS may be just another form of sexual orientation, albeit a very rare one. Just like hetero- and homosexuality, objectum-sexuality often manifests at the onset of puberty.
Erika La Tour Eiffel can’t really explain it. She calls the feelings she has for objects “innate.” As her Web site says, “We are not looking for a cure, but more comprehension into our make-up as an emerging part of society.”
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