I was watching this show called Taboo on National Geographic, and it shed some light on an interesting type of sexuality. A person who is objectumsexual has a pronounced emotional and physical attraction to inanimate objects, and feels the need to be in romantic relationships with them. The show featured a man in love with an old car of his and a woman in love with the Berlin wall. One objectumsexual you may know is Erika Eiffel, who changed her last name from her marriage to the Eiffel Tower in 2008. Do you actually think this is real?
I think I saw that Eiffel Tower girl on the Tyra show once. I'm really not sure, it just seems so out there. Initially I figured it was for attention, because I mean come on... Like really? But whatever. We're all in to different things.
I think something like this might occur... but maybe it manifests out of abuse or something. I dont know. Most of them are probably doing it for tv attention.
My default opinion on things like things, things where there's no way one can reasonably demand proof that whatever is going on in their head "is real" (because how can someone prove that they feel the need to be in a romantic relationship with an object?) is that as long as they aren't hurting anyone and aren't causing themselves distress, then I'll take their word for it. What do I lose in doing so? I consider myself a humanist, and as a post on Tumblr once said:
I thought these people marrying things (like the Eiffel Tower) were just making a point about something (I never found out what). I don't see why this sort of attraction can't be legitimate; like Owen said, So I doubt everyone who claims this is telling the truth, I do believe it exists. And given that the law doesn't (and probably will never) acknowledge this sort of relationship, there's no need to worry unless they exhibit other symptoms.
The girl on the show was sexually abused as a child, but I don't think abuse would make someone NEVER want to seek a relationship from a human. Or maybe I'm wrong... The show did make a point of saying that they both were fine with the fact that the objects could never reciprocate the feelings they had for it.
I'm in love with whose cat? I don't know any guys with cats. Also, cat's aren't inanimate objects (okay, they can be about 70% of the time, but the other 30% of the time they're zipping around so much I don't think they touch the floor). That'd be zoophilia, no? And once the Wall came down, maybe she found a piece to take home with her? That might be nice. But I wonder, are their love interests generally viewed as gendered? Do they consider themselves hetero/homo/bi/etc-sexual, or perhaps asexual? Wikipedia quotes one person referring to the Statue of Liberty as "she," but the statue is in the shape of a female. Are walls and towers generally given genders as well? I'm sure Freud would assume that towers are male, but what do they say? Or would it vary- would Mary and Susan see the same fence as male, or might Susan see it as female? Or does it not have gender at all? I couldn't find these questions at the OS website.
I definitely believe the feelings they have are real. If you look at it purely statistically, it might even make sense. Assume the amount of feelings some people would have for their cars to be a bell curve. On the middle, you have a normal feel of care and appreciation for what a car can do. On the left end, you have people who wouldn't even flinch if their car got crushed by a passing tank. On the right, you have people who spend hours a day cleaning and maintaining their cars. But... in a population of billions of people, it stands to reason there's a few people to the extreme far right, who go beyond even that. And that might well be so intense it manifests as a feeling of love. That said, I don't think it's necessarily something one'd want to focus on. Sure, the car wouldn't say no, and always be there, and you'd be able to dote on it with impunity. But I'd still never call it a relationship. There's something about the interplay of two people relating to each other that you'd never get from a car.