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Okay, first off, I would like to state that neither myself or my current partner (to my knowledge) are objectum-sexuals. This thread was made purely out my own curiosity and because I thought it would make a fantastic discussion. So, please do not ask me about personal objectum-sexual experiences because I haven't had any.

With that said, let's begin.

I'll start by defining Objectum-Sexual, because it's one of those obscure naughty terms that a lot of people don't know.

Objectum-Sexual: Object sexuality or objectum sexuality, in German objektophil (OS), is a pronounced emotional and often romantic desire towards developing significant relationships with particular inanimate objects. Those individuals with this expressed preference may feel strong feelings of attraction, love, and commitment to certain items or structures of their fixation. For some, sexual or even close emotional relationships with humans are incomprehensible. Object-sexual individuals also often believe in animism, and sense reciprocation based on the belief that objects have souls, intelligence, feelings, and are able to communicate. Contrary to sexual fetishism, the object to an OS person is viewed as their partner and not as a means to an end to enhance a human sexual relationship.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_sexuality

While you may not have heard of Objectum-Sexual, you probably have heard of the woman who married the Eiffel Tower a while back. There was quite a media frenzy about her.
When she was on the Tyra show, she stated that people can be in polyamorous relationships with more than one object at a time. She herself feels a strong connection also with the Golden Gate Bridge.

Now see, this isn't too out of the ordinary- honestly. One woman, her partner (or partners, as the case may be.) She's happy, she believes the objects are happy, everyone is happy and all is fine.

Here's where things get a bit complicated.

What if Erika had a husband (or wife, use your imagination), and then felt attracted to the Eiffel Tower?
I'm curious, if your partner was attracted to an object- like say, a bicycle, and treated that bicycle as a romantic interest- investing time and emotion into that relationship, would you treat that bicycle as an extra partner and call the relationship a triad (or whatever the case may be)?

Is there less potential for jealousy when the extra 'person' is not a person at all?

If my partner came to me (and this is a BIG *if*, because as far as I know he is not an objectum-sexual) and said "I'm falling in love with my car. I want to marry my car."
I'd probably raise an eyebrow and say "Ohhhkaaay." But not be overly bothered by it. I imagine in time I'd come to treat the car like a romantic partner as well, possibly initially out of support for my partner ("Yes, Betsy does look rather beautiful today") but later one out of habit ("Hello Honey. Going to take me to the grocery store today?").
And life would continue on as normal for us, 1 + 1 + Car.

Of course, not everyone is as open to car-love as I am. So, how would the rest of you guys handle this?



tl;dr: Your partner has just fallen in love with a surfboard. Totally and completely in love, and believes the surfboard loves them too. They want to add the surfboard into your existing relationship as an extra romantic partner, despite it being a surfboard.
What do you do?

From my perspective, not a psych major, just someone who enjoys the workings of the mind, the personification of objects happens often enough that we take it for granted. It would seem like a logical step if it were to go further towards a certain form of love. Romantic feelings towards an object, location, or even an idea isn't unheard of, or even that rare. It's just the lengths it's taken to that are disarmingly uncommon.

Personally, I thank my mp3 player for playing good music on random, and have kissed it for giving me a particularly good song when I needed it. I also swear at it if it keeps making me skip things I don't want to hear.

I, on some levels, don't see why it wouldn't be considered a poly relationship, especially with the argument for animism. As for less potential for jealousy, I find that plausible, but I wouldn't say with any certainty until we've seen what could happen in that sort of relationship; human reactions can be unpredictable. People have been jealous of ideas taking away their followers and lovers, people have been jealous of objects stealing attention away from themselves, so why should the same not happen in such circumstances? But on the other hand, it's easy to rationalize that it wouldn't do anything to harm their current relationship, because on some level you would know that it's not actually capable of giving or feeling love. It's a very difficult area to enter, ideologically, and at the very least requires caution and observance of a sort of objective state towards the situation.

If I'm not making any sense or have just contradicted myself, I attribute it to being immensely tired.