A woman who was in a romantic relationship with a plane for nine years has shared that she has now ended the relationship.
Michele Kobke first encountered the plane, which she affectionately named “Schatz” (meaning “darling” in German), in May 2014 at Berlin Tegel airport.
The 30-year-old found herself attracted to the 737-800 Boeing plane’s wings, winglets, and thrusters and maintained a long-distance relationship with it.
Kobke had previously expressed her dream of marrying and living with the plane, saying, “I sleep with my darling every night, either with real parts like the spoiler, flap track fairing, and tank valve, or with a five-foot-two model. Intimacy is part of our relationship.”
However, after nearly a decade together, the German woman confirmed to Bild that she and the plane have “separated,” though they remain on friendly terms, as she added, “We’re still friends.”
Her romance with Schatz comes alongside her being classified as having objectophilia.
For anyone who somehow hasn’t fell down that rabbit hole on YouTube, this is when a person develops romantic, emotional or s**ual feelings towards inanimate object rather to another person.
Some psychologists refer to this as a paraphilia (s**ual disorder) but in the majority of cases, objectophiles don’t require treatment.
For the first years, Kobke was only ever able to ‘meet’ the plane through the glass window in the airport before being able to give it a kiss and stand on one of the wings in the hangar.
She’d hoped for a wedding with Schatz, planning for an intimate ceremony and to ‘spend the whole night with him’.
“I wouldn’t want to put on a white dress, but dress really smartly with black trousers and a black blazer,” Kobke said. “I want to have someone to marry us and say, ‘do you want to marry your 737-800’ and I say, ‘yes’, we kiss and then I’m immortalised with him and we can be together forever.”
The woman had bought various parts of the plane for while they were apart, joining the hundreds of aircraft souvenirs she owned.
But now, ending her love affair with Schatz, Kobke has sold 300 of them to make space for something else.
Instead, she’s gathering things related to the Middle Ages as she said: “I now love wearing knight’s armour.”
Featured Image Credit: MDWFeatures
