Sympathizing with objects??

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I'm so glad to know I am not alone in this. I've felt crazy about this since I was a kid.

This lady took it to the extreme.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... years.html



By Richard Alleyne

8:38AM BST 27 May 2008

Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer, 54, whose surname means Berlin Wall in German, wed the concrete structure in 1979 after being diagnosed with a condition called Objectum-Sexuality.

Mrs Berliner-Mauer, whose fetish is said to have its roots in childhood, claimed she fell in love with the structure when she first saw it on television when she was seven.

She began collecting "his" pictures and saving up for visits. On her sixth trip in 1979 they tied the knot before a handful of guests.

While she remains a virgin with humans, she insists she has a full, loving relationship with the wall.

Mrs Berliner-Mauer, who lives in Liden, northern Sweden, said: "I find long, slim things with horizontal lines very sexy.

"The Great Wall of China's attractive, but he’s too thick – my husband is sexier."

While the rest of mankind rejoiced when the Wall, erected by the Soviets in 1961 to halt an exodus from East to West Berlin, was largely torn down in 1989, its "wife" was horrified.

She's never been back and now keeps models depicting "his" former glory.

She said: “What they did was awful. They mutilated my husband."

She is said to have shifted her affections to a nearby garden fence.

Objectum-Sexual or objectophilia is feelings of love, attraction, arousal, and commitment for a particular object.

The mere thought of a relationship with an actual human being seems ludicrous.

I feel very sympathetic towards stuffed animals and plushies. Like IdahoRose, I sometimes adopt one or two from thrift stores whenever I get the chance. It also depresses me to see plushies discarded, unloved, thrown away, or tossed onto the street.

Just a few months ago, I was in the Disney Store, and the plushies for Monsters Inc were still there, including a bunch of the Randall ones. Randall was always my favorite MI character, and I already had a Disney Store plushie of him, but I just felt this unexplainable urge to buy another Randall...I guess it made me sad to think that not many little kids were going to want a Randall bcuz he's "bad" (Ironically, I couldn't find a Randall plush anywhere when Monsters Inc first came out, and I really, really wanted one).

As if to prove my point, when I went to pay for my Randall plushie, the cashier said, "I don't like him - he's mean!"

I used to sympathize with plants because I thought they were conscious lol. Now, I still sympathize with them a little even tho I know theyre not conscious

In some aspects, yes.
I have a weird thing about books, I can't just throw any away or give away to 'uncertain homes', I need to know that each book gets the love and attention it deserves. Not just be put in a shelf and never looked at/read again.
Also with plushies/stuffed animals. Until I got my real cats (at 30+), I could not sleep without my teddy lion. And as with the books, I can't throw any of mine away, I have probably 50 of them left. The rest I have managed to give away/'adopt' to children of friends and family. But sometimes I actually catch myself wondering if 'mr Rabbit' (or whomever) is happy and being loved, or if he has been outgrown and is sitting in an attic somewhere all alone.

I feel the same sympathy for objects as I do people, which is a lot.

I have a TV what I got in 2003, and it has a video built in. It has been used a lot, possible nearly every single day for 10 years, and it is still as good as new today. It has always been in my bedroom and doesn't have a scratch on it and the video still works perfectly and the picture and the sound is as good as a brand new TV. But any new DVD-players that I buy aren't compatible to the TV any more, only older, cheaper ones. But I don't like old, cheap DVD-players because they don't play all the discs and they make an annoying buzzing sound when DVDs are being played. So the only solution is to get a new TV. But I just can't. I have become attached to my TV, and I cannot part with it. I don't like the thought of it being on a dump, after 10 years of being used in a bedroom. I would feel sorry for it if I saw it by the back door, ready to be put into the car to get thrown on the dump, never to be seen again. But nobody else wants it or needs it, and I don't want to give it to a stranger in case they soon throw it away on a dump. Ohh, I HATE feeling sorry for objects!

When I was little, I was like that with dishes. When a dish broke, I'd start crying and be sad for days afterwards. What compounded the problem is the way my parents just scooped up the broken pieces and threw them in the trash. A particular incident made me feel truly alone in the world. My parents had a really beautiful 15-piece coffee service set: 12 cups with unique designs on each, a coffee pot, a sugar bowl, and a creamer pitcher. The designs resembled Persian rug patterns, only in one color. I used to love standing by the cupboard with glass doors and looking at the set. When my parents took the set out for dinner parties, I was allowed to briefly play with one cup at at ime while sitting on the couch. I was always super-careful with them, since I'd be grief-stricken if it broke.

One evening, when my parents had a dinner party, one of the coffee cups tumbled off a tray while being carried, fell on the floor, and broke. All guests shouted "mazel tov!" My parents scooped up the broken pieces and threw them in the trash. I started BAWLING!! ! Everybody at the table immediately started laughing at me! My parents took me into another room, spanked me, and ordered me to stop crying over a broken coffee cup. I tried to explain it: "But if I won't grieve over it, no one else will." My parents responded with another spank, took me back into the dining room, and told me to be quiet or else. I cried myself to sleep that night, and for a good number of nights afterwards. That was roughly the age when I started to view all adults as my enemies, or at least adversaries.

Years later, when I was home alone, something else happened. I was making myself a tuna sandwich. Suddenly, my hand slipped, and my elbow knocked a plate off the counter. It broke, of course. I took the pieces into the backyard, found a spot where my parents don't garden (so they don't cut themselves while digging), used my father's uncomfortably long shovel to dig a hole, and buried the pieces. Then I used a paper plate to eat my lunch; I never developed attachment to paper dishes. When my parents came home, I didn't tell them anything, and they never mentioned the missing plate to me, either. I moved out into my own apartment since then, but my parents still live in the same house, oblivious to the broken plate buried somewhere in their backyard.

I don't feel sympathy for objects or attribute emotional states to them. I love my things because they are a familiar part of my world and I am used to them.

I did as a child, yes. I still have those tendencies, but I know intellectually that objects do not have feelings, and so I am able to discard useless objects easily. The only sentimental attachments I really have are to my diaries, and that's to the information in them rather than to the objects themselves.

I've found that it's easier to keep my place neat if I have less stuff, so I regularly clear out things I haven't used in a while. I am naturally thrifty, so it was hard at first to throw out things which were not broken or useless, but I learned that the utility of keeping the object was exceeded by the utility of having the space free. If I had a vehicle, I would be donating these still-useful objects, but that's not really an option for me right now, and I can't keep them or I'll be buried in stuff.

I think I could be happy living out of a backpack, just so long as I had access to a library.