A woman who was in a sexual relationship with a plane for nine years has said she’s finally broken up with it.
Michele Kobke first met ‘Schatz’ (darling in German) in May 2014 at Berlin Tegel airport.
The 30-year-old was attracted to the 737-800 Boeing plane’s wings, winglets and thrusters and carried out a long-distance relationship with it.
Kobke previously said her ‘biggest dream’ was to be married and live with the plane, adding: “I sleep with my darling every night, either with real components like the spoiler, flap track fairing and tank valve or five-foot-two model; intimacy is part of our relationship.”
However, after nearly a decade of their relationship, the German woman has confirmed to Bild that she and the plane are ‘separated’.
Although, it seems Kobke and the plane have stayed on good terms and the breakup wasn’t too messy as she did add: “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 sexual feelings towards inanimate object rather to another person.
Some psychologists refer to this as a paraphilia (sexual 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.”