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Love Hurts
Ouch!

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."
— Rose Walker

Basically, what Marvel is telling us is that love ultimately leads to death, destruction, and the Devil. The lesson: Love no one. EVER.
-Linkara

Forget life-threatening superheroism, acting Too Dumb To Live, and Tempting Fate. The most dangerous thing any hero can do in any media is... falling in love. Dare to love someone else and you set up yourself and your beloved for a plethora of emotional griefs. Love in Real Life is responsible for vast quantities of anguished poetry and tragic literature; factor in all the crazy stuff that happens on TV, and drama and disaster are practically guaranteed.

About to commit permanently? Look for an Anyone Can Die to put a permanent end to the Will They Or Wont They issue. Forget to say goodbye to your beloved that one time? It'll haunt you for the rest of your life. And let's not forget that becoming emotionally attached to one person leaves you open to the stress caused by the villain abducting your beloved or them even being killed off senselessly just to shape you into the Anti Hero, or at the very least a Heartbroken Bad Ass. Your love is hurt but alive? Dont You Dare Pity Me — he will shove you away. Love will make your heart go soft and pitter-pattering into the path to be crushed by the cruel forces of fate against Star Crossed Lovers. Small wonder that so many try to protect their loved ones by dumping them.

If you've got more than one love interest, you've got a headache-inducing Love Triangle or even Love Dodecahedron on your hands. Tread these waters very carefully, lest you be on the receiving end of a Yandere's poisonous affections or a Tsundere's Megaton Punch. Pick one lover and you can look forward to either a Thundering Herd of jilted rivals or the silent shattering of many other hearts. All in the name of comedy, you say? Comedy never became as twisted as it does when dealing with lovers crazy enough to beat down your door, glomp you, and refuse to let go.

And heaven forbid if your love turns out to be one-sided. You'll become a crazy psycho stalker if you don't choose to nobly sacrifice your love. Sometimes you'll even go all the way into a full-fledged villain with a grudge against humanity because humanity was not kind enough to let you have that one girl. Sometimes it's even your own creator who decides that you can't get the girl because he couldn't get her in real life!

In the right/wrong genre, even when you win, you lose. Little wonder why many a hero has chosen to be a Genre Savvy Celibate Hero.

However, if you do manage to get it right, love can be the purest and most powerful thing in the world.

Counteracted with Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends.

Examples

Anime and Manga
  • Dokuro-chan from Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro Chan is an extremely brutal and literal version of this. The Opening probably puts this best:
    "I'll cut you, punch you, toy with you
    Kick you, be a cocktease, drip stuff on you
    But that's just how I express my love."
  • Roy/Riza.
    • Which is a pittance compared to what Lan Fan goes through for her love of Ling. Cutting your arm off hurts a lot more than getting a burn on your back
      • That's not this trope, that's Honor Before Reason. Or something.
      • She may have acted like that, but really, at the time it was more a choice between her losing the arm or both of them getting gutted by Wrath.
      • And also, it's not like burning her back is the only way Roy and Riza have been a massive source of pain for one another. Most of the traumatic events they have gone through would most likely never have taken place if they hadn't met each other (Roy wouldn't even be a State Alchemist, she wouldn't have joined the army and been sent to Ishval and he wouldn't have annihilated so many people; she has made it clear she doesn't like being in the army or killing people, but she won't quit as long as he needs her). They're practically the direct (albeit non-intentional) cause of everything in the other's life that makes them suffer, and still they're the very thing that makes the other want to go on living as stated outright in chapter 95.
  • Pick practically ANY hero in ANY Gundam series. If you don't believe me...
    • Mobile Suit Gundam: Amuro Ray accidentally killed Lalah, his first love, when she took an attack meant for the man she loved, Char Aznable.
    • Zeta Gundam: Kamille Vidan had his starcrossed soulmate Four Murasame sacrificing herself for him twice.
    • Gundam ZZ: Judau Ashta loses Chara Soon, a woman he did care about, mere seconds after making her promise that she wouldn't die. He then proceeds to have to kill Haman Karn, one of his principle love interests, in the final battle.
    • G Gundam: Domon Kasshu almost lost Rain to the same Devil Gundam that caused the deaths of many others, including his beloved older brother.
    • Gundam SEED: Kira Yamato was manipulated by his first girlfriend Flay and later saw her die in front of him.
    • Gundam SEED Destiny: Shinn Asuka fell in love with Stellar, who also died in front of him, despite his promise to protect her.
    • Not content to ruin just one couple, Gundam 00 has destroyed several of them.Feldt lost her first crush before she even had the chance of admitting anything to him, and ditto for Tieria; Christina and Lichty were already dying when they conceded that they had feelings for each other; Saji's relationship with Louise is to put it very nicely "on the rocks"; Allelujah and Soma's has also hit some rough ground with the death of Sergei Smirnov; Lyle just saw his lover Anew get blown to pieces by Setsuna before his very eyes; Sumeragi's lover Emilio was already dead prior to the series beginning and then what relation she may have had with Billy got torn up when Setsuna opened his mouth about her being part of CB, and Patrick Colasaur perished in an Heroic Sacrifice for his beloved Kati Mannequin...
      • And in the end... Saji and Louise got back together; Alle and Soma went Walking The Earth; Sumeragi talked Billy outta his funk and they kidna reconciled; Patrick actually survived and he and Kati got married
    • Among those who got of (relatively) easy are:
      • The08th MS Team: Shiro Amada only loses a leg, but he keeps Aina and they live in peace.
      • Gundam 0080: Christina Mackenzie is completely unaware that she killed Bernie.
  • Then, pick any hero in any Gundam-inspired series:
    • Space Runaway Ideon: Cosmo suffers a Heroic BSOD discovering that a girl he grew fond of, Kitty Kitten (cheesy name, I know), was killed almost accidentally. Later, Kasha Imhof dies in the movie... and then EVERYONE dies..
    • Code Geass: Suzaku witnesses his big love Princess Euphemia fatally shot by his arch-nemesis, after which she effectively dies in his arms (Pieta Plagiarism galore), then some fifteen episodes later Lelouch, the said "arch-nemesis", experiences a girl he always cared for (well, perhaps not romantically but it was definitely headed that way) dying on him in a very similar fashion.
  • Ayumi from Honey And Clover has a bad case of unrequited love for Takumi, who sees her more like his sister. A lot of the first season of the anime is devoted to Ayumi's suffering because of this. Takumi in turn has a hard time with his feelings for (older) Rika.
  • In One Piece, "Pirate Empress" Boa Hancock of the Seven Warlords of the Sea has the power to turn anyone who's so much as attracted to her to stone. And then when she herself falls in love, she might die by it.
    • Ironically, this is actually subverted when Hancock falls in love, given that she has decided to help Luffy rather than bottle her feelings within her, as it was the cause of death for two empresses before her, and almost killed the elder/ex-ex-ex empress herself.
    • Except that even though her feelings are sincere and intense, it's almost depressingly apparent that she doesn't really have a chance with Luffy.
    • It's also painfully obvious Camie the mermaid has a pretty serious thing for Hatchan, but...well...same reasons as above.
    • Sanji would be the king of this trope if he ever realized none of the women he's encountered (aside from the man-ladies) ever showed any interest in him.
    • Depending on how you interpret the relationship, Zoro towards Kuina. When you put the possibility in context with his present lack of interst in sex, it makes his back story even more depressing.
  • Lithuania in Axis Powers Hetalia gets all his fingers broken by his crush, the eccentric Yandere Belarus. He doesn't seem to mind. Russia, who is both Lithuania's boss and Bela's older brother (and even more of a Yandere than her), has a very twisted, rather one-sided relationship with Lithuania himself, showing his affections through stalking and abuse.
  • Good god, Franz from Gankutsuou. His unrequited love for Albert caused him a whole world of pain (and his death). Seriously, he had a lot going for him - being rich, having good looks, and having no shortage of beautiful and kind women after him (including his fiance, who loved him initially). But instead, he ends up constantly angsting and sacrificing everything for Albert (who doesn't appreciate any of it until the very last moment).
  • In Chobits, Freya essentially kills herself because of this trope.
  • In Gantz, Kei goes through severe depression multiple times due to his loves dying on him. The first time is when Kishimoto dies (although she never did return his feelings), and subsequent times of him becoming really depressed are caused by his girlfriend Tae (who died but got revived). And since the series is still going on, there's still no guarantee that they'll be able to be together. A Downer Ending is quite possible...
  • Ako Izumi of Mahou Sensei Negima. She has a ton of self-esteem issues, and is described as something of a doormat. Then she meets Nagi, he reassures her of her importance, and she falls in love with him. Even after getting Trapped In Another World and sold into slavery, she's able to hang on because she knows that he's there for her. Too bad that "Nagi" is her ten-year-old teacher Negi magically aged-up. Naturally, she's utterly crushed when she finds out.
  • Sagara Sousuke from Full Metal Panic towards Kaname. Full stop. His whole Heroic BSOD in TSR was pretty much caused by being torn away from her after he developed an attachment and feelings for her. As Gauron angrily notices, ever since falling in love, he seems to have a lot more conflicting feelings and doubts.
    • And speaking of Gauron, he seems to have lost some of his edge and become even more messed up since falling for Sousuke... after all, if he didn't care about Sousuke, he wouldn't have been so very angry in the first place...
  • Hello Megumi Shitow what's that your crush already has a girlfriend who is your best friend? Ouch. Now what about that other guy? Sorry, Your sister stole him away long ago.
  • Jigen from Lupin III. His luck with women runs from bad to worse, with them either betraying him, dying, or both.
  • Simon from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann . His first love, Cool Big Sis Yoko, was in love with Kamina, and he had a rather painful experience seeing her kiss him. His Second Love, Nia, ends up dying right when they get married. And if you interpret the relationship between him and Kamina as Ho Yay, Kamina's death hit him very hard.
    • Romantic love isn't the only one that hurts.
  • Kenshin and Tomoe. When he was in his Extreme Doormat phase, she was the one that made him start feeling anything at all again. Apparently it was first caring, then love, and finally awful grief. He has his fair share of Love Hurts moments with Kaoru too, but his story with Tomoe steals the show.
  • Poor Oboro and Gennosuke. They were engaged to bring peace between their two rival ninja clans and fell in love, only for the truce to be broken and forcing them to choose between their love or the honor of their clans. In the end they are the only two left alive, and Oboro commits suicide rather than kill Gennosuke. Gennosuke declares Oboro's clan as victorious and commits suicide with her body in his arms.
  • (Almost) everybody in Itoshiki-sensei's class loves their Zetsubou-sensei. Too bad every single one of them is in some way severely unhinged.

Comic Books
  • One of the many reasons Charlie Brown is The Woobie in the Peanuts strip is his inability to get the Little Red Haired Girl to notice him. A minor case of Creator Breakdown, Schultz admitted that he had his own "Little Red Haired Girl," whom he lost.
    • If this wasn't so funny, it would be depressing: Charlie Brown is to Peppermint Patty as the Little Red Haired Girl is to Charlie Brown, making it an unrequited Love Triangle. Good Grief!
    • Love Rectangle. Marcie also loves Charlie Brown, and would logically be the perfect choice. Too bad her loyalty to Peppermint Patty requires her to aid and abet her "Sir"'s plans.
    • Indeed, unrequited love is a running theme throughout the comic's run: Linus towards Miss Othmar, Sally towards Linus ("I'm not your sweet babboo!"), Lucy towards Schroder... the list goes on.
  • Dr Allison Mann in Y: The Last Man angrily denies that love is anything other than a label stuck on a biological process. We later find this apparently cynical attitude comes from Allison being dumped by her first girlfriend (not to mention her parents miserable marriage). Despite this it is clear she still craves love herself.
  • Just about any romance in any Marvel, DC, or other company you care to name wherein the relationship lasted more than 3 years real-time/10 months in-universe and the characters, to this day, are not together. And let's not even go into the ones that -are- together... Examples are just too numerous to list.

Fairy Tales
  • The original version of The Little Mermaid: The mermaid loves the prince and gives up her voice and family to be with him, but he ends up marrying someone else and she turns into sea foam. But a tacked-on Aesop-fuelled ending gives her an immortal (ie. human) soul anyway. Reputedly fueled by Creator Breakdown.

Film
  • Davey Jones and Calypso's relationship in the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies. Yeah, that ended well.
  • From the Hellboy movie art book: "When, in 1988, Liz Sherman joined the B.P.R.D., Hellboy fell in love. From then on, he knew the meaning of pain."
  • The only woman James Bond ever married (Action Girl Teresa "Tracy" Di Vincezo) was killed moments afterwards in a botched attempt to assassinate him. In later movies, it shows that even with all his flirting and skirt-chasing that he still mourns her.
  • Men in Black. J: "You know what they say, it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." K: Looking horribly cold and restrained. "Try it some time."

Literature
  • Edgar Allan Poe was a very firm believer in this. He thought the best theme to write about was the death of a beautiful young woman, often leading to the protagonist's descent into madness.
    • Given the things that happened to women in his life, this isn't really surprising.
  • The Houseof Night has this in spades: vampyre protagonist Zoey ends up falling for three guys simultaneously (ish). It ends badly when she thinks her own-age vampyre boyfriend Erik is dead, flees to the hot-but-older Loren for comfort, and ends up losing her virginity to him. Proving that Joss Whedon is not the only one who can be incredibly cruel to his characters, the following things happen in quick succession: It breaks her bond with her human boyfriend Heath, Erik walks in on her and Loren Kissing, and it turns out Loren was in cahoots with the villainess and only using Zoey. And then Loren is brutally murdered. Ouch. Poor Zoey.
    • And it gets worse for her: The guy she displays a brief romantic interest in in the fourth book promptly dies, only to be resurrected as a bizarre zomibe-vamp hybird controlled by her archnemisis. Zoey has a bit of a Cartwright Curse, it seems...
  • And Then There Were None features two victims who committed their crimes to keep their loved ones when it was those exact deeds that drove them away. General McArthur manipulated his wife's lover/his right hand into going in a suicide mission; Vera Claythorne caused the death of her pupil Cyril so his uncle/her lover could inherit the family fortune and drove said lover into alcoholism

Live Action TV
  • The new Battlestar Galactica series loves this:
    • Sharon/Helo — they got a happy ending, though.
    • Lee/Kara
    • Adama/Roslin — Oh, jesus. And how. Let's see, they start out strongly disliking each other, move into a tenuous kind of peace with attraction, which gets shattered by the mutiny. Just as they fix that and get back to the tenuous attraction, she almost dies. Then, just as they fix that, SURPRISE CYLONS. Then once they kick the Cylons out, Adama gets hit with an attack of conscience, and then she's dying again, and then Earth, and then she dies. RDM, we the shippers hate you a lot.
  • John/Aeryn in Far Scape. They make out. They fight alongside each other. They're tortured. They try to kill each other. They have sex. They die. (They get better.) They murder people to get back to each other. They fight. They make out. They blow up a bunch of bad guys. They have a kid. I just saved you four seasons of awesome TV.
    • D'Argo and Chiana are just as much fun!
  • Falling in love with the bad guy/girl, of course, is always a bad idea. Just ask Ace Lightning, who had to go and fall in love with the bad guy’s main hench-lady, who ended up sacrificing herself for him at the end of the series.
  • Pretty much every relationship in Supernatural. The Winchesters are crazy and clingy, Bobby had to kill his wife, Ellen lost her husband because John was an idiot, Sam's girlfriends tend to die horribly and Dean blurted out everything to his one-time girlfriend only to have her think that he was a lunatic and that she should break up with him.
  • Quite literally in House, when House's hopeless love for his ex Stacy causes the pain in his leg to increase. Of course, when Wilson points out that this is the reason House is having more pain, House wacks him with his cane and replies: "Awww, you miss Stacy too?" when Wilson keels over.
  • Kamen Rider, at least in the new generation, is as fond of this trope as it's fond of Anyone Can Die. On the rare occasions where a love interest to a major character is still alive by season's end, the relationship between them will likely have ended instead.
  • Highlander The Series: According to Word Of God, Duncan Mac Leod has had "four great loves" in his life. All four are dead, and not of natural causes. In one flashback, a gypsy curses him, saying that he will "bury many women but marry none" - but his bad luck seemed to have started even before that.
  • Pick anything written by Joss Whedon.

Music
  • Incubus' aptly titled song "Love Hurts", although it could be considered a subversion; the chorus is, "Love hurts, but sometimes it's a good hurt and it feels like I'm alive".
  • The probable Trope Namer, though, is an old country standard the Everly Brothers played. Famously, Nazareth gave it an epic metal treatment. From the sound of the singer's vocie, love really hurts.
  • Sing with me...Love, love will tear us apart again...
  • "Please Don't Leave Me" by Pink. WAY more so in the video of the song, where - when the guy tries to leave - she goes totally Stephen King on him.
  • "... that's the pain that cuts a straight line down through the heart, we call it love ..." - Hedwig And The Angry Inch

Opera
  • Pick an Opera, any opera.
    • Aida by Giuseppe Verdi is a good example. Aida, an Ethiopian princess in hiding, falls in love with and is loved by Radames, the general of the Egyptian army. Her mistress, the Pharaoh's daughter is her canny rival. After Radames saves her father, the king of Ethiopia, from certain death after being captured in battle, he brow beats her into fullfiling her "duty" as an Ethiopian to get Radames to reveal the Egyptian's troops' positions, sentencing him to death and dooming them to live apart. It's a "Happily Ever After" ending though; Aida sneaks into the tomb where Radames has been buried alive so they can slowly die together. So yes, the Deus Angst Machina is as integral a part of Opera as humor is to Comedy.

Theater

Video Games
  • Max Payne 2
    This is love. When someone drags you from the wreckage when you have given in, ready to just lie there and die. This is love. When someone, no matter what the cost, shows you there is hope, a choice, that you can put down your gun. This is love. Love hurts. - Max's narration in a cutscene in Max Payne 2, just before his love interest is gunned down by the Big Bad because she refused to kill him. Depending on the difficulty you play on she gets better.
    • Hell, Max's first line in the game says it all: "They were all dead: Love Kills"
  • Odin Sphere: The entire plot is full of this. Only a few characters actually get happy endings, assuming you didn't muck it up and get the bad ending, in which case it turns into a Kill Em All.
  • Persona 3's Yukari and Aigis. After the Protagonist dies, Yukari tries to move on, but is inevitably brought back to the dormitory where fond memories of our hero visit her. She's also jealous of Aigis, who inherited the Protagonist's power. Aigis is so saddened by the Protagonist's death, she wished she could return to being a mere machine, which gave birth to Metis, causing the events of The Answer.
    • Persona 4 could also be considered as having an example of this. Even if you have a love interest (or several) you will still leave any and all of your love interests behind as you go back to your actual home via train.
  • Metal Gear Solid. There is maybe one successful romance in this series that does not put the characters and gamer through hell first. Meryl and Snake don't make it. Meryl winds up in a successful romance with Johnny, the series Butt Monkey. Raiden and Rose have so many issues that they deserve their own trope. They make it, which is more than most can claim, but they go through hell first. The Boss and The Sorrow were damned before the series started, with The Boss being forced to shoot her own lover. And he let her. Naked Snake and EVA failed. Fanon aside, EVA doesn't get Snake, even though she loves him and bore his sons (against his will, I might add). Big Boss ends up with Ocelot. And Otacon? He might as well put a bullet in the head of every woman he shows affection for and save time. Yes, this game is very cynical, whatever gave you that idea?
    • Is it any wonder Kojima averted this hard in Zone Of The Enders? There, only one "pair" ends badly (in this world, at least).
  • Planescape Torment It's not the only thing that hurts. But boy does it hurt.

Web Comics
  • In Sluggy Freelance, Torg's crush on Zoe earns him quite a bit of this as the series goes on, best summed up in the Mind Screw arc "Wayang Kulit".
    • He gets off easy compared to Oasis, who has literally died multiple times because of her unrequited love for Torg.
  • While Lia and Fiona, from Yu Me Dream, don't have any easy time at first, this is nothing compared to when the major Drama Bomb hits. This seems to be intentional, as the author/artist explains here.

Web Original
  • Comes up a lot in Survival Of The Fittest because Anyone Can Die (and usually will), the most prominent examples include:
    • Bryan Calvert goes through the death of Tori Johnson, whom he'd been protecting for almost the entire game.
    • Adam Dodd's girlfriend Amanda Jones is killed in his absence, setting him off on a path of revenge going after her murderer.
    • Ricky Callahan similarly safeguards his girlfriend Whitney Acosta for most of v2. When Calvert accidentally kills her, Ricky commits suicide.
    • Sean O'Cann, after recently coming out of the closet and engaging in a thoroughly romantic relationship, gets this treatment, with his boyfriend Andy Walker biting the dust not long after the game began. Cruelly, they'd met each other prior to this and become separated, leading to Andy's death.

Western Animation
  • Teen Titans: Just when things were looking up for Beast Boy in the last season, culminating in him successfully leading a team of C-list teen heroes against the arc's Big Bad, the series gave him a Downer Ending / No Ending with the return of either a look-alike or amnesiac Terra, his morally conflicted season 2 flame.
  • True for both The Hero and Worthy Opponent on Avatar The Last Airbender: Aang is told he will have to let go of his love for Katara to ever master the Avatar State, and after becoming disillusioned with his life in the Fire Nation, the one thing Zuko has to leave behind that he still cares about is his New Old Flame Mai. See, they're Not So Different. They get them in the end, though.

Real Life
  • Linguistic example, in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish the word "gift" (pronounced "yift") means both "married" and "poison", one wonders if this was made so on purpose...
    • In Japanese, "Ai" means love but it can also mean "grief/sorrow" when written differently.
    • In Russian, "брак" ("brak") means, among other things, both "marriage" and "spoilage/defect."
    • In English, apparently, "To Wed" (Or some form of marriage word) comes from the same roots as "gamble".
  • As if we need to say it: Truth In Television.
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