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alt title(s): Masochism Tango; Dysfunctional Duo
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Fracture my spine, And swear that you're mine, As we dance to The Masochism Tango!
... Or, I Just Want My Beloved To Feel Crappy.
Also known as Dysfunctional Duo.
Two characters are supposed to be deeply in love (or at least, best friends) — despite being blatantly unsuited for each other and showing it every episode. They are constantly screaming at each other or worse, and yet the characters insist they like each other. Very often, the only indicator of the characters' affections for each other will be their jealousy when the other shows an interest (real or imagined) in a character outside of their tango.
This is not the same as an Odd Friendship or Odd Couple, where everybody knows the relationship is strange and the characters very grudgingly learn to respect each other. In The Masochism Tango, the characters are in utter denial. More importantly, so are the writers. The audience won't be though, and you can bet that the shippers are already thinking up alternatives.
The partners dancing to this particular beat have already resolved the Will They Or Wont They issue ( they did, and won't deny they're a couple) — it's just the saneness of their hook-up that's in question. This is often the result of resolved Belligerent Sexual Tension.
For the platonic version, see With Friends Like These or Vitriolic Best Buds. For a milder version, see Slap Slap Kiss and No Accounting For Taste. If the characters aren't at each other's throats, but their relationship feels contrived and artificial nonetheless, they've been Strangled By The Red String. Compare All Take And No Give. If the sadism and the masochism part in the coupling is off balance, also compare Love Martyr. Among fans, it can inspire Anti Goggles.
This trope is named for a song by Tom Lehrer, quoted above. As he explains it, a certain genre of love song is "the passionate or fiery variety, usually in tango tempo, in which the singer exhorts his partner to haunt him and taunt him and, if at all possible, to consume him with a kiss of fire." In his version, the singer asks for whippings, broken bones, cigarette burns...
Note that this is actually Truth In Television for many people. Probably including many tropers.
Do Not Confuse With actual masochism. Or, for that matter, actual tangos.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Ranma and Akane were supposed to have conflicted feelings about each other and their Arranged Marriage in Ranma 1/2. The longer run of the original manga did give them more of a chance to get closer, but they remain argumentative (and violent, in Akane's case) towards each other whenever there isn't some greater enemy to force them to unite. Even in the very last story, Akane can still be interpreted in a suspicious manner, due to her own behavior and the heavily implied fact that Soun Tendo is intending to blackmail at least one and perhaps both of the couple to submit to the wedding with the cask of Nanniichuan that was sent as a "Thank You" for Ranma. Canonically, the very last words the two actually speak in the manga is to blame each other for the wedding being destroyed. The anime series, which was cut off before the manga reached that far, actually has a more positive final scene between the two.
- Similarly, in the Love Hina manga, Keitaro and Naru started out as an Odd Couple and slowly grew into a real relationship, with the hitting and screaming giving way to understanding. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of 26-episode anime and Character Exaggeration, their TV equivalents never made it that far, and fall squarely into this trope. (They did progress somewhat farther, with Naru admitting her love, through the course of the subsequent two movies and OVA miniseries.)
- Actually, Word Of God says that the couple actually ended up getting married, with a wedding date of April 3, 2005, in one of the few examples of definitive relationship resolution in the medium.
- Yubel in Yu-Gi-Oh GX sees this as the only true expression of love; it cannot distinguish between joy/pleasure and pain/sorrow, and convinces itself that every single bit of suffering it causes its obsession Judai - and every bit reciprocated from him in kind - are simply their way of sharing each other's love.
- Shinji and Asuka in Neon Genesis Evangelion. The two initially fight often but seem to be friends, but as the series progresses the sheer vitriol between them (largely from Asuka's side) rises to uncomfortable levels. Despite this, there are indicators, particularly in the extended version of Episode 22 and The End of Evangelion, that they actually desire each other.
- Yoh and Anna from Shaman King. Though at least Anna shows her love regularly by running at heel to Yoh's help.
- Kogoro Mouri and his ex-wife Eri Kisaki in Detective Conan.
- Kogoro acts like a Lovable Sex Maniac, always chasing after pretty women and maintaining a crush on Idol Singer Okino Yoko, but never actually seems to take the act further than ogling or, at most, platonic dating. This behavior always takes a sudden turn for the worse whenever Eri is around, which causes Eri to get about ten degrees colder whenever Kogoro is nearby.
- On the other hand, they actually try to do nice things for each other once in a blue moon. (In recent manga issues, Kogoro actually bought Eri a birthday present—except that he got the day wrong and accidentally gave her the wrong gift box). And sometimes Eri has been known to make Kogoro dinner (too bad she's a Lethal Chef).
- And both Kogoro and Eri have turned Papa Wolf and Mama Bear respectively when the other has been suspected of murder.
- In Paradise Kiss, Yukari and George get together almost immediately, but their romance is unhinged from the get-go. He is sometimes genuinely sweet and gentlemanly with her, but it's hard to notice amidst all the icy contempt and plain insults he throws at her. To make things worse, it's heavily implied his conflicted emotions towards her stem for her similarity to his mother. Naturally, it just couldn't end well for them... yet still ended up better than other examples: they break up out of their own accord and in somewhat amiable terms, George leaves the country to pursue his goals and Yukari decides to live her own life and build her own career. In the Distant Finale, she actually marries her Victorious Childhood Friend Hiro.
- Hiei and his boss, Mukuro from Yu Yu Hakusho. Here's a quote, "Perhaps that's why I feel you understood me...after all, we're both only capable of expressing ourselves through our violence." This isn't just Domestic Abuse played for laughs—he says this to her while they're in the middle of a DEATHMATCH. Against each other.
- His birthday present to her? Her evil, sexually abusive dad, bonded to a tree that keeps him from ever moving and repairs any of his wounds instantly, so that she can torture him at her leisure. I don't know whether to feel oddly touched or to throw up in my mouth a little bit.
- Kaori + 100 Ton Hammer = Poor, poor Ryo Saeba.
Comic Books
- In comics, pretty much anyone. Gambit and Rogue in particular, due to the fact that Rogue's powers make having a relationship with ANYONE impossible combined with Gambit's very much flexible idea of right and wrong often causing Rogue to go into a tirade about how she can't trust Gambit, who refuses to give up on Rogue or even cross the line by bringing up Rogue's own dark history of Moral Event Horizon crossing when it came to Ms Marvel, whenever Rogue uses Gambit's past against him.
- Possibly lampshaded when Gambit said his actual motivation for dating Rogue was to punish himself for his (rather small and inconsequential and blameless) role in the Morlock Massacre.
- Apparently quite standard for the titular protagonist's race on Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire, as seen here
 . Of course, being Heavyworlders, they do seem to be rather durable, too. And high explosives are very romantic.
- The comic series Flinch once featured a short story titled A Red Romance (illustrated by DCAU's Bruce Timm, of all people) where a man and a woman, both sociopathic lowlifes, fall in love and begin a relationship that involves sickening amounts of Masochistic Tangoing, until even this violence isn't enough to satisfy their desires. It leads to the jaded man hiring a specialist to torture and kill her while he watches, only to discover she hired the specialist for the exact same reason. The story ends with the couple in
near orgasmic ecstasy as they watch one another get horribly brutalized, before finally killing them and leaving them in each other's arms on the bloodstained bed. A story that manages to be touchingly romantic AND incredibly disturbing at the same time.
Film
- Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Whos Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (and possibly in real life) are a superb example of this.
- The
movie musical Rent actually has a song titled 'The Tango: Maureen' which focuses on this.
- In The Land Before Time saga, many fans have expressed favouritism for a pairing between Littlefoot and Cera. You'd think the species difference would be enough of a put off, but in addition, the two do argue a lot (in three films, resulting in all out fights). However Cera has been known to be jealous when Littlefoot makes new friends.
- Annie Get Your Gun has Annie and Frank switching from Sickeningly Sweethearts to a Masochism Tango-style song in the space of two minutes.
- The Maids is entirely devoted to a couple of psycho lesbians competing in making the other one feel miserable. Oh, and they both succeed.
- Very much on display in all adaptations of the Bengali novel, Devdas. Main characters Dev and Paro both love each other, but are not above lashing out at one another in pretty cruel ways. Subverted in the 2009 remake, Dev. D. Dev realizes that he never truly loved Paro but, instead, idealized and wished to control her. He then manages some Character Development Dev. D is big on deconstruction, in general.
- Antichrist takes this to the logical extreme.
- Revolutionary Road. Frank and April Wheeler spend most of the film fighting. Yet when April dies from a botched abortion, Frank is devastated.
Literature
- It's actually the societal norm for romance to be The Masochism Tango in Saldaea in The Wheel Of Time, much to the bafflement of Perrin when he marries fan-unfavorite Faile. As The Parody puts it:
Bashere: Perrin, I must train you in Saldaean ways. You must yell at your wife like this: DEIRA!!! PUNCH!!! NOW!!! Deira: Yes, dear. Bashere: But only when she wants you to. Sometimes she wants you to be soft and gentle, like this: I love you, my cuddly little honey-bunny. Deira: Yes, dear. Bashere: And sometimes she wants to yell at you, like this: Deira: DAVRAM!!! MASSAGE MY BACK!!! NOW!! Bashere: Yes, dear. And sometimes she wants to be soft and gentle with you, like this: Deira: I will perch on your shoulder, my big, strong rock of a husband. Bashere: So you see, it's not that hard. Do you know anything about babbling women who don't know what they want? Perrin: Well, I grew up in the Two Rivers. Bashere: Oh, you'll be fine. But if you do get anything wrong, I will kill you.
- Another example would be a story Thom Merrilin tells Mat. When Tom was young, he encountered a blacksmith's wife whose husband would control who she talked to and beat her up if she so much as looked at other men. Thom gallantly offers to rescue her - and is forced to hastily leave the village when she immediately runs and tells her husband! Thom later finds out that she would control the money, and beat her husband up if he as much as had a single beer at the inn. The moral of the story is to not judge before you have heard both sides.
- Subverted in Kafka's short story A Little Woman; the narrator worries about people suspecting him and the titular character of having an affair solely due to her irrational dislike of him—obviously, this isn't the case.
- Phèdre nó Delaunay and Joscelin Verreuil embody this trope for the first two books of the Kushiel's Legacy series. The former is a masochistic prostitute who frequently sleeps with people as a method of solving problems, and the latter is her celibate combat butler-bodyguard.
- In the Narnia book The Horse And His Boy, Shasta aka Prince Cor and Aravis spend most of the book arguing. At the end of the story, it's mentioned that they get married so they can argue more efficiently.
- In Megan Whalen Turner's Thief of Sounis series, Gen has a rather unbelievable but somehow endearing version of this with the Queen of Attolia, who imprisoned him and cut his hand off, and whom he must blackmail into marrying him.
- In the original novel The Princess Bride, Buttercup's parents were described as having this type of relationship, to the point that when her mother died, her father almost immediately followed it was believed to be the sudden lack of opposition that killed him.
Live Action TV
- Xander and Cordelia's romance on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Both before and after they got together, she insulted him all the time and was afraid of being seen with him in public. They barely showed any signs of affection other than kissing (even though they insisted they were in love). Later, Xander began dating Anya, an ex-demon whose idea of a romantic evening (at first) was to brag about all the men she'd tortured and killed over the centuries, though they actually developed a nice rapport later on, in contrast to him and Cordelia.
- In contrast, Buffy and Spike weren't a couple, they merely coupled. Despite repeated sex acts in season six, they never once declared themselves a couple. Spike wanted to be a couple, but Buffy was literally violently opposed to the idea. She merely used him for secret sex. Sex she was deeply ashamed of for having and he was bitter about not being able to leverage into a real relationship. Spike and Buffy were the rare Will They Or Won't They with sex that ended on "Won't They."
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine played this for laughs in a Story Arc about Klingon romances — the Klingon concept of foreplay involves
wrestling bitchslapping and broken bones, and the cowardly Ferengi Quark winds up having to participate (and insisting while getting patched up in sickbay that it was Worth It.)
- You can see Worf's dating advice here.
"Men do not roar. Women roar. And hurl heavy objects. And claw at you."
"What does the man do?"
"He reads love poems. He ducks a lot."
- Dax manages to hold her own with Worf in that episode (both come in to sickbay, supporting each other, with various bruises and fractures at the end); apparently she was used to it enough as Curzon to manage.
- Cardassians have a similar custom of snapping at each other during their courtship period. A female Cardassian engineer argued the toss extensively with O'Brien, only to reveal later that she found him attractive, bluntly declaring, "I assure you that I am quite fertile." She took the news that O'Brien was already married surprisingly well, saying at the end that Keiko was a lucky woman.
- A list of all the times the various Degrassi series did this would be a Wiki in itself. Some of the more notable cases:
- Joey and Caitlin on Degrassi High were supposed to be Star Crossed Lovers — even though Joey was a classic Ted Baxter with self-esteem problems and Caitlin was a stern, moralistic social activist. They broke up and got together again too many times to count.
- The same thing happened in the fourth season of Degrassi The Next Generation, which paired J.T. (goofy, irresponsible, and tactless) with Liberty (humorless, workaholic, and a world-class Control Freak). They insist that they're in love, but all we see is them arguing. (At one point, J.T. brags about their sex life in public, and Liberty pours cold soda down his pants.)
- Emma, the resident idealistic goody-two-shoes on Degrassi The Next Generation, has had several boyfriends — all of them extremely bad boys. First, she dated a Troubled But Cute boy whom she broke up with twice. Then she dated an amateur DJ whom she felt eternally awkward around. Then she began performing oral sex on a sociopathic thief who said he was with her just to piss off his ex-girlfriend, and bragged about all the other girls he was still having sex with. Did we mention that before they started dating, she had once tried to get him expelled? She wound up catching gonorrhea from him. Then Emma began dating Peter, whom she first met when he was blackmailing her best friend. And when she broke up with him, she went back to the very same Troubled But Cute boy she started with.
- Reality Show example: in The Amazing Race 9, Lake and Michelle (mostly Lake) swap insults, rants, and epithets for nearly the entirety of every episode after the first. When finally eliminated from the Race, they declare their love for each other in such a way that you begin to wonder what chunk of their lives was left on the cutting room floor.
- Jonathan and Victoria from The Amazing Race 6 were possibly an even better (worse?) example.
- Lee Adama and Kara Thrace on Battlestar Galactica — their epic "I hate you, I love you, I hate you" outlasted three seasons, several space battles, two drunken sex accidents, two whirlwind marriages (to other people), one inexplicable weight gain, one case of Stockholm Syndrome, one apparent death, and many fans' patience, and was only resolved when Starbuck was revealed to have been Dead For Real and up and vanished.
- It's been suggested recently that these two actually work well as a subversion of this trope and that RDM was trying to show just how dysfunctional this type of pairing would be if portrayed realistically.
- Saul and Ellen have been dancing theirs for a long time. Several thousands of years, in fact.
- Mal and Inara on Firefly. Despite being instructed by Inara upon their first meeting to not call her a whore, guess what Mal spends the entire time she spends on Serenity with him doing? Their bickering surpassed the usually cute Aw Look They Really Do Love Each Other designation and went straight into Love At First Punch territory.
Zoe: So... trap?
Mal: Trap.
Kaylee: Maybe she just wants to see you. Sometimes people have feelings, y'know. And I'm referring here to "people".
Mal: I take it y'all were watching?
Kaylee: ...yes.
Mal: Did you see us fight?
Kaylee: [confused] No.
- Sean and Julia McNamera on Nip Tuck are so ungodly ill-suited for each other from the moment they appear onscreen that any other two people in the universe would have come to their senses and cut ties years ago: they tend to split up and recombine a minimum of once per season, swearing every time they do either one that this time, it's going to stick. It never does, and one wonders if even the writers can put up with their whining for much longer.
- Dr. Cox and Jordan in Scrubs. These two are stunning, simply because even when they are openly together and obviously planning on spending the rest of their lives together, they continue to insult, demean and torment each other, even when they're happy. Over the years this has become increasingly one-sided as Jordan's character has been Flanderized to the point where while Dr. Cox has taken to trying to be nice and develop the relationship, Jordan only ever attempts to crush his (and everyone else's) psyche.
- There are some points where we see Jordan in more mellow points, even in later seasons. For instance the last episode of season seven, where she listened to Cox's story to Jack and we her without her defenses. In general it seems like much of the venom is gone from their relationship and now it's a matter of playful pecking. Even with the other characters, Jordan seems to drop the bitch act when it counts which is a far cry from her outright sadism of early appearances.
- It seems that this relationship actually thrives on the fighting, and that their shared hate actually brings them together.
- Which was actually showcased in one episode, where Jordan no longer wants to fight because of Jack. So Dr. Cox tries to initiate fights with other people, to which Carla says that she won't fight with him. They eventually patch things up after Cox tells Jordan she's just like her mother, and they agree not to fight in front of Jack.
- Kyle and Maxine from Living Single.
- Hyde and Jackie on That 70s Show. Before they got together, their interactions consisted entirely of slinging barbs and insults at each other. And after, their relationship was... pretty much the same, only now they had sex.
- Jackie refused to notice this. Hyde knew it but tried not to care.
- Proudly coarse Carla Tortelli and snooty John Allen Hill from Cheers. Hurling insults were their favorite foreplay.
- Frasier: A one-sided example came with Niles and Maris (starting about late S2 and finishing in S6). She manipulated him, dominated him, you could very well say that she was emotionally abusive and she put him through torment during their divorce. What's interesting is that Niles seems to go for or even cause these types (due to his submissiveness when it comes to women); His emaciated pet was Maris in dog form, Mel might have treated him better but was still dominating and even Daphne became shriller and bitchier after they got together.
- In the episode "The Focus Group", Niles actually intentionally attempts to instigate one of these between he and Daphne after they got into their first argument and he...enjoyed it so much. This, mind you, is before they got together, so it fails pretty miserably. Daphne's just too polite to take the bait and only argued with him in the first place because she was already at her wits end.
- Somewhat one sided in Stargate SG-1. Vala is constantly teasing Daniel but it is revealed that this is her way of flirting and genuinely does have feelings for him. Daniel however completely misconstrues this and assumes she's just plain making fun of him.
- One of the earliest television examples, Fred and Ethel Murtz from I Love Lucy. To give an idea of how much they bicker and seem to dislike each other, when asked what he knew about rice, Fred remarked, "I had it thrown at me on one of the darkest days of my life." If divorce had been as common in the first half of the 20th century as it is now, they probably would have split up twenty years before the series began.
- Truth In Television: Actors William Frawley and Vivian Vance openly despised each other, and flatly turned down a spin-off series starring the two of them.
- Steve and Karen McDonald from Coronation Street fit this trope. Despite marrying for a bet, the two quickly realized that they really did love one another after all. However, much to the amusement of fans of the show, their subsequent storylines focused on how Karen completely browbeat her husband. Eventually the couple split after both had affairs (including one scene where Karen had sex with her lover despite knowing that Steve could hear everything), but got back together and then divorced (Karen forced Steve to do this so she could have a proper wedding). Unfortunately their second wedding was ruined by Tracy Barlow, who had slept with Steve (when he was separated from Karen) and had his baby. Despite the fact that Karen chose to re-marry Steve many more arguments followed, but the final straw came when Karen suffered a nervous breakdown following a miscarriage and abducted Steve's daughter by Tracy. Steve decided to put an end to The Masochism Tango for good.
- While Word Of God says that House and Stacy were meant to be deeply in love, onscreen it was more like this. She's deeply self-righteous about the whole "cutting up his leg without his consent" thing and hasn't seemed to learn her lesson when it comes to her ill husband either, doesn't believe that he has any human feelings whatsoever (even when he shows her and us his adorable, romantic/cheesy side by giving her a prescription for her "heart problem") and seems to act like she wants to kill him in his sleep. For his part, he can't decide whether he wants her to be with him or if he wants her to suffer and at one point, breaks into her therapy file so he can act like the nice guy. He ended it in Need To Know but it really, really doesn't make him any happier.
- The entire "crew" of Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Although they claim to be best friends, and they will sometimes fight violently over "best friend" status with each other, they spend most of their time yelling and screaming at each other, physically abusing each other, slipping each other dangerous drugs, getting bizarre and often scarily sexual forms of revenge on each other, and literally planning to murder each other.
- A literal version in Burn Notice, with Michael and Fiona, as at one point they come to blows about it. They eventually resolve things and are back to a semi-dysfunctional couple, with the occasional outburst by Fiona, such as her slapping him when he was planning a trip to Cuba, "to remind [him] to be careful," just after giving him a kiss for luck.
- John and Aeryn in Farscape. From their very first meeting they're beating on each other (usually Aeryn is smacking John around but not always) and it becomes a common theme in the series.
- You would think this trope would be named Married With Children: Al and Peg pretty much treat each other like mortal enemies, and even take glee in ruining things that the other would enjoy, however each becomes insanely depressed/violent/jealous on those occasions where it looks as though the other has found someone else.
- How is Lana and Clark not mentioned here? All the time they were together he was more emo than Batman. They even lampshaded this in a season 8 episode, when Lana returns to the show.
- And literally when she has kryptonite inside her, causing him ACTUAL pain.
- Sam and Casey of Life With Derek suffered through an extremely fragile on-again, off-again relationship for several episodes before finally calling it quits for real.
- One wonders if Hannah Montana's Lilly and Oliver's (previously The Straight Will And Grace) Relationship Upgrade was, in fact, an upgrade. They seem to alternate between being Sickeningly Sweethearts and being at each other's throats.
- Saturday Night Live had a pair of recurring characters circa 2005 called The Needlers: The Couple That Should Be Divorced that basically epitomized this trope:
Sally Needler: Well, that's because someone got mad at the grill and pushed it into the swimming pool.
Dan Needler: That was probably because someone kept complaining that their steak tasted too steak-y.
Sally Needler: You know, you ruin every Fourth of July.
Dan Needler: YOU RUIN THE FOURTH OF EVERYTHING!!!
- Cody and Bailey of The Suite Life on Deck started out as a sweet, endearing couple who were well-matched intellectually and tolerant and forgiving of one another's faults. As the second season progressed, they constantly fought for dominance in the relationship, and everything became a competition between them. By the time they broke up at the end of season two, they weren't so much ending their relationship as putting it out of its misery.
- Niles and C.C Babcock in The Nanny. I mean, throughout season 1 and 2, they'd shoot insults back and forth out of the wind. Then, Niles decided he wanted to marry her, and proceeded to get rejected. 3 times. Eventually, they got got married and were expecting when the show went off.
Music
- Recurring Mountain Goats characters the 'Alpha couple' are locked in a mutually self-destructive spiral of alcoholism and substance abuse, veering between declarations of love, expressions of total hopelessness and outright Kung Shui.
Theater
- The entire point of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
- In Rent, there is a song called 'Tango: Maureen', all about how Maureen torments her boyfriends/girlfriends with compulsive flirting: "When you're dancing her dance, you don't stand a chance, her grip on romance makes you fall. So you think 'might as well dance a tango to hell'...at least I'll have tangoed at all.
- No one's mentioned Much Ado About Nothing yet? You know, the play that pretty much created this trope?
Video Games
- Parodied (Or Is It...hmmm...) in Super Smash Bros Brawl: playing as Wolf in a certain Star Fox-based arena will trigger a com chat involving Leon gushing over the viciousness of Wolf's smackdown of the opponent, and Panther questioning who the lizard is more envious of - Wolf, or his victim.
- Huge Schoolgirl Natsu and The Napoleon Shouma from Rival Schools are the incarnation of this trope.
- Erk and Serra from Fire Emblem 7, if you get their A support.
- This might not actually count, but for the Echani in Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic 2 repeated duels constitute both a courtship and foreplay (if the male wins, at least).
- Touhou Fanon and Kaguya/Mokou Shippers often display Kaguya and Mokou in The Masochism Tango since Kaguya and Mokou have been trying to constantly kill each other for years and years. It doesn't work because of their Immortality. This Fan comic displays this interpretation rather well (Warning: Ads are NSFW)
Web Animation
Webcomics
- Parodied in the webcomic Girl Genius: the Jagermonster Andre is convinced that the construct Von Pinn loves him. His "proof"? She mauls him on a regular basis without ever quite killing him. Considering she apparently has an already horrific reputation for violence, the fact that she simply takes so long mutilating and dismembering Andre is seen as validation by everyone else on the dirigible. It's reached the point where everyone dismisses the sounds of screaming and roars with "That would be Andre".
- On top of that, Jagers are kind of like that to begin with.
- You could say all the Sparks are this way, too. Gil and Tarvek are never more attracted to Agatha than when she's being crazy, beating them/other people up, and wanting to experiment on people. Agatha's the same for them.
- In Order of the Stick, they rescue an old man at his wife's request. Then the couple meet again, and they wonder how much of a good deed it was.[1]
- Dominic Deegan and Luna have turned bitter fighting over each other's habits into foreplay.
- xkcd has Black Hat Guy and his love interest. Subverts the "blatantly unsuited for each other" part though: They're both horrible people. Demonstrated here.
- One of the perks of the Exterminatus Now forum is watching Lothar, one of the comic writers, and his girlfriend Raye get into their regular multi-post arguments and insult exhanges.
- Something Positive: Jason and Aubrey are proof that this trope is what happens when Vitriolic Best Buds get married.
- This is apparently a regular part of Troll relationships in Homestuck, and even has its own name, "kismesis". Two individuals in kismesis also have generally flip back and forth between it and "matesprit" (more traditional romance). A good example of this would be between Vriska and Tavros. Vriska torments Tavros every chance she gets, even going so far as to mind-control him into jumping off a cliff and then constantly insults him afterwards for being a pathetic cripple. And yet she promptly starts making out with him as soon as they meet up in the Medium.
Web Original
- Riley and Zaboo's relationship in The Guild is more a sadomasochism tango with Riley as the top and Zaboo as the bottom.
Western Animation
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Quotes 
