True Love is Exceptional

Chris Traeger: You always like tall brunettes.
Ben Wyatt: Not exclusively.
Chris Traeger: Historically, yes, exclusively.

— Parks and Recreation about Ben, whose current girlfriend is a short blonde.

If the protagonist of a love story Has a Type at the start of the story, their final True Love will not be of that Type. The guy who prefers the Proper Lady will end up with the Tsundere, the girl who only gets turned on by "bad boys" will end up with a nice guy, and occasionally the (mostly) straight person will end up with someone of the same gender.

Generally, this is shown in terms of "you don't know what you're looking for until you find it", and, on a more pragmatic level, makes for a better story under the Rule of Drama. Would you really want to watch two hours of "person dates a bunch of similar people until they find the one that suits them best"? Or worse, a nice couple who hit it off immediately and hook up without any problems. (True Love Is Boring, after all.)

One explanation for this is namely in exploring differences between what one desires in a partner and perhaps what one needs in a partner (namely, that what they could want may not necessarily be what they need in a partner so they could have a long-lasting relationship.) Another could be circumstances; the two would typically not be seen together, but have been through so much together that the bonds allow them to see them differently than if they were strangers.

One of the most popular variants is the Troubled, but Cute guy who only dates so-called "easy" girls until he finds true love with the Girl Next Door — falling into the old (sexist) adage that "there are girls you sleep with and girls you marry," a popular mantra for parents who didn't mind their son "sowing his wild oats", but didn't want a girl who was less than virginal marrying into the family. (The same is, of course, true of women who are presented as making a distinction between "men they sleep with" and "men they marry", although in accord with the Double Standard, it's less likely to be brought up as an issue).

The female protagonist often travels along a different arc: they will fall for someone she'd usually consider unsuitable or downright dangerous after a string of more sensible partners. Usually, it comes across as "even if a woman decides to date men who can at least spell "morality," they will still get ditched as she falls for the Bad Boy anyway."

Most audiences aren't interested in love-as-political-point-scoring and will treat the work as a love story.

See also Ladykiller in Love — where the character falling in love at all is exceptional, and True Love Is a Kink. Subtrope of O.O.C. Is Serious Business. Contrast Ridiculously High Relationship Standards for characters who insist on being with someone who meets their exact tastes.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In From Eroica with Love, Dorian's preference (if you ignore his love life's status as an urban legend) is for submissive, artistic, fey(-er than himself) pretty boys. The unrequited love of his life is Klaus - who is macho, domineering, artistically insensitive, and has a volcanic temper to boot.
• At the start of Future Lovers, Kento dreams of marrying a sweet and responsible homemaker and having a family. He's forced to seriously revise that dream when he finds himself falling in love with Akira, who is as far from the ideal housewife as you can get, gender included.
• Gravitation's Eiri Yuki had a track record that consisted of "girls who won't mind if I forget about them post-sex, but who are happy to get an encore should I deign to call them." He ends up with clingy, demanding, (and male) Shuichi.
• Subverted in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War. Iino falls in love with Ishigami despite him having a lot of characteristics that she finds to be a major turn-off (he disregards the rules, is mean to her, and doesn't take school seriously). The dramatic irony of the situation is that everything else about him matches up with what she wants exactly, she just can't see it like the other characters and audience can. The same is true of Ishigami— while he prefers bubbly, kind, openly friendly girls, he's too fixated on Iino for the cast to ignore and the story likewise reveals that he's had her in mind since middle school. His ideal scenarios also involve things that Iino has been shown to enjoy or do.
  Iino: After all, a type is nothing more than a set of preferences. It's got nothing to do with who you actually fall in love with.
• In Lovely★Complex, Risa, who's unusually tall for a girl, wants a boyfriend who's taller than her. Otani, who's unusually short for a boy, wants a cute girlfriend who's shorter than him. Take a wild guess as to whom each one hooks up with in the end. Admittedly, they have a lot in common aside from the height difference, but it takes quite a while for them to get over that mental hurdle.
• In Magi: Labyrinth of Magic Sharrkan's type of woman is the loose, easy kind that a man can have a quick score with. In other words, call girls and the like. However, he fell in love with Yamraiha, a woman who takes relationships very seriously and who is probably the farthest thing from "easy."
• Rei in Mars (1996) dates any girl willing to sleep with him, most of them shown as brash, shallow, and self-obsessed, until he meets painfully introverted and artistic Kira, who has some serious issues regarding sex and is the first girl not to immediately make for the bedroom.
• In Whispered Words, Ushio makes it very clear that she only cares for extremely cute girls—much to the lament of her best friend, Sumika, who does not consider herself cute in the least, being a rather tall karate prodigy. Things become rather ... complicated, once Ushio realizes she has developed feelings for Sumika after all.
• Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku — everyone in the alpha (Narumi/Hirotaka) and beta (Hanako/Tarou) couples have described types (which the other person in the other couple ironically fit), but are steadily dating people who don't fit these archetypes.
  • Narumi likes scary, tough-looking guys like Tarou, but is with the stoic and caring Hirotaka.
  • Hirotaka likes busty, mature women like Hanako, but has been carrying a torch for the petite and cheery Narumi.
  • Hanako likes Prince Charming-type men and considers Hirotaka a good catch, but is with Tarou, who is rough around the edges and hot-tempered.
  • Tarou likes sweet, cute girls like Narumi (and actually does tend to find Narumi adorable in internal dialogue), but is with the belligerent and serious Hanako.
• Sumire from You're My Pet has it in mind to date a man with her "Three Highs" - taller than her, more educated than her, and earns more than her because she's learned from experience that No Guy Wants an Amazon. Naturally, she falls in love with Takeshi, a short and out-of-work modern dance student.
• You're Under Arrest!: Natsumi in the early episodes was shown to have an interest in older men, like Kachou and Detective Tokuno. However, she ends up with Shouji Tokairin, who's a few years younger than her.

Comic Books

• Astro City: One comic focuses on a man haunted by dreams about a strange woman, later revealed to be his wife who was retconned out of reality as a casualty from a villain's attempt to Ret-Gone superheroes. One thing that confuses him about his "dream girl" is that she really isn't what he would normally think of as his type; one of his friends notes the same thing about his own wife.
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Heather Douglas, Marvel's telepathic Moondragon has one of the more convoluted stories, starting off as a manipulator who would sometimes use sex as a weapon and always was involved with males. Then to her own surprise, she fell in love with Rick Jones's wife Marlo Chandler, but that did not work out. Marlo eventually returned to Rick, and to ensure her future happiness, Heather "confessed" that she thought she had subconsciously made Marlo fall in love with her in the first place. Phyla-Vell, the cosmically aware daughter of Captain Marvel (the first one, with Phyla herself being the fourth), was so moved by that self-denying lie that she fell in love with Heather, who thus unexpectedly found her true love after all.
• Spider-Man: One also could put Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson in this category, especially as MJ in her original form was not even intended to be a serious love interest by the creators. Here it took the tragic death of Gwen Stacy, which also affected Mary Jane deeply, and a few other twists and turns until the two realized how well they fit together and could finally tie the knot.

Fan Fic

• In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) fanfic series, "2nd Time Around", April finds herself musing that Donatello was always the turtle she sought out when she was a child in her father's lab, hinting at their deeper connection even before the mutagen gave him sentience, leading to him becoming her secret partner in her new private investigator business and the two eventually becoming lovers.
• In the first chapter of Advice and Trust, Asuka stated that she wasn't supposed to fall for a meek, insecure boy like Shinji:
  "I don't know! I just keep thinking about it! I'm not supposed to be attracted to boys like you! I'm supposed to want a real man like Kaji! I'm not supposed to be wondering what it would feel like to kiss you, to have your arms around me! It's not supposed to feel this good to do it! It's not supposed to feel so good to be lying here with you! I shouldn't want this to never end..." Her outburst ran down into confusion. "Why is it you?"
• In At Gate's Edge Roy Mustang is a consummate Casanova whose type tends to be men and women that he can easily charm without effort and immediately sleep with him. He falls hard for Edward who is a stubborn, hard-to-impress Tsundere who takes commitment very seriously, but is physically incapable of touching due to being a ghost.
• The Black Sheep Dog Series: In Black Mask, Sirius claims to prefer "blondes with loose morals", preferably Muggles or muggleborn. He ends up falling for the brunette Colette Battancourt, a sheltered, Proper Lady Pureblood witch that his family wouldn't disapprove of too much. Lampshaded by Regulus, who asks his brother what he likes about Colette since she's the type of girl Sirius would normally find boring.
• In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Heroes crossover series Interventions, Spike forms a strong bond with Nikki/Jessica as he represents an unconventional blend of what each of her personalities want in a man after D.K.'s death, with Nikki needing a good father figure for Micah while Jessica prefers the 'bad boys'.
• The Child of Love: In chapter 1 Shinji thinks it is curious he — an introvert — is more drawn to a girl as hot-headed as Asuka rather than someone more tranquil like Rei.
• Evangelion 303: In chapter 3 Asuka tells to Shinji that she will be keeping an eye on him, and Shinji wonders why can't a normal, well-adjusted girl say that to him. In chapter 5 Asuka screams that Shinji is not her boyfriend, and her ideal boyfriend is completely different from Shinji: her ideal man is manly, confident, beefy, always acts carefully, and thinks with lightning speed. Shinji and Asuka got together at the end of that episode and got engaged in chapter 13.
• In Those Gilded Chains We Wear Hermione, who prefers kind and caring men, gradually falls for Bellatrix, who is anything but.
• In A Monster's Nature, this applies to both Caitlyn and Brandon, as Caitlyn can't ignore her feelings for Brandon even as she wishes he wouldn't kill people and Brandon makes it clear more than once (in his own unconventional way) that he genuinely loves Caitlyn despite his regularly-expressed belief in his own superiority over the rest of the human race.
• Rules: Light Yagami, with his looks and charm, could literally have any girl he would want. He's dated several over the years, and no matter what their status in life, they fawned over him and would do anything for him, including giving up their hopes and dreams to become the perfect, obedient Japanese housewife. Then comes Charlie. American, foul-mouthed, independent Charlie, who hated him at first. She fought with him, infuriated him more than anyone else besides Elijah/L. She was unlike any girl he had ever met. It wasn't hard to see that she would be the one he would fall for in the end.
• In Shatterheart R!Syaoran believed that he would always love sweet Sakura, only to fall in love and eventually get engaged with with Kurogane who is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Discussed in TorontoBatFan's Let Me In series regarding Owen and Abby's relationship as witnessed by Oscar, Owen's grandfather and their new guardian after they run away. Oscar is aware when Owen and Abby start having sex, and freely acknowledges that he would object to such a relationship if Abby was a normal girl of her apparent age, but recognises that they don't exactly have a choice but to be sexually active at this age as Abby will never get any older, even before Owen becomes a vampire himself.
• The Book of Dust fic "The Window in the Desert" features Lyra and Pantalamion finding a new door to Will's world, the two making their way to Oxford to reunite with Will and Kirjava. When Doctor Malcolm Polestad follows Lyra in time to witness their reunion, he is struck by how Will and Lyra's daemons are so close to the other that at one point Will is holding Pan and Lyra Kirjava, Malcolm disturbed at the level of intimacy even as he's amazed to see Lyra looking like that.

Films — Animation

• Shrek: Princess Fiona dreamt of having a typical storybook ending with her Prince Charming, who would slay the dragon and climbed to the highest room in the tallest tower and break the curse that turned her into an ogre at night. She ends up falling in love with Shrek, an ogre who is a far cry from Prince Charming, and when the curse breaks she ends up becoming an ogre permanently (which doesn't really bother her since her mannerisms were ogre-like in both of her forms). In the sequel, when Shrek offers her the chance to live their Happily Ever After in beautiful human forms, can you guess what Fiona's response is?
  Fiona: I want what any princess wants, to live happily ever after...with the ogre I married.

Films — Live-Action

• In Tremors Val has a precise checklist for women he dates; "long blonde hair, big green eyes, world-class breasts, ass that won't quit, and legs that go all the way up!" (Unspoken is the fact they have three names and the intellects of cheese spread.) He ends up falling in love with Rhonda, a brunette with blue eyes who is rather short and Hollywood Homely. (But at least she has brains!)
• Danny Zuko in Grease prefers "girls who put out," only to fall for sweet and naive Sandy (at least, she is until the end of the film, making this a possible subversion where the True Love changes in order to conform to their partner's "type").
• This is the entire plot, albeit forced on the main character, of Shallow Hal. Hal typically goes after beautiful but vacuous women but after he's hypnotized into perceiving women based on their inner beauty instead of their outer appearance, he falls for a kind but morbidly obese woman since he sees her as slim and beautiful.

Literature

• In Anne of Green Gables, Anne Shirley had always insisted that she would only marry a man who fit her ideal. Tall, dark, handsome were non-negotiable requirements. Preferably one who owned a castle somewhere, like Spain. In the end, she winds up with Gilbert Blythe. She had rejected him many times for not fitting her ideal. (Granted, Gilbert is tall, dark, and the handsomest guy in her hometown — but he trained as a doctor, he was too much of a Boy Next Door, and she didn't want to ruin their friendship.) ^note  The Belligerent Sexual Tension was the focus of the first book, not the rest of the series. At the end of Anne of Green Gables, Gilbert and Anne talk, Anne admits that holding a grudge for one incident years ago was silly, and they become friends. Given that Anne does have feelings for Gil but won't acknowledge them and Gilbert is not at all subtle about his feelings, it turns very quickly into a Just Friends relationship where Everyone Can See It.
• The Belgariad: In Polgara the Sorceress, Polgara has had genuine romantic feelings for two men in her past (and loved one of them) — Kamion, the first Rivan Warder, and Ontrose, a Wacite Arendish knight. Both were urbane, polished, cultured, well-spoken, courtly, and definitely noble. Though Ontrose in particular became something of a Lost Lenore to her, the man she ultimately married, thousands of years later, is... a plain-spoken, straightforward, unpolished, honest, hardworking blacksmith with no aristocratic connections whatsoever named Durnik.
• In L. M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle, Valancy's cousin Olive, after her fiancé dies, proceeds to have a romance with a town bad boy, until her family's disapproval leads to her dutifully giving him up (with non-family gossips saying he was starting to cool on her), and finding a more suitable Second Love.
• This appears to be set up for Confessions of Georgia Nicolson — despite Georgia's claims that only "Sex Gods" need apply to be her boyfriend, her closest and most constant relationship is with Dave "The Laugh." While he's not as attractive as Georgia prefers, and lacks the status symbols of both Robbie and Masimo (a car/scooter, sings in a band, older than Georgia), she can't stop thinking about him (often remarking mid-monologue "How did Dave The Laugh get in there?") and shows surprising maturity in her reactions to him; Georgia can be ludicrously insensitive to most people, but she genuinely fears hurting or offending Dave in any way, not out of pride for herself but out of an honest regard for his feelings.
• How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Aisha Udgard often said to her father that she wouldn't marry a man weaker than her, which considering that she's the strongest warrior of her tribe would set the bar pretty high. However, she ends up falling for Souma, a man who's not only weaker than her, but for whom she also serves as his bodyguard, after the disaster struck the God-Protected Forest and he brings in the Elfrieden army to aide in humanitarian rescue work and personally uses his living poltergeist powers to help search for survivors.
• I Am Not a Serial Killer has another example that's less "not their usual type" and more "wait, they're actually into someone?" John is shocked and confused by his genuine interest in and affection for Marci — because he's a diagnosed sociopath. As he well knows, rules are meant to be broken. He also inverts the "girls you sleep with and girls you marry" variant-Brooke, ends up being a shallow infatuation, and Marci is maybe the only person in the world he really loves.
• In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Marianne wants to find a man who is as demonstrably passionate about life as she herself is. She finds it in Willoughby, but when he turns out to be a callous rake who seduced and abandoned a young woman, leaving her pregnant and destitute, and then abandons her in favor of marriage to a rich woman, she instead finds her happiness with the older Colonel Brandon — a quiet, serious, well-mannered man who is much less outspoken about his feelings.
• Martin in Spectrum prefers to date married women who are fine with their own husbands and are only looking for a casual affair. That's because he doesn't feel ready for a committed relationship and wants to make it as clear as possible he isn't planning marriage. Also, he likes a mature and experienced woman, because Age-Gap Romance is gross. In the end, he is in love with and engaged to Irina, who is unmarried and eighteen years his junior.
• In the Spy High books by A.J. Butcher, super-wealthy Jerk Jock Ben has only ever dated girls equally as privileged and physically gorgeous as him (which in the first series brings him together with Lori), but ultimately falls in love with Cally, who although kind and loving is a wrong-side-of-the-tracks former delinquent and grew up in comparative poverty.
• Tends to happen a lot in Piers Anthony's Xanth series. The protagonist goes on an adventure to gain something (sometimes, specifically, true love), but at the end of the story Character Development has set in and they're no longer interested in what they looked for, and has likely fallen for a companion in the meantime. In "Ogre, Ogre", Smash Ogre seeks help to rid himself of the Eye Queue Vine (which makes him un-ogrishly smart and thus an outcast among his kind, and undesired by female ogres) and in return having to escort the girl Tandy. In the end, he discovers that he always was intelligent, and having spent time with Tandy, he now finds other ogres boorish and unpleasant, including the females; he'd much rather be with Tandy. Similarly, in "Faun & Games" Forrest wants to find another faun, but when he does so (after lengthy, character-building adventures) he finds her shallow and uninteresting, even though she acts pretty much the way he did at the story's beginning. Fortunately, his companion Mare Imbri rejoins him in the end.

Live-Action TV

• The truth of this trope depends where you stand in the Shipping Wars, but all of Angel's romantic interests were petite blondes (Buffy, Darla, Kate, Nina) with the exception of voluptuous brunette Cordelia. Who, for at least part of the time he was interested in her, had dyed her hair blonde. Dude has a type (specifically, self-sacrificing heroes, at least when he has his soul).
  • Make them tough and confident too and you have a winner. Also don't forget some of Angelus/Angel's MALE lovers e.g. Spike, who is also (comparatively) small and blond.
  • Lampshaded in the episode "Carpe Noctem" where an old man switches bodies with Angel and is seen having sex on Wesley's desk. Cordelia isn't suspicious, saying that going at it with "some cheap blonde" is just the sort of thing Angel would do. However, when Fred mentions she was "some cheap brunette" the gang realizes there must be something wrong with Angel and springs to action.
• On The Big Bang Theory Penny always dated the dimwitted Jerk Jock type. Her on-again-off-again relationship with Leonard made her realize what she really wanted was a Nice Guy who challenged her intellectually (in other words, Leonard).
  • In one of her "off again" phases, we got to see her current boyfriend. Who was dumb as a post and pretty self-absorbed. He was friendly enough, just apparently incapable of understanding other peoples' feelings. Which basically made him Sheldon without the high IQ.
  Penny: Dammit, Leonard! You ruined dumb guys for me!
• Friends:
  • The insecure Chandler was terrified of commitment and went through Minor Flaw Major Break Up with his few relationships. Then he fell in love with his best friend Monica, and not only accepted her 'high maintenance' faults but felt good about dealing with them. With her help, he forged through his own issues and proved to be an unbelievably sweet boyfriend and later husband.
  • Monica's high-strung nature had her primarily looking for mature and serious guys, only to end up with an immature, wisecracking old buddy. It's especially noticeable when her ex-boyfriend Richard appears and, despite him being her previous ideal man, she still picks Chandler. The pair established the happiest relationship on the whole show.
• Parks and Recreation: Before meeting the short, blonde Leslie, Ben apparently had a type:
  Chris Traeger: You always like tall brunettes.
  Ben Wyatt: Not exclusively.
  Chris Traeger: Historically, yes, exclusively.
• Charlotte on Sex and the City spent the first seasons looking for her prince charming and eventually found Trey, who was everything she ever dreamed of, and married him. When she and Trey were divorcing she chose her divorce attorney, Harry, specifically because he was everything she didn't want in a man, and therefore she felt free to be as aggressive as possible during the divorce. Harry turned out to be her true love.
• Mulder's minor love interests in The X-Files tended to be tall, leggy, and blonde or brunette. In the end, he winds up with Scully, a petite redhead.

Music

• The narrator of "She's More" by Andy Griggs was surprised to fall in love with someone who looked nothing like his fantasy dream woman. The first verse gives the specifics: he likes tall women with long hair and blue eyes, but his love interest has shorter hair and green eyes and is only average height.

Video Games

• My Cafe: Lucas, the resident genius scientist, likes girls who are as scientifically minded as he is. He ends up dating Emily, an advertising agent who is mostly clueless about science and, according to Lucas's own calculation, has a -99 compatibility with him.

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