Unknowingly in Love

And it's you, and me
and all of the people
And I don't know why
I can't keep my eyes off of you...

— Lifehouse, "You and Me"

A character doesn't realize they're in love with someone. It's not that they don't know what love is (though they may not have felt it before) or they're in denial; they simply don't connect the butterflies in their tummy to this "love" thing that everyone talks about. Or their love manifests in a different way than they expect, or what is normal for their society.

This trope is rare in Real Life, but appears a lot in fiction. People growing to love someone often seems forced or like "settling" to an audience — there's a reason the One True Love trope is so common. (A romance that is one-sided for most of its screentime isn't very romantic, after all.) The morality of pursuing someone uninterested in you is also a turn-off to many people, because stalkers often use as an excuse their delusion that "no doesn't mean no". A Dogged Nice Guy, however heroic otherwise, can easily come off as disrespectful or pathetic. This trope enables both the dramatic tension of a plot and the happy ending at a time of the author's choosing — however, authors must be careful with it. In bad hands, it can make a character seem alienatingly stupid, be a flimsy excuse for Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends, or prompt viewers to ask Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?.

When this trope crosses over with Previously Overlooked Paramour (whereby the lead realizes that a potential suitor is more compatible than they thought), the suitor in question can initially be on the receiving end of the lead's obliviousness to the lead's own infatuation towards the suitor; matters can also become complicated if the suitor in question is themselves oblivious to their own feelings towards the lead.

The parties in question may go as far as denying their infatuation tooth-and-nail.

The trope may come alongside Love Epiphany (especially Belated Love Epiphany), Romantic Fake–Real Turn, Ladykiller in Love, and/or Race for Your Love. It may be caused by the character growing out of the Girls Have Cooties stage or being In Harm's Way and consequently too distracted by escaping death to consider deeper feelings like love. If the character is oblivious specifically because they don't consider themselves LGBT, their loved one may be a Closet Key. Those accustomed to Loving a Shadow may find that "real", mature love feels quite different. Subtrope of What Is This Feeling?. Compare Baffled by Own Biology.

For when a character is clueless about another character's romantic feelings towards them, see Oblivious to Love.

---

Examples

Anime and Manga

• Amagami: Kaoru Tanamachi and Junichi Tachibana have been friends for some years and are very comfortable with each other, to the point she's perfectly at ease hugging him by surprise or nibbling on his ear to tease him. In one of the manga adaptations, she only realises that what she feels for Junichi is love once he starts dating Tsukasa Ayatsuji, and ruefully wishes she'd realised this sooner.
• In Berserk, because Guts didn't want to get in the way of Casca and Griffith, he refused to acknowledge his feelings for the former (and probably the latter) were more than friendship and wished the two happiness after he was gone.
• The Case Closed character Heiji is utterly incapable of realizing his feelings for Kazuha, going so far as to believe that the jealousy he felt when she flirted with a magician was just a leader's concern for his follower.
• The Case Files of Jeweler Richard: After Saul's Armor-Piercing Question to Seigi asking him if he knows he's romantically in love with Richard, Seigi spends days questioning his own feelings, having never considered it love at all. In the end, he comes to terms with the fact that he does love Richard (even if he's still not sure it's romantic).
• In Full Metal Panic!, Sousuke takes a long time to recognize his growing feelings for Kaname for what they are; when he and Kurz discuss the subject in the novels and Kurz tells him it's love, Sousuke doesn't believe him, as love is supposed to be happy and he is miserable. Sousuke's warped, sexually exploitative upbringing also contributes to his ignorance.
• Otherside Picnic has Sorawo, who recognizes early on that Toriko is in love with the missing Satsuki. But she is oblivious— until well into vol. 4 —of her own feelings for Toriko. Justified in that Sorawo spent much of her youth dodging kidnappers and hiding in abandoned buildings. She's thrown when Toriko reveals that she has two moms, so it's likely that given everything going on in her life, Sorawo simply never stopped to consider her own stance on romance or orientation.
• My First Girlfriend Is a Gal: Yui Kashii is a narcissistic Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who views everyone around her as her "servants" or "pets". Her favorite "dog" is Junichi, with whom she has been in the same class since middle school. However, when Junichi suddenly begins dating the titular gal Yukana, Yui becomes angry, justifying it as "her dog" giving someone else attention that's entitled to its owner. Yui begins scheming to steal Junichi back by any means necessary, including seducing him, often becoming confused by how aroused she gets when trying to win him over and questioning why she even cares so much. Through convoluted circumstances, she eventually comes to realize that her jealousy is because she's in love with him and that she probably always has been, but didn't realize it until it was too late. This makes her undergo a Jerkass Realization and pledge to be a nicer, kinder person to try to earn Junichi's love. She realizes that it's probably too late now, but she refuses to give up and tells him she's willing to settle for being his mistress if necessary.
• In Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Kaguya knows that other people have affections they consider "love", but as a child of the exalted and ruthless Shinomiya clan, she was raised to believe that love was a delusion and beneath people of her standing. She still tries to seduce Shirogane (for pragmatic reasons, of course!), and is surprised when her ploys to do so embarrass her instead. Eventually (after she admits to herself that she wouldn't discard Shirogane even if an objectively better boy showed up) she is able to vocalize to Hayasaka that she loves him, which is a sign of great Character Development and foreshadows an actual confession to Shirogane several chapters later.
  Doctor: You're lovestruck.
  Kaguya:...So... there's some kind of heart disease called that, you mean?
  Doctor: No. It's the usual feeling you get when you're heads over heels for someone.
  Kaguya: [chuckles] So even doctors make jokes.
  Doctor: It's not a joke.
  [cue tantrum]
• Asuka Jr. from Kaitou Saint Tail has a severe case of No Social Skills to the extent that he struggles to understand girls, love, and romance at all, and so it takes him a while to understand that he's in love with his classmate Meimi simply because he can't distinguish between that and merely just caring about her as a decent human being. For a while, it does seem to be nothing but genuine consideration, but at some point, he starts getting really antsy about the idea of someone taking her away from him, something that confuses him even further because by all means, there's no reason he should be bothered by that, right? He eventually figures it out when his ongoing pursuit of Phantom Thief Saint Tail, whom he deeply associates with Meimi due to suspecting that they're the same person, puts things in pragmatic perspective for him: if there's something that he wants to protect to the point of never wanting to let it go, it means that it's something that truly has become precious enough to be his "treasure", and that developing an intimate enough relationship for him to do what he wants to do for her will require a Relationship Upgrade.
• Subverted in a Love Hina subplot. Motoko experiences strange feelings whenever she's around Keitaro and is told by others that those feelings must be love. Hilarity Ensues, until The Reveal that she was actually sick, and the feelings she was having were symptoms of the illness.
• In Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun the titular boy doesn't realize that he's starting to hold Sakura in special regard. He finds the prospect of her ignoring him devastating, and in Chapter 71 the gag outright points out that he unconsciously started drinking milk ^note a folk remedy to make children grow taller after Sakura hinted that she likes taller guys (which he also fails to realize specifically meant him).
  • Masayuki Hori from the same series also doesn't realize his own feelings for Kashima, despite his single-minded devotion to her, constantly talking her up at the slightest provocation, and outright saying he thinks she has the most attractive face in the world. When another student directly points out how much Hori likes her, it takes him five days to work through his own thoughts and eventually realize he's right.
• My-HiME:
  • Natsuki Kuga is completely unaware of the fact that she loves Shizuru. During the Festival she pointedly tells Mai that she has no person precious to her, save the memory of her late mother. When that memory is destroyed by the revelation that her mother was going to sell her to the Searrs Foundation, she suffers a Psychosomatic Superpower Outage. However, her powers are restored when Shizuru rescues her from Nao, and she realizes that it was Shizuru's love that kept her from falling into total cynicism like Nao. When she later summons her CHILD- a being whose power is fed by the love a HiME feels for her most important person- he has become Kaiju-sized.
  • Mai is also unaware that she's in love with Yuuichi until, after the death of her most important person (her brother), she can still summon her CHILD. She realizes why when she finds herself scrawling the first character of Yuuchi's name in the condensation on a window.
• In My Monster Secret, Youko actually tries to set Asahi up with someone else...then she sees them on a date and feels her chest tightening, which she brushes off as her reaction to the shrine they're at.
• Played with in regards to the titular character in Naruto. Naruto himself spends the majority of the series unaware of the nature of romantic love and how it is any different from the kind of 'love' one would have for a favorite treat (which he understands due to how much he loves to eat his favorite food ramen). It ultimately isn't until he's finally become fully accepted by his village and later learned the true nature of romantic love over the course of his adventures in The Last: Naruto the Movie that he fully understands and realizes the nature of Hinata's love for him and how he himself has in fact been in love with her without even realizing at first.
• Ouran High School Host Club: Although Tamaki is typically highly perceptive of the feelings of others, he is oblivious to his feelings towards Haruhi, rationalizing his constant fawning over her as affection for a surrogate daughter. It takes multiple people questioning this logic (and other people explicitly expressing their romantic interest in Haruhi) for Tamaki to finally come to terms with his romantic feelings.
• Seitokai Yakuindomo: Mutsumi Mitsuba is obviously absolutely smitten by protagonist Takatoshi Tsuda, but due to her pure and innocent nature doesn't connect the dots that what she feels is romantic love (to the frustration of her best friend Chiri and members of their Judo Club). It's notable that the other members of Takatoshi's Unwanted Harem never raise their guard around her (unlike with other girls like Uomi or Mori), since she's so oblivious to her own feelings they don't feel threatened at all despite her closeness to Takatoshi.
• SPY×FAMILY: Loid Forger has difficulty realizing his own affection for Yor, the woman posing as his wife. Likewise, Yor is unaware of her developing feelings for Loid or jealousy towards his co-worker, Fiona.
• Ran and Julia from Strawberry Shake Sweet spend a good deal of the manga like this: first by failing to notice their own feelings, then by practically refusing to acknowledge that said feelings are mutual. Hilarity Ensues.
• Nishikata from Teasing Master Takagi-san is not only oblivious to Takagi's feelings for him (despite her making no attempt to hide them), but also to his feelings for her. Given that the spin-off has the two of them married with a daughter, he obviously figures it out at some point.
• Toradora!, At the end of episode 19, Taiga finally comes to realize that she's in love with Ryuuji, after going to some effort to help set him up with her good friend, Minori.
• Kyohei and Sunako from The Wallflower absolutely refuse to even entertain the thought that they're in love with each other- Sunako going as far as to say 'Love is an illusion' and Kyohei using the excuse that he 'loves her food'- and this is after they've kissed twice, saved each other countless times and had the entire cast calling them out on their UST and feelings - so much that at this point of the manga, everyone is convinced they are in love/together.

Fan Works

• Zig-zagged in The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan. Twilight doesn't realize she is crushing on Nova Shine, but eventually knowingly falls in love with him. With misguided views of love, Nova flatly refuses to believe he is in love with Twilight even though he is head over heels for her and everyone else comments on it.
• In Beyond Heroes: Of Sunshine and Red Lyrium, it takes Varric literally thirty chapters to realize what most of his friends figured out forever ago - that while yes, the Inquisitor (Bethany Hawke in this AU) is his friend and Protectorate, she's also become a heck of a lot more.
• In Once Upon a Time fanfic Enchanted Tales with Belle, for many months, Mr. Gold is absolutely clueless about the fact that he has fallen in love with Belle. Justified, because he is crazy with anxiety and fear for his sick son's life and doesn't really have much time for other feelings.
• In Finding Family, Anne didn't know that she's been in love with Marcy without even realizing it in the 10 years the Calamity Trio had been apart. It takes Sasha explaining everything to her within the timespan of 45 minutes for Anne to see how oblivious she had been.
• The Flash Sentry Chronicles: Twilight and Flash didn't realize they have feelings for each other until years after they became friends. Even the efforts of Cadance, the princess of love, had failed to hook them up.
• The Flower Princess and the Alchemist: Despite the Unresolved Sexual Tension between them, Orihime has some difficulty recognizing her true feelings for Edward ( even though they have kissed on a few occasions). This mainly has to do with her being so madly in love with Ichigo that she can't perceive her feelings for Edward as anything romantic in nature because it's just too different than what she feels for Ichigo. Plus, her deep-seated self-worth and insecurity issues also play a factor because she strongly believes that no one would truly fall in love with her. The real her. The ugly, broken person she tries to hide from the world.
• For the Love of Pikachu: In the end of Chapter 12, When Ryder told Pikachu to listen to his heart, he started to think of every moment he had with Buneary until he soon realized he was in love with her.
• Hero Chat: Chat Noir is blockheaded as always when it comes to romantic feelings. Other characters have to point out that frequent nightly visits to "balcony girl" (Marinette) are not something you do with someone who's "just a friend."
• Heroic Myth: After being saved by Archer several times, Tiona develops a crush on him. She doesn't realize it at first, and it takes some time before it sinks into her.
• Josuke's True Love: In this JoJo's Bizarre Adventure comic dub, after Josuke turns down another girl and saying he's waiting for his One True Love, Koichi asks how will he know what true love is. Josuke answers that true love in question will always make their partner smile and understands them better than anyone, and explains that when he finds it he'll recognize it immediately. Then his best friend Okuyasu comes over and Josuke perks up in the exact matter he describe, all while Koichi face palm in background as it's clear that Okuyasu is Josuke's true love but the latter doesn't realize it.
• Judgement Day (Dragon Ball): Despite the lengths Goku went to ensure Vegeta went to the same afterlife as him, he doesn’t realize he has feelings for Vegeta until he has the opportunity to swap out their judgment papers. This would have allowed Vegeta to stay in Fighter’s Heaven without the two being soul-bonded.
• In The Live House (which calls itself a fanfiction for The Loud House, but really it's more of a story in which the show is live-action, focusing on the fictitious actors), Lincoln's actor has a crush on Lynn's actress, but doesn't realise why he feels so different around her until Luna's actress explains. Justified in that he's only eleven and it's his first crush.
• Magician's Obsessions: A defining plot point. Anypony who cares to look will notice that Twilight and Trixie are head over hooves in love with each other, but Trixie's egotistical stage persona keeps her from seeing Twilight as anything but a Worthy Opponent, while Twilight's lack of social skills makes her think that what she's feeling is only very intense friendship. Even though Twilight has suffered a severe depression from longing for Trixie, and Trixie has an entire shrine with news clippings about Twilight.
  Celestia: At this rate I may need to send her a book on the subject, or perhaps just write her a message telling her she is in love. For being my smartest student to date, Twilight is also sadly the most dense.
• Nightblade: As a sociopath, Rythin has no real understanding of love. He figures out he's in love through process of elimination.
• No, Chika, You, We do NOT Make Out to Show Our Friendship!: Chika and You never realize that they were in love with each other until their fellow Aquors members point it out by comparing their feelings with the more open-relationship of Kanan and Mari. It's especially noticeable since Chika and You kiss each other on the lips thinking it's a special act of their friendship
• In Pokémon: The Deltaverse, Ash takes a while to realize he's in love with Serena.
• Servant Shenanigans:
  • Artoria doesn't realize that she has romantic feelings for Irisviel even though Everyone Can See It. Mordred even says that Artoria just won't get the hint unless she's properly courted.
  Diarmuid: [Artoria] was being difficult about her crush on Irisviel. You know, 'No, Diarmuid, she's just a friend. Yes, I care about her a lot, and if she cried I would kill whoever made her do so, but that doesn't mean I'm in love.'
  • Fuuma was so unfamiliar with the feeling of love that he initially assumed he was sick and went to see the nurse.
• In the Ghostbusters (1984) fanfic Sick, Egon has a crush on Ray, but initially thinks he's ill or allergic to Ray's clothes. The reason is partly because, despite being a man in his thirties or forties, he's apparently never fallen in love before, and partly because the love has given him anxiety, resulting in nausea and lightheadedness.
• In Some Semblance of Meaning, Vale could easily be accused of this. Her Love Interest Obsidian isn't quite as bad as she is, but even so, by the time he finally realizes his feelings for Vale, several others — Amber and the other Careers, Phlox, Vale's sister Laurel, and probably even Caesar Flickerman and others in the Capitol — had already picked up on it long ago.
• In the Sesame Street fanfic What's the Distinction?, Ernie initially doesn't realise he's in love with Bert. In fact, he thinks his excessive clinginess towards him must mean he doesn't love him.
• Ships Ahoy!:
  • Oprah initially feels herself falling in love with O'Donahue, but brushes off the feelings because she's unfamiliar with the concept of love. O'Donahue feels the same way, but unlike Oprah, he knows about love.
  • When Oscar mentions that his Truth-Sniffer-inator gadget is his favorite one, Olive gets butterflies in her stomach. However, instead of realizing what the feeling means, she brushes it off as nervousness and reassures herself that she has nothing to hide from him. The pair eventually end up in a relationship.
  • Opal begins to realize that she has a crush on Otto from the very moment she comes to the realization that he is endearing to her, but tries to deny her feelings by bringing up excuses that range from "Otto likes another girl" to "I'm only eleven and shouldn't have a crush on anyone at this age". Of course, she and Otto do eventually enter a steady relationship with each other.
  • After Precinct 13579 wins their first Jackie Award, Octavia finds that she feels flustered when talking to Oren and has no idea why. Likewise, Oren is also struggling with his own feelings for Octavia.
• In Time and Again. Naruto rationalizes his love for Hinata as him trying to make up for not stopping her from entering a (very unhappy) Arranged Marriage and getting Neji and Hanabi killed even.
• In this Tomb Raider fanfiction, Lara is this trope (as opposed to her mostly asexual portrayal in canon). Lara admits in her own narration that she 'needs' Sam, the two sleep in the same bed every night, she feels jealous when a boy pays attention to Sam, and yet it takes several weeks before she realizes that her feelings for Sam might be romantic. Sam's response to Lara's eventual Love Confession:
  Sam: I told myself I wouldn't say 'finally.' But- god- finally!
• True Potential: While walking with Kurotsuchi, Shikamaru asks her if she would like to come for dinner at his house. She accepts and, after she leaves, he wonders why he asked her that question in the first place.
• When The Moon Fell In Love With The Sun: Bad as it was in canon, Katniss's obliviousness here is even more so. 11 chapters in, she's still at the stage of thinking that someday they might be friends, even when she's started having Erotic Dreams about him.
• In A Young Girl's Delinquency Record, Tanya has to be shown forcefully, via magic, that she has feelings for Visha. She's still oblivious to the utterly transparent crush Visha has on her.

Films — Live-Action

• Silver Linings Playbook: It takes a long time for Pat to realize that his feelings for Tiffany go beyond friendship due to him spending most of the runtime trying to win his ex-wife Nikki back. When he finally gives Tiffany an Anguished Declaration of Love, he apologizes to her for taking so long to catch up.
• Lampshaded by Yvaine in Stardust: when confessing her love for Tristan (after A Match Made in Stockholm and most of the film spent in squabbles), she admits love is "strangely easy to mistake for loathing".
• It takes most of The Wedding Singer for coworkers Robbie and Julia to realize there's more between them than a really good friendship. It doesn't help that he's recently had his heart broken and she's engaged to marry someone else, but it's funny to watch everyone around them slowly cotton on to the fact that they're in love. When they do figure it out, Robbie's ex-fiancée Linda almost ruins everything by preventing Julia's Love Confession, but fortunately they're helped out by their friends, some airline personnel, and Billy Idol. (It Makes Sense in Context.)

Literature

• In Anne of Green Gables, Anne transitions from insisting that Gilbert is her mortal enemy (because he mocked her red hair when they were young), to seeing him as a good friend and rejecting his marriage proposal for I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship reasons, to finally realizing she is in love with him when he is on the brink of death from typhoid. Heretofore she had been completely unaware of it, due to her unrealistic ideas of what being in love was supposed to be like.
• The Belgariad: Relg and Taiba both take quite a while to figure out that they're actually in love with each other, even though they're instinctively drawn to each other's company right from the start.
• In Bridge to Terabithia, young Jess is oblivious to his feelings about Leslie for the entire book, even after she dies.
• Emma: Emma enjoys playing matchmaker for others but doesn't realize that she loves Mr. Knightley until Harriet expresses an interest in him.
• From Alan's P.O.V. chapter in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, it's quite clear that he already has a crush on Catarina when he is 9, but he only recognized his crush when Catarina was briefly kidnapped when he's 15. And even as a 9-year-old boy he certainly knows what love is; the reason he met Catarina in the first place is to accuse her of seducing his betrothed Mary.
• In Otherside Picnic, Sorawo takes a good four volumes of novel to map out that she has feelings for Toriko, her accomplice, and try to act on them. Any reader is likely to figure it out long before she does, since Sorawo narrates the story in first-person, and spends an awful lot of time thinking about how Toriko is the most beautiful person she's ever met.
• Please Bully Me, Miss Villainess!: Yvonne is a human player reincarnated as the lead villainess of an Otome Game, who accidentally finds herself the target of the heroine Elsa's affections. It takes her a long time to realize that Elsa's feelings are romantic in nature (though mainly because the original game contained no Gay Option route, let alone a villainess one), and she is still (the novel is unfinished at the time of writing this) stumped by what it is exactly she herself feels towards her, earning her the Fan Nickname "neutronium girl" because she is just that dense.
• In Sound! Euphonium, Kumiko doesn't realize her feelings for Shuuichi until someone else tells her about them.
• In Sparkling Cyanide, Stephen Farraday doesn't realise that he has long been in love with Sandra, his Meal Ticket wife, until his lover Rosemary starts nagging him to get a divorce. He later admits he was so sure he married Sandra for her money and position that he didn't allow himself to think otherwise.
• In Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note, seventh grader Aya doesn't recognize that her feelings for Sunahara and other members of The Team are edging towards romance. This trait carries over when she becomes a high schooler in the spinoff Genie Team G Jiken Note; her sister Nako calls the guys her boyfriends, but Aya doesn't notice and continues to see their relationship as purely platonic.
• The Hunger Games: Thanks to her traumatic upbringing, Katniss repeatedly misses that she has feelings for Peeta. Prior to the book she's implied to have had a crush on him (surprising even herself when she realises how much she's noticed about him), vaguely refers to "a hunger" when they kiss, and spends paragraphs describing his eyelashes and hands. It takes until the end of the series for her to finally acknowledge that she loves him.
• In The Valkyrie, Zima doesn't realise she has fallen in love with Mstivoy until he nearly gets killed. To her credit, it's not just her being clueless: he has previously done everything in his power to push her away, believing he was doomed to die.
• In Warrior Cats, Lionpaw doesn't consider that his eagerness to have secret night meetings with Heatherpaw might be motivated by something other than "friendship". Unlike most examples, he never realizes the truth, because (them being from different Clans) their romance was cut short before it even began.

Live-Action TV

• Arrested Development: Played for laughs when Gob is trying to explain his feelings towards his recently discovered teenage son. When Michael suggests that it could be love, Gob dismisses the idea, saying he knows what an erection feels like.
• Friends: Downplayed since Rachel knew she loved Ross in the past, but when Ross was about to marry Emily, Rachel was genuinely surprised when Phoebe made her realize that she was still in love with him.
  Rachel: I cannot believe you didn't tell me!
  Phoebe: Because we thought you knew! It's so obvious! God, it would be like, you know, telling Monica "Hey, you know, you like things clean."
• In the How I Met Your Mother Season 1 episode "Drumroll, Please", Robin arrives at the apartment and tells Lily about her new gig. When Lily tells her about Ted's romantic evening with a woman named Victoria during Stuart and Claudia's wedding, Robin reveals that she did make it to the reception after getting off work but she saw Ted and Victoria by the piano bench who are about to kiss. This causes Robin to go to the bathroom and cry and Victoria hears her and comforts her by giving her the bouquet. Robin admits she doesn't know why she's crying at that time until Lily reveals that she has feelings for Ted.
• Kamen Rider Drive: Played for laughs when Shinnosuke and Chase are at the cafeteria drinking with the latter asking the former if he's in love with Kiriko. This causes Shinnosuke to drop his drink and loudly deny it but Chase believes it because he saw him spying on him and Kiriko on the rooftop. Shinnosuke still denies it and points outs her flaws such as being violent to him. When Kiriko shows up to discuss the case, Shinnosuke gets distracted by looking at her but leaves immediately which conforms Chase's suspicion. As they leave, Shinnosuke begins to realize that he does have feelings for Kiriko after remembering the times they spent together while on duty.
  Shinnosuke: Now I see it...I really do have feelings for her...I have all along...
• The Scorpion character Walter is a Tin Man, often declaring himself to be unburdened by emotions while proving himself wrong; in fact, he feels emotions but can't process them. In particular, he ignores or denies his feelings for Paige, even pushing her toward other love interests. It's only when a heartbroken Toby drunkenly yells at him for acting this way that he admits his feelings, and it takes another year before he's able to be mature enough about it for a relationship to develop.
  Walter: I'm in love with Paige. (Beat) I'm a moron. (leaves after Paige)
  Toby: No, just a genius.
• Star Trek: Voyager's doctor is a holograph with the appearance and mind of a grown man, but only a few years of actual life experience. Therefore, he doesn't understand what romantic love is, having not experienced it up until the events of "Lifesigns". Until Kes suggests that he's in love, he doesn't know why he's been so nervous and spacey ever since his crush arrived.

Radio

• Bleak Expectations: In series 2, Pip Bin is completely unaware of his feelings for Ripely, right up until she storms his wedding to Tallulah Not-A-Man.

Theatre

• Anne in A Little Night Music is not only oblivious to her awkward stepson's feelings for her, but also to her own feelings about him, which she only realizes at the end.
• Joey in Me and My Dick isn't happy when the Anthropomorphic Personification of his dick gets a boner for his friend Sally, since he has a raging crush on popular girl Vanessa. But he later realizes, via Love Revelation Epiphany, that he has had feelings for Sally all along.

Video Games

• Fate/Grand Order: Mash Kyrielight's naivety from growing up sheltered means she doesn't quite understand her crush on the protagonist, despite constantly blushing around him/her and being the first to object to other Servants' advances on them. According to her, she only knows about love in theory and not in practice.

Visual Novels

• Ikemen Sengoku:
  • Mitsunari is so oblivious about anything related to romance that he fails to realize when he himself has fallen for someone.
  • Sasuke isn't much better, despite being a more composed genius than Mitsunari. He constantly comments on his route that he feels happier and everything seems brighter when he's with the female main character but fails to realize exactly why he feels like that for an astoundingly long time even though he spent four entire years training to become a ninja just to be able to protect her when he finally found her again.
• Tsukihime has a rare villainous example in the Big Bad, the Dead Apostle Michael Roa Valdamjong. He fell for the main heroine, Arcueid Brunestud, but did not recognize his feelings as love, so he did everything possible to antagonize her in the hopes that she would hunt him down and he could be close to her. In the story's present, this results in him becoming the Serial Killer terrorizing the city, hoping that his 'beloved' will seek him out and he can toy with her a little more.

Webcomics

• Fate/Gamers Only: Mash, aside from being unable to tell Rikku has a crush on her (despite how terrible she is at hiding it), is unable to tell she shares the same feelings. This is primarily due to Mash having gotten a hangover that made her forget the inciting kiss (the following day when she admits to having forgotten recent events, she later acts flustered around Rikku and says she doesn't know why she feels this way). This is slowly phased out as Mash becomes more aware of how she enjoys Rikku's presence, albeit with the occasional embarrassed denial and instances where she can't quite pinpoint her feelings (Mash describes a moment where Rikku hits on her while in her underwear as causing "strange urges"). Even so, Mash is able to fall asleep in a tender embrace with Rikku after spending a night together without realizing they are essentially dating.

Western Animation

• Frog And Friends exaggerates the trope for comedy. When Frog falls for a duck, he not only doesn't realize he's in love (thinking the fast heartbeat, strange mood, blushing, and chills are symptoms of a disease) but once he's told it's love, he doesn't realize who he's in love with.
• In the Justice League episode "Far from Home", Brainiac 5 is completely unaware that he has fallen in love with Supergirl until Green Arrow points it out.
• Implied in The Owl House. Luz Noceda's behavior around Amity over the course of the first season suggests that she may have been unconsciously harboring a crush as early as "Lost in Language". However, by the time we actually get concrete proof in "Escaping Expulsion", she realizes what's going on pretty much immediately.
• For most of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, the main protagonist Adora is oblivious to her romantic feelings for her former childhood friend-turned-nemesis Catra until the series finale when the latter admits her own feelings for the former.
• In Young Justice (2010), Artemis takes a while to realize her feelings for Kid Flash (even though Everyone Can See It).

---