History Main / YouHaveWaitedLongEnough

** In the book, she was about to take a man as her mate, because Richard wasn't supposed to return home for about three centuries, and the magic of the Confessors had to live on. Right before she does, she learns Richard is back.

* Literature/{{Child Ballad|s}} ''[[http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch017.htm Hind Horn]]''

* Literature/{{Child Ballad|s}} ''Literature/YoungBeichan''

* In [[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/186truesweetheart.html "The True Sweetheart"]], the heroine [[SheCleansUpNicely dresses up for the ball]] in order to win back the prince, who had been [[DistressedDude enchanted]] into [[LaserGuidedAmnesia forgetting her]].
* In "Literature/TheTwoBrothers", collected by Creator/TheBrothersGrimm, and "[[http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/079.htm The Three Princes and their Beasts]]", collected by Creator/AndrewLang, the false hero forces the princess to claim that he saved her and claims the StandardHeroReward, but the hero arrives at the wedding and saves her.
* In [[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/asbjornsenmoe/threeprincesseswhiteland.html "The Three Princesses of Whiteland"]], the hero violated a [[ForbiddenFruit prohibition]], and only makes his way back to the heroine in time to stop her wedding.

* In "Literature/{{Bearskin}}" the young soldier frees a man from debtors prison, and the man promises the hand of one of his three daughters in gratitude. The two eldest refuse him, disgusted by his appearance, but the third agrees, believing him to be a good man. He promises to return in three years to the day to marry her, or else he will be dead and she will be free to marry whomever she pleases. However, he returns a day late having taken the time to dress himself as a rich and important man, and the family does not recognize him. He again offers to marry one of the man's daughters, the two eldest volunteer, but the youngest refuses, as she has gone into mourning.
* In "[[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/eastsunwestmoon/stories/daughterskies.html Daughter of the Skies]]", the heroine finishes her [[TheQuest quest]] and arrives during the wedding preparations and bribes the false bride into letting her at her husband; the false bride drugs him twice, but the third time, he is alerted to what she had done the first two, and doesn't drink the drug.
** Also in "[[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/eastsunwestmoon/stories/sprigrosemary.html The Sprig of Rosemary]]".
* In "[[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/eastsunwestmoon/stories/hoodiecrow.html The Hoodie-Crow]]", the heroine finishes her [[TheQuest quest]], finding the place, and is hired by the cook. She prepares the wedding feast and slips her ring into it; the prince recognizes it and says he must marry her.

* Played with in "[[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/eastsunwestmoon/stories/enchsnake.html The Enchanted Snake]]", where the hero refuses to marry the woman who [[EngagementChallenge healed him]] because he is already pledged to another. Fortunately, they are the same woman.
* In ''Literature/TheFeatherOfFinistTheFalcon'', the heroine arrives to find Finist marrying the Tsar's daughter. She bribes her way to him three times, but the Tsar's daughter has put an enchanted pin in his hair to keep him asleep; the third time, she touched him and knocked the pin out.
-->''Then he summoned all his princes and nobles and his officers of all ranks and told them the story, asking: "Which of these two am I to wed? With which can I spend a long life so happily that it will seem a short one: with her who would deceitfully sell my hours for playthings, or with her who sought me over three times nine lands? Do ye now discuss and decide."\\
And all cried with one voice: "Thou shouldst leave the seller of thy rest and wed her who did follow thee!"''
* In "Literature/TheBlueMountains", the hero arrives on the wedding day of the heroine and bribes a servant to bring her to him. As soon as she recognizes him, they marry instead of her new bridegroom.
* In "Literature/MaidMaleen", the titular princess arrives as the prince is marrying his new bride; her father had locked her in a tower for seven years.

* Buttercup in ''Film/ThePrincessBride'' is forced to marry Humperdinck when she thinks Westley is dead. Fortunately, he shows up to rescue her. Twice.
* In ''Film/CrouchingTigerHiddenDragon'', [[LadyOfWar Shu Lien]] had refused to get into a relationship with [[WarriorTherapist Mu Bai]], because her fiancé (and also Mu Bai's best friend) had died in battle. Mu Bai also refused to get in a relationship with her, to honour his best friend's memory since he felt guilty for not having been able to help him. However, everyone else, including [[RebelliousPrincess Jen]], had invoked this trope [[ShipperOnDeck to try to get them together.]] [[spoiler: It's a ''massive'' TearJerker when they finally acknowledge their feelings... when Mu Bai is dying after being poisoned. They can only share a LastKiss before he goes.]] And to make matters worst, in the sequel[[spoiler: we learn that Shu Lien's fiancee himself faked his death because he believed Mu Bai and her were a better match.]]
* In ''Film/{{Castaway}}'', Chuck makes it through his ordeal by believing that his fiancée is waiting for him back home. Heartbreakingly, she had waited for years after everyone else had given up on him. [[spoiler: He's still too late though, as it has still been several years since she gave into the pleas of her family and moved on. Her new life includes a loving husband and daughter.]]

%%* Creator/CharlesDickens's ''The Cricket in the Hearth''
* In "[[http://www.classicreader.com/book/56/10/ The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor]]" Literature/SherlockHolmes is called in when a bride disappears within hours after the wedding ceremony. He deduces the existence of the true love, tracks down the couple -- who had actually been married before, but she believed him dead -- and persuades them to come clean to the rejected bridegroom.
* In Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs's ''[[Literature/JohnCarterOfMars A Princess Of Mars]]'', Dejah Thoris agrees to marry another prince, believing John Carter to be dead. He appears and leads an attack on the city to free her -- carefully assuring that someone else kills the prince since she would be forbidden to marry the man who killed her fiance.
* In the ChivalricRomance ''Literature/KingHorn'', when Horn left his childhood sweetheart, she gave him a magical ring that let him know that he had not lost her. When it changed color, he hurried back and found her being forced to marry.
* In "[[Literature/TalesOfDunkAndEgg The Sworn Sword]]" by George R.R. Martin, Lady Rohanne (a.k.a. the Red Widow) will lose her lands if she doesn't remarry by deadline.
* In ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', [=McCoy=] promised to meet up with Natira, his wife from the generation ship Yonada, when it reached its destination; chronologically, it should've done this shortly after the end of the series. He clearly didn't stay with her from the films, and most ExpandedUniverse novels say that as High Priestess she was obligated to marry someone else, either before planetfall or because he didn't return.

* ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'' Mercedes does spend some time waiting for Edmond after he is forcibly imprisoned but she does eventually decide to marry Fernand (his betrayer, unbeknownst to her). When Edmond eventually escapes and makes his fortune, he's very unforgiving of her but eventually concedes that she had little other choice. By that time, however, she has changed her mind on the matter.

* In BBC's ''Series/RobinHood'', Marian has put off getting married for an inordinately long period of time, to the point where the Sheriff can make snarky comments about her being "still a maid" at the grand old age of twenty-one. Robin notes her unmarried status with interest when he returns back from five years fighting in the Holy Land, and even Guy of Gisborne (who coerces a promise of marriage from her) isn't immune to the fact that her singleness is due to the fact that "[she was] once betrothed to Robin Hood".

* This is the reason Sara married the Duke of Nottingham in Donizetti's ''Roberto Devereaux''. She was still in love with the title character, but the queen - who also loved Roberto - pressured her to marry.

* This happens often in some more conservative cultures in the process of modernizing. For instance, in much of the Middle East, there is great pressure for women to marry before they turn 30 (same principle that informs [[ChristmasCake the Japanese]]). Many women do find men they would like very much to marry and are personally and socially acceptable to their family...but because, in many of these countries, the economy/job market chronically ''sucks'', he can't find proper work and is thus ''economically'' unacceptable ([[UnableToSupportAWife i.e., he couldn't support her]]). So it often happens that women wait for him to get a (better) job...and wait...and wait...and at a certain point, the parents (or grandparents) get frustrated and tell her to marry someone else.

* In the ChivalricRomance ''King Horn'', when Horn left his childhood sweetheart, she gave him a magical ring that let him know that he had not lost her. When it changed color, he hurried back and found her being forced to marry.

[[folder:Film]]

* ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'': The protagonist Will Laurence has an "understanding" with his childhood sweetheart Edith Galman which persists during his years serving in the Navy. When he inadvertently becomes a DragonRider and transfers to the Aerial Corps, a branch that keeps its members even more isolated and has a bad public reputation besides, Edith breaks things off and marries another man.
-->'''Edith:''' I have not complained, have I? I have waited; I have been patient; but I have been waiting for something better than a solitary life, far from the society of all my friends and family, with only a [[MarriedToTheJob very little share of your attention]]. My feelings are just as they have always been, but I am not so reckless or sentimental as to rely on feeling alone to ensure happiness in the face of every possible obstacle.

->"They are making ready this very day," said the Eagle, "for the marriage of the daughter of the King of the Blue Mountains. For three years now she has refused to marry anyone whatsoever, until she should give up all hope of the coming of the man who released her from the spell. Now she can wait no longer, for three years is the time that she agreed with her father to remain without marrying."

They may have told her "[[TitleDrop You Have Waited Long Enough]]"--if, indeed, they were even aware that she had promised to wait.