Basic Trope: A character goes through a non-heterosexual phase before becoming straight again.
- Straight: Alice and Beth date through junior year of high school but break up in senior year, saying they've grown out of that phase.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Beth are married for 30 years before deciding that they’re straight and it was just a phase.
- Downplayed: Alice and Beth break up, and prefer male partners, but remain bi-curious.
- Justified: Sexuality is something that takes time to discover and Alice and Beth ultimately realize they’re straight (or at least prefer guys to gals)
- Inverted: Alice dates Charlie through junior year, before breaking up with him in high school, telling him that she's outgrown her heterosexual phase.
- Subverted: Alice starts talking about how gay relationships tend to be seen as a phase, and how she sees it as one, looking like she's going to break up with Beth, only to admit that it's not a phase for her.
- Double Subverted: ...Only for Beth to say that as far as she was concerned, it was a phase and break off their relationship.
- Parodied: Alice and Beth gained Intangibility (or "Phasing") whilst dating, but were Brought Down to Normal when they broke up.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice goes through many periods in her life where she exclusively dates other women, interspersed with periods where she only dates men.
- Averted: Alice and Beth remain a happy couple all throughout high school and beyond, with no mention of it being a phase at all.
- Enforced: "Okay, we've pleased the queer crowd by having Alice and Beth as a couple, but now we have the Moral Guardians breathing down our neck for it, what do we do?" "We break them up and have them say it was a phase they were going through."
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Alice dates Beth as a "phase" in order to tempt Charlie to her.
- Exploited:
- Charlie, knowing Alice is going through a gay phase, waits for her to break off her relationship with Beth, then swoops in and tries to hook up with her.
- Beth happily takes up the relationship with Alice because, phase or not, this is one of the very few lesbian relationships she's going to get for the time being and she's desperate for anyone of the same gender.
- Defied: "Listen, I'm gay and I want to go out with you, but only if you don't think of it as some kind of phase we're going through, okay?"
- Discussed: "Did Beth really think Alice was actually a lesbian?" "Maybe. Too bad it worked out like this."
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Alice is seen dating a girl during her college days, but in her adult life, she is only ever seen dating men.
- Deconstructed:
- When Alice breaks off their relationship because "we're getting too old for this sort of thing," it deeply hurts Beth who swears off romance for the rest of her life.
- An adult Beth has serious trust issues that make it hard for her to have a relationship.
- Reconstructed: Beth looks back on her experience with Alice as a painful but important lesson to only get invested in a relationship if her partner is equally serious about it.
Maybe you'll grow out of your love for the same gender back at Gay Romantic Phase.
