Basic Trope: The hero breaks up with their Love Interest in order to protect said Love Interest from their enemies.
- Straight: Amazing Girl breaks up with Bob, her boyfriend, in order to ensure that he is no longer under threat from her numerous enemies.
- Exaggerated:
- Amazing Girl fakes her own death in order to ensure that she and Bob are apart and thus protect him.
- Amazing Girl is a Dude Magnet who basically does this every single episode.
- Downplayed:
- Amazing Girl is worried about Bob's safety, and for that reason tries to shoot down any potential romantic moments with him.
- Amazing Girl bluntly warns Bob that he will never get to feel safe as long as they're dating and invites him to break up with her at any time if it's not worth it. Bob doesn't, but the option is clearly on the table.
- Justified:
- Amazing Girl's enemies are psychotics who are willing to kill Bob in a terrible and painful fashion in order to take their revenge on her.
- He could be kidnapped and taken hostage to get to her.
- The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life
- Inverted:
- Bob breaks up with Amazing Girl in order to protect himself from her enemies.
- Amazing Girl decides to move in with Bob because if they're together more often, it will be more difficult for her enemies to attack him.
- Amazing Girl dumps Bob because she's sick of dealing with his enemies. Especially his Psycho Ex-Girlfriend, Bouncing Betty.
- Amazing Girl kills Bob herself to "protect him" because he will be in danger from her many ruthless enemies as long as he's alive.
- Amazing Girl absolutely refuses to dump Bob (when her friends and enemies agree that they are highly incompatible and she should) because she knows that he is a severe suicide risk and she won't have the shattering of his sanity (at the absolute least) on her conscience.
- Subverted:
- Amazing Girl considers breaking up with Bob, but decides to stay with him come what may.
- She breaks up with him until she deals with her enemies. Once the enemies are dealt with, she gets back together with him.
- Amazing Girl states that she has lost many of her loved ones to her enemies, except she killed them herself because they were "stifling her".
- Doubly Subverted:
- ...until there's a very close call. Then she decides she really does need to break up with him to protect him.
- ..but then either the enemies come back, and she has to break up with him once again.
- Parodied:
- Amazing Girl breaks up with Bob despite the fact that he is also a superhero who is more than capable of defending himself against any attacks.
- Amazing Girl breaks up with Bob to protect her enemies from him.
- Amazing Girl's enemies are all Harmless Villains, and Bob treats being kidnaped like an annoyance. Nonetheless Alice still breaks up with him for his safety.
- Zig Zagged: Amazing Girl keeps changing her mind about whether she and Bob are together or not.
- Averted: Amazing Girl and Bob are in a steady relationship, but this issue is never brought up.
- Enforced:
- "It sure would be a grand romantic gesture if Amazing Girl gave up the man she loved in order to protect him from her enemies; plus, it'd make her angsty, and everyone knows that True Art Is Angsty."
- Bob's actor is quitting this season, but he's popular enough with the fandom that Bob and Amazing Girl need to break up amicably.
- Lampshaded: "If we stay together, they'll find you and kill you. And if that happened, I'd never forgive myself."
- Invoked:
- From the outset of the relationship, Amazing Girl warns Bob that she may break up with him due to this trope.
- Alternatively, Amazing Girl wants to break up with Bob anyhow, and uses her enemies as a convenient excuse.
- Amazing Girl and Bob stage a very angry, public breakup so that the enemies think they broke. In secret they're still together.
- Exploited: The villain looks for past romance partners as well as present, knowing that do-gooders so often perform this trope.
- Defied:
- Amazing Girl actively cultivates superficial relationships, one-night-stands and relationships without romantic involvement precisely so that she never finds herself in this position.
- Amazing Girl is a Celibate Heroine. Even when she might want to love like a normal person, she's conscious that heroes must make sacrifices to ensure world's well-being.
- "Amazing Girl, I am more than capable of defending myself, stop treating me like a child, please!!"
- Bob is a more ruthless anti-hero than Amazing Girl. He hunts down and kills all of Amazing Girl's enemies.
- Amazing Girl's enemies make very clear that this is not an option.
- Amazing Girl chooses to date Bob, who is another superhero in her weight class. Any villains that attempt to kidnap him end up Mugging the Monster.
- Discussed: "Bob has been devastated since Amazing Girl dumped him, but he'll recover when he realizes it has been a blessing in disguise. Living as a super-villain's recurrent hostage is no life for anyone."
- Conversed: "Amazing Girl might think that by breaking up with Bob she'll be able to keep him out of trouble; but this series has shown us that this guy is just too dense for it work! He'll be falling into another intricate super-villain trap in a couple of episodes."
- Deconstructed:
- "Amazing Girl, baby, if you dump me, the villains still might come for me! Even if I'm not your boyfriend anymore, they still know you care for me—I'll be just as likely a target as ever! And now I wouldn't have an awesome superhero girlfriend around all the time to save my sorry ass!"
- Or, the bad guys aren't really concerned about whether or not Amazing Girl and Bob are currently in a relationship. Despite Amazing Girl's efforts to protect Bob by breaking up with him, they kill him anyway.
- Bob becomes depressed upon realizing Amazing Girl broke up with him because of her enemies, feeling like if only he was stronger or able to defend himself this never would have been an issue.
- The murderous madmen who want to kill anybody Amazing Girl loves... are just an excuse. She has a tremendous fear of commitment, a titanic amount of self-loathing, and said villains coming out of the woodwork is a particularly ironic coincidence; but if they did not existed Amazing Girl would just find some other reason to dump Bob and apply it with similar drama. Maybe all of her efforts would not prevent the Green Beetle from tossing Bob off the top of the Brooklyn Bridge — the thing is, Amazing Girl does not even wants to try.
- Reconstructed:
- After rescuing him one too many times from the clutches of one of her archenemies, Amazing Girl finally snaps and tells Bob he's an incompetent and useless piece of garbage that couldn't do anything to save himself. After watching such negative image of her former lover, Bob decides to end his relationship with Amazing Girl on that instant and walks off with bitter feelings towards her. The enemy spies, having seen that Bob no longer has any connection with Amazing Girl, decide he's not useful as a hostage and finally leave him alone, though perhaps a rogue enemy might come by and kill Bob with practically no mercy. Meanwhile, Amazing Girl cries in solitude because of the harsh act she had to pull back there; she'll always love Bob no matter what. And once she finds out that Bob did indeed die...
- Bob gets sick of being used as a Distressed Dude and trains himself into a Badass Normal or Empowered Badass Normal. Having taken a level in badass, he's no longer The Load and rebuffs any kidnapping attempts himself, which improves his and Amazing Girl's relationship. They become a Battle Couple in the long run.
- What came first, the chicken or the egg? It does not matter. There are still murderous madmen out there who would gleefully murder Bob in the most violent and public way possible just to get a rise out of Amazing Girl or for a lark, and it's a proven fact that if they think there is a connection between them they would become absolutely relentless about killing Bob. Bob is still safe being very, very far away from Amazing Girl.
- Implied: Amazing Girl breaks up with Bob for unexplained reasons, but she seems very reluctant, and was earlier expressing concern for Bob's safety.
- Played For Laughs: Amazing Girl breaks up with Bob while invoking vague cliches likes "It's not you, it's me" and "Our lifestyles aren't compatible," intercut with footage of Amazing Girl saving Bob from various supervillains.
Look, I'm sorry, but I have to stop following you now. It's Not You, It's My Enemies, and I can't let them know about a potential article for vandalism, word cruft, and natter.
