History Main / SuperheroesStaySingle

* UsefulNotes/{{The Silver Age|of Comic Books}} Franchise/{{Superman}} stories ran on this.

** Averted in UsefulNotes/{{the Bronze Age|OfComicBooks}} by the marriage of the Earth-2 Superman and Lois Lane.

* ComicBook/CaptainAmerica has rarely had a long-lasting relationship since at least UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks. In the 1980s, he was with Bernie Rosenthal long enough to become officially engaged to her; however, she was eventually put on a bus. In the film ''WesternAnimation/NextAvengersHeroesOfTomorrow'', [[spoiler:it is revealed he married Black Widow and had a son.]] These days, most people talk about him and ComicBook/Agent13 as the best bet, but unfortunately both of them are MarriedToTheJob, so it hasn't really been played up in recent years - except for some serious drama, [[spoiler:like Sharon stabbing herself in the stomach and killing [[MySecretPregnancy the baby she had hidden from Steve]], because she had been captured by the Red Skull, the Skull figured out that she was pregnant, and she was sure he was going to use it for evil.]]

** ''[[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Volume 1]]'': Diana and ComicBook/SteveTrevor dated steadily from the UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks until the 70's. He then spent the next 15 years getting killed or PutOnABus, and then [[TheBusCameBack brought back,]] repeatedly and they got married in the final issue before the Crisis. After the [[ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths Crisis,]] George Perez's [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1987 retool]] retconned away their relationship completely and married Steve off to supporting castmember Etta Candy.

** On [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Earth-Two]] and Earth-2, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor married, resulting in their child [[ComicBook/InfinityInc Lyta Trevor (Fury)]].

* ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'': Averted. Barring the occasional character [[ComicBookDeath death]], Reed and Sue have been more-or-less HappilyMarried for quite a long time.

*** [[ZigZaggingTrope Zigzagged]] later: in {{ComicBook/New 52}} universe reboot, [[spoiler: because first, said reboot sent Superman back to unmarried status. Then, the situation came back to normal (married to Lois with a son as a bonus in ''Rebirth'')]].

As such, superheroes afflicted with this trope are never, under ''any'' circumstances, allowed to settle down with anyone. ([[AlternateUniverseReedRichardsIsAwesome At least, not in the main canon]].) Unlike the CelibateHero, they may actually date, but expect them to say "ItsNotYouItsMyEnemies," and other excuses of varying plausibility. If they actually do show signs of planning to settle down with someone, expect the CartwrightCurse to rear its ugly head, resulting in the love interest getting killed off, PutOnABus or otherwise removed from the hero's life before story's end or somewhere further down the line. If both do survive and stay together long enough to marry or even have their own kids in the main timeline, the work may even go as far as to smash the ResetButton, CosmicRetcon it into oblivion, make it AllJustADream, or inflict some other form of DiabolusExMachina to undo everything and appease the [[StatusQuoIsGod almighty Status Quo]].

** Bruce himself falls squarely into this trope in nearly all incarnations. He's usually depicted as being MarriedToTheJob, and his two most famous romantic prospects are [[DatingCatwoman Catwoman]] (a professional sneak-thief) and Talia al Ghul (the daughter of one of his mortal enemies). In 2017, however, Bruce ''proposed to Selina'', and she accepted. How this will work out long-term has yet to be seen.
*** Unfortunately, on July 4th, 2018, the 50th issue of Batman (2016) where Batman and Catwoman were supposed to get married has Catwoman leaving Batman at the alter fearing that by marrying him, it'll make him happy and therefore never be Batman, leaving Bruce heartbroken. The writer, Tom King, has said that this will be a 100 issue story so whether or not they get back together at the end is unknown as of now. Issue 100 should come out roughly June 2020.

** Most attempts to give [[ComicBook/Batgirl2000 Cassandra Cain]] a love interest failed miserably, and usually resulted in said love interest being killed off. Given her bad luck (and some would argue [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys bad taste]]) with men, it's no surprise that most {{Shipping}} involving her is centred around her female friends.

** He was first married to Madelyne Pryor, and their marriage went down the toilet as soon as Jean Grey came back from the dead (the first time) and later Madelyne revealed to be evil all along.
** He then much later married Jean Grey at last. However, things would prove to go sour after he began cheating on her with Emma Frost and Jean would try the same with Wolverine. In the end, it would be actually death what did them apart as Jean was killed (again) by Magneto. By the time Jean came back from the dead (again), Cyclops had long been killed by the Inhuman terrigen mist.

** The first time she was engaged was actually with a mutant from the Morlocks called Caliban. It was an arranged marriage in exchange of the morlocks helping Colossus survive his mortal wounds. Later Caliban would release her from her vow, wanting her to love him and marry him for real if the chance ever came.

*** It is worth adding that, unlike most examples on this page, there was never an explanation, in panel, to why Kitty left Peter (the reason why the other Guardians left is quite clear, but that same reasoning doesn't work with Kitty because it's clearly established Peter never hid anything from her and, as a matter of fact, she was the only one to whom Peter told the information he hid from the Guardians).
** Last, [[ComicBook/XMenGold after re-joining the X-Men]], she found herself, once again, working with her ex-boyfriend, [[ComicBook/{{Colossus}} Piotr Rasputin]]. At first, she found herself quite at peace with the fact they could only be friends. However, Piotr kept pushing her to give their relationship a new chance, until Kitty decided they needed to talk about this openly. Right there, Piotr confessed he also believed their relationship didn't make sense anymore unless they took it to the next level, proposing to her right there. Kitty asked for more time to think about it. However, after some more adventures, she accepted her feelings for him, and in turn asked him to marry her (he said 'yes'). All pointed out that this time Kitty would finally tie the knot as no shacking event designed to separated them occured until one day before the wedding. Nevertheless, the catastrophic event would occur in the form of [[ComicBook/{{Magik}} Illyana Rasputin]], best friend of Kitty and Piotr's brother, who, in a drunk rant, would tell Kitty about her doubts of her and Piotr being able to hold a happy marriage. These doubts then pushed Kitty to re-think again what she was doing, eventually leading her to leave Piotr on the altar. Much later she confessed they might never marry because the history between them was too messy and love wasn't enough. Piotr left after this, breaking their engagement and relationship for good.

* Cartoonist Lee Falk defies this trope. ComicStrip/ThePhantom married Diana back in the '70s (granted, this ''was'' after one of those decades-long NewspaperComics courtships), had two children, and the family is still together today. As for ComicStrip/MandrakeTheMagician, Falk got him and Narda married off in a huge storyline than ran shortly before Falk's own death (and heck, Mandrake and Narda's 60-odd year courtship makes the Phantom's look like a Vegas wedding by comparison!). Mandrake and Narda are still together in their comic.
* ComicBook/CaptainAmerica has rarely had a long-lasting relationship since at least UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks. In the 1980s he was with Bernie Rosenthal long enough to become officially engaged to her; however she was eventually put on a bus. In the film ''WesternAnimation/NextAvengersHeroesOfTomorrow'' [[spoiler:it is revealed he married Black Widow and had a son.]] These days, most people talk about him and ComicBook/Agent13 as the best bet, but unfortunately both of them are MarriedToTheJob, so it hasn't really been played up in recent years - except for some serious drama, [[spoiler:like Sharon stabbing herself in the stomach and killing [[MySecretPregnancy the baby she had hidden from Steve]], because she had been captured by the Red Skull, the Skull figured out that she was pregnant, and she was sure he was going to use it for evil.]]

* [=DC=] wouldn't let [[ComicBook/{{Batwoman}} Kate Kane]] marry Maggie Sawyer and not because of their sexual orientation, due to an editorial mandate that their characters cannot be married or have happy personal lives in their New 52 continuity (the reason Creator/DanDidio personally said was that [[TrueArtIsAngsty personal happiness should be sacrificed by the heroes for the sake of focusing on their "work"]]). It's one of the many issues Williams III and Blackman had that made them decide to leave their run on the comic (and in a twist of irony, DC had to make this mandate public knowledge to stave off accusations of homophobia).

* Elizabeth Carson of the Literature/WhateleyUniverse has been married three times: two divorces and one husband killed by a supervillain. One of the divorces was apparently caused when one of their kids got superpowers and died from a burnout. She's single now, but has at least one (living) child and at least one granddaughter. (She's over seventy at the start of the series).

* ''Film/TheMask'' movie ends with Stanley seemingly having hooked up with Tina. [[Westernanimation/TheMask The animated series]] ditched the character of Tina, and both Stanley and The Mask rarely have luck in love. (And that's not counting [[Comicbook/TheMask the original comic]], where just the fact that [[spoiler:Stanley is killed by his girlfriend]] shows no-one in their right minds would remain in a relationship with [[AxCrazy Big Head]]...)

* Dexter in ''Series/{{Dexter}}'' suffers this as his long-term love interest [[spoiler: is killed off after five seasons]], only for him to begin long term relationships with two other women [[spoiler: that don't work out.]] This is a contrast to the books where Dexter is HappilyMarried despite being a SerialKillerKiller.
* ''Series/TheIncredibleHulk1977'': David Banner has a few love-interests-of-the-week, but the only time he's truly serious is in [[Recap/TheIncredibleHulk1977S2E1Married the Season 2 premiere]] where he meets a woman, falls in love, gets married, and becomes a widower (again)... [[StatusQuoIsGod all within a two-hour episode.]]
* ''Series/WonderWoman'': In Season 1, Wonder Woman and [[LoveInterests Steve Trevor]] are [[ShipTease attracted to each other]], but she returns to Paradise Island and he eventually has [[IdenticalGrandson a son]] with [[UnknownCharacter another woman]]. In TheSeventies she meets up with Andros II in "Mind Stealers from Outer Space" for her most difficult parting. Pete Johnson in "Knockout" comes complete with a son, Ted, who seems exactly the kind of boy who needs a [[GoodStepmother super powered stepmother]]. Bryce Candle, the titular man from "The Man Who Could Not Die" was even a fellow immortal {{Superhero}} but both the {{Spinoff}} and Season 4 were were not meant to be.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'': This trope is not only parodied in "Chindred Spirits", but also eventually becomes a main plot point. Timmy, fed up with his [[ShowWithinAShow favorite comic book series]] now mostly consisting of the superhero Crimson Chin wallow in lonelyness-induced depression instead of the action he reads it for, wishes for a new character to be introduced and become Crimson Chin's love interest. This backfires when the comics now consist entirely of mushy romance between Crimson Chin and said love interest (a ComicBook/WonderWoman {{Expy}} with blonde PrehensileHair named Goldie Locks), leading Timmy to deliberately [[YankTheDogsChain ruin Crimson Chin's happiest moment of his life]] by wishing for Goldie Locks to suddenly undergo a FaceHeelTurn, just so Crimson Chin can have another villain to fight.

* ComicBook/CaptainAmerica has rarely had a long-lasting relationship since at least the GoldenAge. In the 1980s he was with Bernie Rosenthal long enough to become officially engaged to her; however she was eventually put on a bus. In the film ''WesternAnimation/NextAvengersHeroesOfTomorrow'' [[spoiler:it is revealed he married Black Widow and had a son.]] These days, most people talk about him and ComicBook/Agent13 as the best bet, but unfortunately both of them are MarriedToTheJob, so it hasn't really been played up in recent years - except for some serious drama, [[spoiler:like Sharon stabbing herself in the stomach and killing [[MySecretPregnancy the baby she had hidden from Steve]], because she had been captured by the Red Skull, the Skull figured out that she was pregnant, and she was sure he was going to use it for evil.]]

** ''[[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Volume 1]]'': Diana and ComicBook/SteveTrevor dated steadily from the GoldenAge until the 70's. He then spent the next 15 years getting killed or PutOnABus, and then [[TheBusCameBack brought back,]] repeatedly and they got married in the final issue before the Crisis. After the [[ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths Crisis,]] George Perez's [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1987 retool]] retconned away their relationship completely and married Steve off to supporting castmember Etta Candy.

* ''Franchise/SpiderMan'':

** Peter and MJ are still married in the daily comic strip, and the alternate universe of ComicBook/TheAmazingSpiderManRenewYourVows.

* ''Series/TheIncredibleHulk1977'': David Banner has a few love-interests-of-the-week, but the only time he's truly serious is in [[Recap/TheIncredibleHulk1977S2E1Married the Season 2 premiere]] where he meets a woman, falls in love, gets marries, and becomes a widower (again)... [[StatusQuoIsGod all within a two-hour episode.]]

** [[ComicBook/RobinSeries Tim Drake]]'s long-term relationship with [[ComicBook/Batgirl2009 Stephanie Brown]] ended after she got brutally killed in War Games. She came back to life and they briefly restarted their relationship, but soon after she was sent back into limbo in the {{ComicBook/New 52}} reboot.

* The ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderManSeries'' took some serious heat for the fact [[spoiler: ILetGwenStacyDie was played straight]]. Given the fact the relationship was one of the most popular things about the pairing and it was already on the rocks, many fans were angered and thus contributed to the series reboot. Mary-Jane (played by Creator/ShaileneWoodley) was initially in the second movie as a {{Cameo}} but got cut out at the last minute. She would have been used in the third movie that never got made.

* ''Series/TheIncredibleHulk1977'': David Banner has a few love-interests-of-the-week, but the only time he's truly serious is in the Season 2 premiere where he meets a woman, falls in love, gets marries, and becomes a widower (again)... [[StatusQuoIsGod all within a two-hour episode.]]