Times where the Love Interest decides that Love Cannot Overcome in Comic Books.
- This is why Silver St. Cloud breaks up with Bruce Wayne in a famous 1970s Batman arc; she can't handle knowing that he's risking his life against people like The Joker every night, so she abandons him and Gotham. This seems to be the source for many other examples from Batman adaptations in other media.
- Batman's own troubled romances with Catwoman and Talia probably count.
- Green Lantern: Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris have done this to each other repeatedly over the years since his identity as GL and hers as the domineering, villainous Star Sapphire frequently complicate their underlying mutual love.
- Pointed out to Hal during Blackest Night, when Indigo-1 points out that Hal and Carol contradict the Star Sapphire mantra that "Love conquers all". Hal actually notes that what Indigo's saying doesn't sound like a compliment, to which she retorts that it wasn't meant to be.
- As of the final issue of Geoff Johns' run on the title, Hal and Carol will eventually get together and stay together, which would be an aversion of this trope.
- The Incredible Hulk: Being in love with the emotionally withdrawn Bruce Banner is tough enough already, but his onetime wife Betty Ross is often driven away by his monstrous Superpowered Alter Ego, the Hulk. By the time of Immortal Hulk, Betty refuses to look Bruce in the face (Hulks and Joe Fixit are exempt - it's just Bruce she hates).
- After being killed again and coming back as the more monstrous Red Harpy, Betty's primary thoughts was how she went from loving Bruce to their incredibly toxic relationship with each other. When they finally reunite she cuts out and eats a weakened Hulk's heart, despite Hulk begging for her aid. Only that turns out to be an attempt to help Hulk - tearing his heart out kick-starts his disabled healing factor. But she still makes it clear she's pissed at him. In fact, she later learns to control her transformation, but refuses to appear as anything other than Red Harpy to Bruce. Eventually, Bruce reaches his breaking point and demands she transform back. Betty attacks him for it.
- Royals: Crystal and Ronan the Accuser still love one another even after their incredibly acrimonious and forced divorce, but even after Ronan stops blaming Crystal for the destruction of Hala, he's still too overcome with grief and shame to try and reconnect with her. His murder a few months later doesn't help.
- Spider-Man: As of the One More Day stuff, Mary Jane breaks up with Peter, not because she can't handle being in danger for knowing Spider-Man, but because she can't handle putting other people who are close to her in danger because she knows Spider-Man.
- Ironically in Spider-Island, when Carlie Cooper finds out that Peter is Spider-Man, she angrily concludes that their relationship was a lie, and breaks it off with him in no uncertain terms. Meanwhile, MJ temporarily has Spider-Man's powers and realizes fully why Peter continues to fight the good fight as Spider-Man.
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) puts this through a Deconstruction. At the urging of Carlie Cooper, Mary Jane attends an outreach program for super heroes' civilian friends and loved ones called "Lookups". At the urging of its creator, Jarvis, MJ admits her fears and spending all her time away from Peter and she comes to realize that, despite all of this, she really does love him, that running away from his life isn't who she is and that she's happy to be with him.
- Teen Titans: This is played around with regarding the relationship between Arsenal and Cheshire. The two fell in love while Arsenal was investigating Cheshire for the government, and left because he couldn't bring himself to turn her in. Then Cheshire got pregnant and gave birth to their daughter Lian, and things became extremely more complicated and convoluted. There's still an attraction shared between Arsenal and Cheshire even though Cheshire was (understandably) pissed off about Arsenal leaving like he did, but what's really strained whatever love there might be between the two is Cheshire's increasingly horrific actions as a mercenary. After Cheshire dropped an atomic bomb on the country of Qurac to prove she wasn't kidding around, Arsenal now struggles with the guilt of still loving her despite that and has even compared himself to Eva Braun loving Hitler. Eventually, when Cheshire tried to escape from prison and told Arsenal he could join her and take Lian with her, Arsenal refused realizing even if they did Cheshire would never truly change or try to change her behavior.
- A non-romantic example occurs in Villains United when Cheshire's forced to join the Secret Six because of a bomb in Lian's head. While Cheshire's visibly horrified when told of this, her next course of action was to get her teammate Catman to help her conceive a replacement child. When Cheshire betrays the Secret Six after becoming pregnant, she tells Deadshot it's because she can't stand the idea of being controlled or enslaved by someone else (stemming from her childhood growing up in slavery). Many stories made it clear Cheshire does love Lian, but her extremely traumatic childhood has made it so whatever love she has for her child isn't enough to prevent her from doing anything possible to escape being trapped again.
- Villainous example: A few Batman stories before the 1980s showed that Harvey "Two-Face" Dent's fiancée, Gilda, still loved him unconditionally after his transformation, but his criminal lifestyle and tendency to end up in Arkham eventually forced her to move on. The Golden Age story that introduced him was quite different; there, she's immediately repulsed by his disfigurement, but Harvey and Gilda Kent got to keep their happy ending after a skilled plastic surgeon rescued from Germany successfully reforms his face.
