Joanna: How dare you judge me? I mean what are you? You think you're some kind of, like, angel here? No, you're just this penny-stealing... wanna-be criminal... man.
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, well, that may be. But at least I never slept with Lumbergh.
Alice refuses to date Bob after learning that he once slept with Alice's enemy. It's usually portrayed as a visceral revulsion, whether or not it's justified by other factors such as infidelity. Sometimes exploited in cases of Rape, Pillage, and Burn, or And Now You Must Marry Me. See also Defiled Forever.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- 'Empowered'': Emp learns that her boyfriend Thugboy once slept with her rival, Sistah Spooky. She later finds out her boyfriend, Thugboy, once slept with her. She asks Thugboy who is better in bed. Thugboy thinks if he says Sistah Spooky, he's in big trouble, and he better not say they're interchangeable in bed either. He said Emp was better. Emp refuses to talk to him for about a third of the volume.
Film
- Gangs of New York. "I'm not interested in The Butcher's leavings."
- Chopper. The eponymous character suspects his hooker girlfriend of having had an affair with one of his enemies while he was in prison
- Office Space. Peter can't even remotely deal with the fact that Joanna once slept with his banally evil boss Lumbergh. She didn't, it was a different Lumbergh.
- Bud White's reaction when he learns that his hooker girlfriend Lynn slept with his enemy Ed in L.A. Confidential. It's ambiguous whether he's mad at Lynn for "cheating" on him, or for "cheating" on him with Ed.
Literature
- Downplayed in The City Who Fought. Channa, seen as one of the leaders of the Space Station invaded by the Kolnari, is of particular special interest to their leader Belazir, who she can't afford to alienate lest he take it out on the other inhabitants of the station. Belazir smugly says that their spending time together will alienate Channa's lover Amos. Amos is somewhat jealous but is a reasonable person and remains as part of a team with Channa working to resist the Kolnari.
- Used for drama in Wulfrik, when Wulfrik returns alone from a disastrous expedition and has to sneak ashore. He goes to see Hjordis, but finds her having sex with his rival Sveinbjorn. It turns out it was six months since he was last seen (traveling through the Warp tends to do that), and her father (who always intended to marry her off to Sveinbjorn anyway) kept worrying away at her about the necessity of cementing an alliance with Sveinbjorn's tribe. While Wulfrik throws Sveinbjorn out with broken hands and nose, he doesn't sleep with Hjordis because he can still smell him on her.
Live-Action TV
- In Smallville, Clark gets a mild case of this when Lana gets together with Lex, but he is more like crazily jealous.
- Happens to Ted in How I Met Your Mother when he's dating his frenemy's ex.
- Veronica Mars: Veronica can barely look at Logan on learning he slept with Madison Sinclair when they were briefly seperated, let alone date him. Not only was Madison one of the most vicious enemies towards Veronica after her fall from grace, but inadvertently responsible for getting Veronica raped at the party.
- Happens between Olivia and Peter in Fringe, with the added twist that the enemy is Olivia's own Alternate Universe double, and Peter thought at the time that she was Olivia. It's strongly implied that what Olivia found most hurtful was that Peter apparently couldn't tell the difference. He tries to explain that he did notice a difference in her, but thought it was just her letting her guard down more and actually being happy because they finally got together.
- Chris Tate in Emmerdale married his girlfriend despite knowing she had cheated on him with his sister. He was much less forgiving however when he discovered she was cheating on him again with a man he despised (who happened to be her cousin) and got his revenge by committing suicide, having just discovered he was terminally ill, and framing her for murder.
- This trope is used several times in Buffyverse. Angel never liked Buffy having new boyfriends but was particularly bothered by her sleeping with his long-time rival Spike. In "Just Rewards", Harmony, Spike's still-soulless ex-girlfriend, likewise expresses disgust at the same for the opposite reason, as she'd declared herself Buffy's nemesis a while back. A flashback in the Angel episode "The Girl in Question" revealed that The Immortal, a nemesis of both Angelus and Spike, had sex with both their girlfriends at the same time. "Calvary" had Fred react with disgust upon finding out that Wesley had sexual relationship with Lilah Morgan (who was working for Occult Law Firm Wolfram & Hart).
- In "Entropy", Xander is disgusted when he sees his ex-fiancee Anya sleeping with then-soulless Spike, declaring that all he'll see when he looks at her after that point is that she'd let "that soulless thing touch her". He later recounts this however, realizing that she'd been heartbroken by being left at the altar by him and simply sought Sex for Solace.
- In Gossip Girl, Blair breaks up with Chuck after only being back together a few hours when she finds out he slept with her enemy Jenny Humphrey right before their reconciliation. As in, minutes before their reconciliation. She's unable to forgive this for a long time.
- Also, Chuck is understandably horrified when he finds out Blair slept with his Evil Uncle. And Blair's not thrilled that Chuck slept with her enemy Vanessa. And Chuck's disturbed when he finds out Blair slept with his enemy Carter. They do this a lot, but Jenny is the first one which is treated as really difficult to forgive because it was after their long relationship instead of before.
- In The Sopranos, Tony was more than happy to have sex with his rival Ralfies girlfriend Valentina but refused to make her his permanent mistress until he found out she never had sex with Ralf (due to sexual tastes being for S + M rather than conventional sex).
- In Once Upon a Time, Emma reacts like this to finding out that Graham is sleeping with Regina. He seems to be ashamed of it himself.
- Subverted in Ted Lasso, when Roy has a brief struggle after getting together with Keeley over the knowledge that she used to be with Jamie, who he at the time varies between hating and being entirely dismissive of, only to be decisively told by Ted and the Diamond Dogs to get over himself.
- In The Vampire Diaries, Tyler is horrified to realize that Caroline slept with Klaus. Made particularly irritating by the fact that the show and Caroline treat this as if Tyler is slut-shaming her and expect you to take her side when Tyler is horrified that Caroline slept with Klaus - the man who killed his mother, literally enslaved Tyler at one point, and has been directly or indirectly responsible for ruining Tyler's life.
- On one episode of Seinfeld, Jerry's extremely disturbed that his current girlfriend once dated Newman. It's made even worse that he was the one who broke up with her, leading Jerry to wonder what could be so wrong with her that even Newman couldn't bear it.
Jerry: All I could think of while I was looking at her face was, Newman found this unacceptable.
Mythology and Religion
- In the Ramayana, Sita is kidnapped by Ravana, and held in his palace for an entire year, until her husband Rama comes to rescue her. He is angry with her, because he assumes that she slept with Ravana (she didn't). In order to prove that she was faithful to Rama, she walks over flames, which don't burn her.
- In some versions, the flames turn into flowers or flower petals.)
- In some versions, this is enough to convince him, and they live Happily Ever After, but in other versions, even this isn't enough to convince him, and he wants no more to do with her.
- And in yet another
, she gets fed up with his lack of faith in her and declares in public that she did sleep with Ravana, adding "May the ground swallow me alive if I'm lying". The grounds swallows her all, and she dies with dignity while Rama has to live in shame.
Video Games
- In case 2-4 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Juan Corrida breaks off his marriage with Celeste Inpax because she used to date his rival, Matt Engarde, before they had even met. This causes a worse outcome than most of the other examples on this page, as it caused Celeste to be Driven to Suicide.
