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The One That Got Away

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"There is always the one girl out there, though, the one that got away. Guys have that... and serial killers have that, the one that got away. 'I had her, the trunk was lined with garbage bags, and then she got away.'"
George Simmons, Funny People

A character once had a great love in their life, but that was a long time ago. Somewhere along the way, they lost them, often without even realizing at the time what they were giving up. Now all they have left are bittersweet memories. Second Love often has an unenviable time getting them over it.

This trope can fall into three categories:

  1. The Stepping Stone: Even if the love ends tragically, the vibrant, passionate romance shared by the characters and/or their heartbreaking split may help with Character Development, setting them on the path to a better, more fulfilling life. It can even help the characters in future relationships, like knowing what love and respect they are worthy of, or learning from their mistakes to make the love last.
  2. The Tragic Loss: The characters never get over their One that Got Away. They can try, sure, but the loss sticks with them. For years, possibly even forever, the characters are haunted by the wonderful memories and the bitter idea of what could have been. This regret can alter their lives positively or negatively, depending on the character.
  3. The Fantasy Fulfilled: After years of separation, bitter regret, and pining for each other despite being apart, the characters get a second chance to be together. They sort things out, rekindle their romance and it's Happily Ever After. If the lost love does ever turn up this is Old Flame, or one of its subtropes, instead. Old Flame Fizzle may occur if his memories were idealized, or she changed.

Sister trope to Did Not Get the Girl, only here we never even meet the "girl" (in the present anyway; flashbacks are allowed). See also Girl Next Door Turned Superstar, when the one that got away becomes a celebrity. Compare Thriving Ex-Crush.

If said lost love is dead and has a larger role in the story dead than alive, you're looking at The Lost Lenore, which is a sister trope but distinct.

If you came here looking for that one criminal case a detective failed to solve, see That One Case.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Aggretsuko: Retsuko's mother sets her up on an arranged date with a polar bear named Shirota, and despite her initial reservations Retsuko does end up having a good time with him on their date. However, those reservations come back and she breaks it off after one date, and when she changes her mind and tries to go back to him she finds he's moved on and found a new girlfriend, leaving Retsuko with nothing but regrets.
  • A pretty heartwrenching one in Fruits Basket. When Hatori told Akito that he wanted to marry Kana, Akito freaked out so badly that he blinded Hatori in one eye. Kana was so distraught over this that Hatori had to erase her memories of their relationship.
  • In the epilogue of The Quintessential Quintuplets, Fuutarou ultimately marries Yotsuba, but the rest of the quintuplets still hold a torch for him, with the quintuplet hold her torch tightly being Nino. It gets to the point they all invite themselves to the honeymoon to stay together.

    Comic Books 
  • Carl Barks's creation Glittering Goldie for Scrooge McDuck; future writers like Don Rosa jumped on the tragic story and made her an Old Flame in most adaptations, including DuckTales (1987).
  • For Better or for Worse:
    • Anthony is treated as this for Elizabeth, despite them having a mutual break up during college and being in other relationships. They Do, but at the expense of Anthony ruining his marriage to Thèrése and Elizabeth sabotaging her relationships with Paul and Warren.
    • An arc where Elly and John take a dance class reveals that John has one in his high school girlfriend, Patsy O’Connor who dumped him in Grade 10. Elly is understandably not happy about this.
  • Devi is this to Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, both in the romantic sense and the serial-killer sense joked about in the page quote.
  • Harry Vanderspeigle from Resident Alien is an alien stranded on Earth. He had a woman he loved back on his home planet. However, he's unlikely to ever see her again as even if he does get back home, she might be dead from old age, since Harry had to travel to Earth via Sleeper Ship for an unknown amount of time.
  • In Scott Pilgrim Envy is this for Scott, to the point that even a year later, and after he has already started dating Ramona, a single phone call from her can reduce him to a sobbing wreck. It takes almost the entire series for him to get over her.
    • On the flip side, Scott is this for Lisa Miller (that he never dated but is still pining for him), Kim (and their break up turned her into The Cynic), Knives (for whom he's also the first love), and Envy herself, who after their break up got together with a complete jerk and ended up spending almost as much time as Scott getting over him.
  • In the proposed DC crossover The Twilight of the Superheroes, in order to prevent the Bad Future his future self intentionally caused to happen, John Constantine had to let this happen. After she left, he starts crying.

    Fan Works 
  • Chronomistress: Out of Time: Daisy Chain, for Time Turner, who otherwise has little affection in his heart. This single old flame is enough of a weakness for him to get trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine of romantic memories.
  • Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls: Could be taken literally in Thorax and Luna's case. They met when they were, relatively young, and, while it started as normal fights, it eventually turned into friendship and later into genuine affection. Unfortunately, It ended poorly for them when Thorax trusted his family too much and Luna almost died, barely escaping but not without losing a piece of her soul. A big part of his plans revolves around convincing her to talk with him so he could apologize. After events at Camp Everfree, Thorax finally had the chance, but Luna says she can't forgive him yet.
  • Evangelion 303: Invoked by Shinji in chapter 13 when he is trying to talk Asuka into remaining together and thinks that if he fails, she - the only woman that he has ever loved and will probably ever love - will vanish from his life forever.
  • In Peanuts story Everybody's Gotta Leave Sometime, Charlie Brown acknowledges he ran out of chances to woo the Little Red-Haired Girl.
  • In An Extended Performance and A Long Night at the Hippodrome, Trixie Lulamoon and Piercing Gaze, to each other. (This is possible because of Trixie's serious emotional problems.)
  • HERZ: Kurumi had a crush on Shinji since they met in high-school. However, he was always in love with Asuka. She spent years chasing after him, but she never managed to get him to reciprocate her feelings, and her attempts to seduce him were impulsive and ill-though-out and alienated him further.
  • In Total Drama fanfic Lunch Date with a Goth, an Indie Chick, and a Wide-Eyed Bubble Boy Gwen is still regretful on how her relationship ended with Trent.
  • SAPR: Sunset and Flash for each other, even though they both agree that they’re better off apart.
  • In The Memory Band, an installment of Skyhold Academy Yearbook, Dorian and Varric share a drink and talk about the people who qualify for this role in their lives.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Nadia in the American Pie films is this to Jim early in the franchise. After blowing his chances with her in the first film, she gets sent back home when her sponsors see the video footage. They are still in contact after, though, and Jim's dad even refers to her by the trope name in the second film. However, in the second film, he eventually rejects her, realising that he loves Michelle. Reunion implies that, even years later, Jim might even be this trope to Nadia.
  • The whole plot of Chasing Amy is the unfolding events of how a girl becomes this to the protagonist. The title of the movie itself is presented as another way of saying "The One That Got Away," and this trope could in fact be renamed to that with little difference in meaning.
    Silent Bob: So there's me and Amy, and we're all inseparable, right? Just big time in love. And then four months down the road, the idiot gear kicks in, and I ask about the ex-boyfriend. Which, as we all know, is a really dumb move. But you know how it is: you don't wanna know, but you just have to, right? Stupid guy bullshit. So, anyway, she starts telling me about him... how they fell in love, and how they went out for a couple of years, and how they lived together, her mother likes me better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... and I'm okay. But then she drops the bomb on me, and the bomb is this: it seems that a couple of times, while they were going out, he brought some people to bed with them. Menage à trois, I believe it's called. Now this just blows my mind, right? I mean, I am not used to this sort of thing. I mean, I was raised Catholic, for God's sake.
    Jay: Saint Shithead.
    Silent Bob: So I'm totally weirded out by this, right? And then I just start blasting her. Like... I don't know how to deal with what I'm feeling, so I figure the best way is by calling her a slut, right? And tell her she was used. I'm... I'm out for blood. I really wanna hurt this girl. I'm like, "What the fuck is your problem?", right? And she's just all calmly trying to tell me, like, it was that time and it was that place and she doesn't think she should apologize because she doesn't feel that she's done anything wrong. I'm like, "Oh, really?" That's when I look her straight in the eye, I tell her it's over. I walk.
    Jay: Fuckin' A!
    Silent Bob: No, idiot. It was a mistake. I didn't hate her. I wasn't disgusted with her. I was afraid. At that moment, I felt small, like... like I'd lacked experience, like I'd never be on her level, like I'd never be enough for her or something like that, you know what I'm saying? But, what I did not get, she didn't care. She wasn't looking for that guy anymore. She was... she was looking for me, for the Bob. But, uh, by the time I figure this all out, it was too late, man. She moved on, and all I had to show for it was some foolish pride, which then gave way to regret. She was the girl, I know that now. But I pushed her away. So I've spent every day since then chasing Amy ... so to speak.
  • Choose Love: Cami explicitly describes Jack as "the one that got away". He is her dreamy high school boyfriend whom she broke up with because he went to do something activistic in Guatemala. Now he's back stateside and has apparently never stopped loving her, either...
  • Citizen Kane:
    Mr. Bernstein: A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry and as we pulled out there was another ferry pulling in and on it, there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.
  • City Slickers: Mitch asks Curly the cattle boss if he's ever been in love:
    Curly: Once. I was driving a herd across the panhandle. Texas. Passed near this little dirt farm right about sundown. Out in the field was this young woman, working down in the dirt. Just about then, she stood up to stretch her back. She was wearing a little cotton dress, and the settin' sun was right behind her, showing the shape that God had give her.
    Mitch: What happened?
    Curly: I just turned around and rode away.
    Mitch: Why?
    Curly: I figured it wasn't gonna get any better than that.
  • The Coward: The title comes from Amitabha's moment of cowardice—he flakes out and breaks up with his girlfriend Karuna after she asks him to marry her immediately, as her family is going to take her away and eventually fix up an Arranged Marriage to someone else. When they meet again several years later, Amitabha clearly feels that way about her, regretting their breakup and asking her to leave her husband and go away with him. There is however a suggestion that this is a matter of Wanting Is Better Than Having, and for her part Karuna seems to believe this.
  • Darling: How Diana feels about Robert. She doesn't seem to care very much about anybody else, but she breaks down sobbing after her infidelity causes Robert to dump her. Later she muses about how chance timing cost them a chance of reuniting. At the end she goes back to England to meet him, they have sex, and she's deliriously happy, talking about how they're going to live together in the country. Robert then cruelly rejects her, having had his revenge.
  • In Hot Tub Time Machine, Adam views his old girlfriend Jenny as this. But once he goes back in time and starts hanging out with her again it's easy to see why he broke up with her. Then he becomes depressed about it, especially after finding out she was originally gonna dump him, believing the choices he made in his life are pointless.
  • Evoked in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, when Harry sees Harmony.
    Harry: You know the high school girl you had a crush on? The one that got away, and haunts you for the rest of your life?
    Gay Perry: Yeah, I've had that. Bobby Mills.
  • Sam the Lion and his "young lady" in The Last Picture Show.
    Sam: You wouldn't believe how this country's changed. First time I seen it, there wasn't a mesquite tree on it, or a prickly pear neither. I used to own this land, you know. First time I watered a horse at this tank was—more than forty years ago. I reckon the reason why I always drag you out here is probably I'm just as sentimental as the next fella when it comes to old times. Old times. I brought a young lady swimmin' out here once, more than 20 years ago. Was after my wife had lost her mind and my boys was dead. Me and this young lady was pretty wild, I guess. In pretty deep. We used to come out here on horseback and go swimmin' without no bathing suits. One day, she wanted to swim the horses across this tank. Kind of a crazy thing to do, but we done it anyway. She bet me a silver dollar she could beat me across. She did. This old horse I was ridin' didn't want to take the water. But she was always lookin' for somethin' to do like that. Somethin' wild. I'll bet she's still got that silver dollar.
  • The ending of Little Nicky shows that Satan (Nicky's father) never got over his relationship with Holly (Nicky's mother, an angel). The end credits reveal they tried to get back together but couldn't deal with a long-distance relationship and found other love interests.
  • Anna in Out Cold, a pretty French girl who Rick meets while vacationing in Mexico. Even though it turns out that she's engaged and was all along, Rick still pursues her and ignores Jenny, a local girl who's clearly far better for him.
  • Past Lives: Narration in the trailer establishes that Nora and Hae Sung are "what could have been"s for each other. Hae Sung flies to America just to visits her, and muses that if she hadn't moved away, they might have dated or even married.
  • Believe it or not, Muriel Finster was this in Recess: School's Out. When she, Prickly, and Benedict were young, she used to date Benedict. However, due to his desire to boost test scores by getting rid of recess at their school, she broke up with him. Because Benedict genuinely had feelings for Muriel, he never dated another woman.
  • Sleepers: Carol to Michael, as the latter couldn't explain to her the trauma he endured, and they broke up. The ending shows he still has feelings for her.
  • Summerland (2020): Alice has been reclusive and unhappy since Vera, her lover, left her years ago. Later it turns out this is because Vera wanted to have children. They get back together after meeting once again.
  • In The Truman Show the title character falls for a woman named Lauren. However, since his life is actually a television show, she's actually an actress named Sylvia and he's not supposed to like her. The two only get one stolen kiss before the show's producers force them apart, but he continues to pine for her for years. At the end of the film, when Truman escapes the show, Sylvia is shown rushing out for him, implying they reunite.
    Waitress: They got rid of her, but they couldn't erase the memory.

    Literature 
  • A Christmas Carol: Ebenezer Scrooge and his vanished fiancée Belle.
  • In a twisted example that brings to mind both examples in the page quote, Emeli of the Ciaphas Cain series invokes this trope. As a devout follower of Slaanesh, she takes it as a personal insult when Cain is able to resist her seductions. She redoubles her efforts the next couple of times they meet, though her priority gradually shifts more towards simply wanting him dead as he continues to thwart her.
  • The Great Gatsby: The entire plot is based around this and Gatsby's subsequent attempts to win her back. He doesn't.
  • Harry Potter:
    • Lily Evans is this to Severus Snape. She's also The Lost Lenore, though, as she died after choosing James Potter.
    • Cecilia is this to Tom Riddle, Sr., as he was bewitched into marrying Merope Gaunt via magical means (either with the Imperius Curse or a Love Potion, as Harry surmises, though Dumbledore believes the latter is more likely).
  • His Dark Materials: By the end of the series Will and Lyra are this to each other as they're forced to stay in different universes for the rest of their lives. They promise to try and become Type 1's and fall in love with other people eventually - but given the circumstances note  they seem set as Type 2's. The sequel series proves this to be the case.
  • A common trope in the works of Nicholas Sparks, most notably Allie for Noah in The Notebook and Amanda for Dawson in The Best of Me. Both couples reunite eventually, although Allie and Noah become Happily Married and Amanda and Dawson are separated once more by his murder.
  • Darkly used in the short story Perfect Days, in which a retired serial killer has a new resident move into his rest home... the one victim who got away from him. He kills her, but has a heart attack in the process and dies happy.
  • Willoughby considers Marianne this at the end of Sense and Sensibility. Though he and his rich wife are said to not always be unhappy together, Willougby still compares any up-and-coming belles unfavorably to the now Mrs. Brandon.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Tyrion Lannister's One That Got Away is his first "wife", Tysha. He saved her from brigands, fell in love with her, and married her. Then his father Tywin revealed to him that she was actually a whore hired by him to teach him a lesson, had his entire guard rape her, paid her, then sent her away. This leads Tyrion to never love another woman again, going with whores instead. Later it is revealed that she wasn't actually a whore; that was just a lie (or, as generously as possible, Metaphorically True) created by Tywin to humiliate him.
    • Tywin has one himself: his long-dead wife, Joanna, almost certainly the only person on Earth he ever truly loved. She died giving birth to Tyrion, which explains an awful lot of Tywin's profound loathing for his son.
    • Catelyn Stark is this to her childhood friend, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish. He loved her since they were children, once fought a duel with her fiancé for her hand... and lost bitterly. That wasn't the end of it, though; he takes it to disturbing levels... Catelyn always saw him as Like Brother and Sister.
    • Jorah Mormont's legal wife, Lynesse Hightower, who abandoned him after he fell on hard times. Despite despising her for dumping him, he has been basing his idea of a lover on her; his love for Daenerys Targaryen is partly because she resembles Lynesse.

    Live-Action TV 
  • 30 Rock: When Floyd came back to visit, Liz tried to invoke this trope ("The next time Floyd brings some corn-pone tranny back to his apartment, all he's going to be thinking about is me standing there in the snow looking like the one that got away."), but largely failed.
  • Acapulco: It quickly becomes clear that Maximo and Julia are not together in the present, but judging from how she features so heavily in his stories and he keeps the bracelet he had meant to give her all the way back in 1985 with him, he has not completely gotten over her.
  • Season 2 of Californication features Lew Ashby, a music mogul, who got so wrapped up in the fame and the money that he lost his girlfriend, Janie, who got married to some Jerkass. Hank even tells Lew that Janie is his "Daisy Buchanan," and the whole season is basically a Whole-Plot Reference to The Great Gatsby. Up to and including Gatsby/Ashby's death.
  • Castle has one in Kyra in the episode "A Rose For Everafter," much to Beckett's chagrin, though she won't admit it. Not that Castle is pining away for her and abstaining from love entirely.
  • With the introduction of romantic subplots upon its revival in 2005, Doctor Who has had a few of these implied for the lead character, the Doctor. Rose Tyler is the first; after she is trapped, supposedly forever, in a parallel world, the Doctor spends the entirety of the next season pining over her, to the point of alienating his next companion, Martha, who attempts to become his Second Love and fails.
    • Clara Oswald is an odd example of this trope being zig-zagged. The Doctor falls in love with her, but ultimately loses her due to a Trauma Conga Line that includes her being Killed Off for Real, but then revived. In order to move on and stop himself from being Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, the Doctor submits to a Mind Rape that wipes most—but not all—of his memories of Clara. He remembers her as a friend he traveled with, not that he was in love with her. Where the "one who got away" aspect kicks in is it's established that Clara, due to the Doctor's interference, is now functionally immortal and as such could have been the first companion actually capable of staying with the Doctor for the rest of his life. But he had to let her go.
  • Friends
    • Monica and Richard. They were deliriously in love, despite their May–December Romance. After a string of unextraordinary slacker boyfriends, Richard opened her world to passion and maturity. However, their love story ended sadly when they started talking about their future. Monica wanted to have children of her own; Richard already had children and didn’t want anymore. They both tried to give up their dream, but ultimately realized they couldn’t follow through. For Richard, the romance is Type 2, as it’s revealed that he’s never really gotten over Monica, as just seeing her makes him feel hopeless, and years later, Richard returns and asks for her back. But for Monica, their past is Type 1, as she has already moved on from him and is in a fulfilling, mature relationship, something that her romance with Richard motivated her to find.
    • Phoebe and David. They had a real connection on the show, but he was set to do a study of subatomic particles in Minsk, and Phoebe lets him go to pursue his career. Years later, when he returns, he tries to rekindle the spark, but she has long since moved on with Mike.
  • Game of Thrones: Catelyn Stark is this to her childhood friend, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish. He takes it to disturbing levels...
  • High Fidelity: Mac was clearly the ex who Rob misses the most (they even were engaged). He feels the same.
  • One episode of House has Wilson tell Taub and Kutner about House's "one that got away". Turns out he was just screwing with them—he even gives the woman's name as "Irene Adler". House actually did have a The One Who Got Away in Stacy, whom he rejected anyway after realizing that he could never love her like her husband Mark could.
  • Ted and Victoria in How I Met Your Mother. They became as a couple twice but ultimately they couldn't be together as the latter wanted the former to cut ties (cease being friends) with Robin (the person Ted left her for in their first time as a couple), which he couldn't.
    • A large part of Ted's Character Development in the later seasons comes from him realizing that Robin was NOT this trope. They were two people strongly committed to their priorities and their priorities were incompatible. Ted wanted to settle down and have kids while Robin wanted to travel and had absolutely no interest in being a mother. If they tried to make the relationship work, one or both would have to sacrifice their dreams and they would just make each other miserable. The series finale shows that ten years later, with their dreams fulfilled, their priorities have shifted enough that they now have a chance for a lasting relationship.
  • NUMB3RS suggests that Robin Brooks is this to Don Eppes, though the trope is later subverted with the couple deciding to give their relationship another shot. They later get engaged.
  • Surprisingly, Belle is this for Rumplestiltskin in Once Upon a Time. It tortures the latter even in their new lives. They eventually start a relationship in season 2.

    Music 
  • Katy Perry has a song of the same title, and the lyrics play the trope straight. The music video, however, is more of an example of The Lost Lenore.
  • As does Jake Owen.
  • Pops up occasionally as a theme in songs Michael Jackson sings. Most notably are "I Want You Back" by The Jackson 5 and "She's Out of My Life" from Off the Wall.
  • Tom Waits sings a song of this name on the album Small Change, although it's less about the one that got away and more about the life of the protagonist after the one that got away... got away.
  • "Whatsername" by Green Day.
  • A few of Pink Martini's songs feature this trope, most notably "Kikuchiyo To Mohshimasu," "Veronique," "The Gardens of Sampson and Beasley" (which actually manages to be pretty upbeat about it all) and possibly the tragic "Piensa en Mi." And of course "Hey, Eugene!", an increasingly desperate message for a guy at a party who refused to call back.
  • Badfinger's "Baby Blue."
  • "The Man That Got Away" was written by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin for the 1954 film "A Star is Born". While the original Judy Garland recording is the most famous, it has been covered by many artists, notably in a gender-flipped version ("The Gal That Got Away") by Frank Sinatra.
  • "Hold on Loosely" by 38 Special is sung by a guy who pushed away the girl he loved, looking back on his mistakes. "Usually it's too late when you realize what you had."
  • Jenny Lou Carson's "Jealous Heart", which is about a woman who drives her boyfriend because she can't control her jealousy and says the memory of him will haunt her for years.
  • Referenced and subverted in "It's a Beautiful Day" by Michael Bublé, which has the lyric, "I'm so glad you were the one that got away!" This is one of his most upbeat songs, and that's saying something.
  • "Strawberry Wine" by Deana Carter is told from the POV of a teenage girl who fell in love with (and lost her virginity to) one of her grandfather's farmhands when she spent the summer there. In the fall, her boyfriend had to go back to college, and though they tried a Long-Distance Relationship, it didn't work out. Many years later, she still comes back to the particular spot where she lost her virginity just to reminisce.
  • "Runaway" by Del Shannon.
  • The Residents' The Commercial Album has a track called "Perfect Love":
    The only ever perfect love is one that gets away.
  • The Boys Like Girls song "She's Got A Boyfriend Now" is all about this:
    Wish that I could turn this car around, but she's got a boyfriend now.
  • The one in Gaelic Storm's "Lover's Wreck" left to become a pirate. Her former lover mopes and is eventually press-ganged onto a privateer.
  • "One Love" by Marianas Trench.
  • Lady A's "Dancing Away with My Heart."
  • Blackhawk's "Every Once in Awhile," sung from the perspective of the one who got away ("Just ask her if she ever still thinks about me/She'll say 'every once in a while'")
  • Kevin Denney: "That's Just Jessie" finds the narrator distracted by memories of the one that got away during a meeting or other mundane tasks.
  • "My Old Flame" by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston, which opens with, "My old flame. I can't even think of her name."
  • "And Still" by Reba McEntire. The narrator runs into her former lover and the two reminisce about old times. Unfortunately for her, her ex soon introduces her to his wife.
    I gave my best smile, but I was dying inside.
    • "If You See Him/If You See Her," a Distant Duet with Brooks & Dunn, is also this, with two halves of the relationship running into a mutual friend. They each tell the friend to tell the other first that they wish each other well, then that they regret the way their relationship ended, and finally that they're still in love with each other. In the music video, they both call the mutual friend at the end to ask him to keep that information to himself, leaving the other forever as The One That Got Away.
  • Dire Straits: "Tunnel of Love". Sort of mutually understood at the time that it would be a momentary thing ("She said you are the perfect stranger/ she said baby let's keep it like this"—and in the end, he didn't pursue her: "And in the roar of dust and diesel I stood and watched her walk away/I could have caught up with her easy enough but something must have made me stay"). But as he reminisces on this, he wonders what could have been:
    And now I'm searching through these carousels and the carnival arcades
    Searching everywhere from steeplechase to palisades
    In any shooting gallery where promises are made
    To rock away rock away from Cullercoats and Whitley bay out to rock away
  • Zac Brown Band and Alan Jackson's "As She's Walking Away" is about an older guy convincing a younger man to not make this mistake as he did.
  • In Luke Combs's "She Got the Best of Me", the narrator credits the one that got away with starting his music career— he learned to play as a way of coping after she broke his heart— but admits he's not over her yet.
  • Pearl Jam's "Nothingman".
  • It could be argued that Taylor Swift built her early career on this trope. "Teardrops On My Guitar" is the earliest example.
  • Confession Executive Committee by HoneyWorks features Mio and Haruki, a couple of "friends" who are obviously in love with each other, but neither ever worked up the courage to confess, and both ended up parting ways (Haruki moved to America after graduating high school) without realising that their feelings are actually reciprocated by the other. They get better, but it still takes a long while before they even date.
  • "Copper Girl" by Three Colours Red:
    Remember that girl who changed your world some time ago,
    Then she flew away, but she never did quite go...
  • "Island" by Eddy Raven uses sailing metaphors for this, with him lamenting the fact that he let her go ("Now what kind of sailor ould let such a dream get lost? / Tonight we'd be sailing out under the southern Cross"). He ends with the phrase "I might sail forever and never find that island again".
  • "There Goes My Baby" by Trisha Yearwood:
    He was the kind of guy who loved so unselfishly
    And everyone could see what a prize he was
    Everyone but me
    I must be blind
    I must be the kind who don't know what they have
    'Til they're all alone and sad
    There goes my baby...
  • The titular "Skinny Love" of the Bon Iver song refers to this, in specific a beloved relationship that was already on the brink of destruction — "skinny" from malnourishment — and ended despite how much the narrator wanted it to work. The worst part is that the narrator realized that in trying desperately to keep the flame alive, they became demanding and controlling in a way that only accelerated things further, leaving them hungry for love but with nothing to blame but themselves.
  • Toby Keith's "How Do You Like Me Now?" is essentially a Revenge Ballad based around this trope with implications of It Will Never Catch On sprinkled in for good measure, with the narrator showing his High School crush what she missed out on by turning him down twenty years earlier.
    • Meanwhile, "Does That Blue Moon Ever Shine on You" and "We Were in Love" play the trope straight.
  • Lene Marlin's "Another Day" is about lost love.
  • Tim McGraw has "I Didn't Ask And She Didn't Say." The singer runs into an ex when his flight gets delayed, and he's wondering all through their superficial catch-up conversation whether she remembers their times together and if she holds the same place in her heart for him that he holds for her. He doesn't ask her, and she doesn't volunteer the information, and they part ways with lingering feelings in the air.
  • It's heavily implied that Carol Brown from the Flight of the Conchords song of the same name was this for its singer. He breezes through all of the ways his relationships with ex girlfriends ended, with them getting hurt or plain leaving. Carol is the only one the singer lingers on, pausing every time he remembers her abruptly leaving on a bus and getting angry when the Choir of Ex-Girlfriends keeps reminding him of his failings, thinking she put them up to it.

    Theatre 
  • In One Touch of Venus, the reason that modern art collector Whitlaw Savory buys a 3000-year-old Anatolian statue of a goddess is that it reminds him of "the girl who got away." When Savory runs into the goddess wandering through the Big Applesauce, he recognizes her as his girl that got away but not as his missing statue.

    Video Games 
  • In Diablo III Lyndon fell deeply in love with a woman named Rea, but she chose to marry his brother instead. He still loves her but after a scam went wrong and Lyndon's brother ended up in jail, she thinks he's responsible and hates him.
    • The Reaper Of Souls expansion reveals that this trope might have been invoked by Rea. She murdered her husband. There's an implication that she's the Thieves Guild Master and has been playing a long con on both brothers.

    Web Original 
  • The Character Narrator of Alice Isn't Dead has totally restructured her life to chase after her vanished wife Alice, taking a long haul trucking job to capitalize on clues that Alice is Wandering the Earth. Though her pursuit is partly motivated by evidence that Alice is involved in The Conspiracy, the Narrator's logs sometimes veer into ruminating as though it were a typical breakup.
  • Kontrola: Even when they're in relationships with other people after theirs collapsed, Natalia and Majka quiet clearly want one another most of all.
  • Red vs. Blue: The Director of Project Freelancer is so haunted by the memory of a lost love that he ends up in a perpetual cycle of losing her over and over again, via the AI he created (a Living Memory of his own experiences) and the Virtual Ghost that the AI creates in the image of the Director's lost love.

    Western Animation 
  • On Adventure Time, Betty is this for Simon, aka the Ice King. It's tinged with The Lost Lenore as well, since she would presumably have died centuries before the show's setting. As it turns out, Betty jumped through a time portal opened by a temporarily sane Simon attempting to communicate to her and by the end of the episode is still out in Ooo, seeking a way to cure him of his insanity.
  • Central Park: In Season 2 "The Shadow", Hank was infatuated with Bitsy when he first saw her as a young beat cop working as detail after the Shadow's first theft 60 years ago, but never said anything to her. While he eventually moved on and found someone else, he still regrets not speaking up.
  • In the Justice League Unlimited episode "Epilogue" (the Fully Absorbed Finale for Batman Beyond), Selina is given a nod as being this for Bruce.
  • King of the Hill: Boomhauer has Katherine Hester, an old girlfriend that he hasn't seen for twelve years and it's shown that he was this to her. She unexpectedly returns to his life engaged to his younger brother Patch. Things get complicated for Boomhauer because not only is he still in love with Katherine but also because Patch proves very sleazy in his own behavior, which eventually cancels their engagement. At the end, Katherine leaves town again to clear her head but both of them leave the door open to possibly rekindle things in the future.
  • Subverted in Over the Garden Wall. In the first episode, Wirt enters one of his poetic phases and mentions a "lost love;" in a later episode, he mentions that he has a crush on a girl, but she was "swept off her feet" by someone named Jason Funderberker. When we actually see what happened, it's clear to the viewer that Wirt's perceptions were less than accurate. Sure enough, Wirt and Sara are implied to hook up in the last episode.
  • In Steven Universe, Rose is this for Pearl. She's also The Lost Lenore, though, as she died after choosing Greg.
    Pearl: You won, and she chose you,
    And she loved you, and she's gone...

    Real Life 
  • Bobby Darin was this for singer Connie Francis. According to her autobiography, her Boyfriend-Blocking Dad kept them apart, and she claimed that not marrying him was one of the biggest mistakes of her life.
  • Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once fell in love with a woman named Regine Olsen and was engaged to her at one point. However, he broke the engagement, but he never recovered from his decision to do so and remained in love with her for the rest of his life. The feeling was also mutual for Olsen, even though she went on to be happily married to Johan Frederik Schlegel. When she received news of Kierkegaard's death, she expressed immense guilt and regret for being unable to resolve the tension between the two. Furthermore, when her husband died, Olsen saw herself as a widow both to him and to Kierkegaard.


 
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A Moment Forever Ago

Hank was infatuated with Bitsy when he first saw her as a young beat cop working as detail after the Shadow's first theft, but never said anything to her. While he eventually moved on and found someone else, he still regrets not speaking up.

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