Totally Trusting Love Interest

Nothing makes being caught in an Accidental Pervert moment worse than your Love Interest being the one who caught you. You're definitely going to be Mistaken for Cheating, even if you exclaim, "It's Not What It Looks Like!"

Unless, of course, you have a Totally Trusting Love Interest—then you don't need to worry about it. They'll just laugh and ask what's really going on. This goes beyond just having an open and trusting relationship. A Totally Trusting Love Interest has faith in their partner's fidelity, no matter what the evidence against them looks like. They know there's some sort of explanation, and they'll wait patiently for it.

A key component of this trope being played straight is that the faith is justified. And if so, then it might be a Seduction-Proof Marriage, if they're married. If the trust is mistaken, then it's Love Makes You Dumb.

Compare to Understanding Boyfriend where a character's significant other doesn't have a problem with the character having kept another kind of secret like being a superhero from them.

The inverted version of this trope is Mistaken for Cheating, Not What It Looks Like, or other event tropes. Compare Power of Trust, where trusting someone inspires them to live up to that trust.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• In Ah! My Goddess, it's a common occurrence for someone to pull Keiichi into a compromising situation, but Belldandy always believes him when Keiichi explains that it's Not What It Looks Like.
  • It happens multiple times with her older sister Urd:
    • On one occasion, he doesn't even need to explain — when Belldandy finds Urd naked in the bath with him, her immediate response is "Why didn't you tell me so I could join you?", prompting another character to say that Belldandy must be stupid to trust Keiichi so blindly. But considering that Keiichi can't even make moves on the eminently willing Belldandy, it's quite reasonable.
    • On another occasion, Belldandy finds Keiichi in another compromising situation with Urd and instead of staying around to talk, she runs away crying, not because she believes Keiichi is cheating on her. In fact, she outright states that she trusts him. But she now believes Urd is in love with Keiichi, and she's torn about taking Urd's "love" from her.
  • Belldandy once defended Keiichi from a manufactured compromising situation by saying "It's true! He doesn't have the guts to do that!" She realized how bad that sounded and tried to correct herself but just made it worse. Specifically, she corrected herself by saying, "My Keiichi...isn't enough of a man to—" This results in the unsound effect of "Digging the hole deeper."
  • Urd weaponizes the trust at one point, manipulating Keiichi into groping another woman in front of Belldandy and trusting that Belldandy's jealousy of that other woman getting Keiichi's affections would be subconsciously channeled into explosions, powerful enough to defeat an attacker they were facing.
  • Belldandy has flat-out stated that she will always believe Keiichi — even if he's lying.
• Ai Yori Aoshi: Despite having so many Not What It Looks Like situations, as the girls listen to Kaoru's explanations and actually believe him. Sometimes, he doesn't even need to explain anything. Except for his first encounter with Miyabi. He'd gotten out of the tub in an unsuccessful attempt to keep Aoi from coming in. Then he slipped and fell on top of her. So Miyabi enters and sees Kaoru, naked, kneeling between Aoi's legs with his hands firmly planted on her breasts. It was perfectly natural for Miyabi to throw him across the room and start trying to stomp him to death.
• Played with a touch of tragedy in Bitter Virgin. The bond between protagonists Daisuke and Hinako has developed to the point where, when Attention Whore Kazuki tries to claim that Daisuke raped her, Hinako flat out calls her a liar, telling her Daisuke would never do such a thing. The touch of tragedy comes from the other reason she knows Kazuki's lying: she knows from firsthand experience that Kazuki is far too calm and collected to have been a rape victim.
• Dragon Ball Super: Barry Khan, an obnoxious character playing the Great Saiyaman, tries to frame Gohan for infidelity when Videl spurned Barry's advances. When he presents a picture of Gohan kissing Cocoa, Videl simply tears the photo in half and calls him out for being so petty and childish. She knows Gohan would never cheat on her and knows that no matter what it might look like there must be a reason for it.
• Deconstructed in School Days. Kotonoha never suspects Makoto of cheating with her, despite blatantly obvious clues (rarely sees her, avoids responding to her calls/mail, people telling her he's cheating, etc.). This obviously all leads to insanity when she was able to see him cheating with her own eyes and the leads to the infamous Nice Boat ending.

Comic Books

• Doctor Strange (2023): When the warlord Aggamon is assassinated at the end of the first issue, suspicions fall on Doctor Strange's wife Clea (who had in fact pledged to kill Aggamon after he murdered a refugee). Even Clea expects Stephen to suspect her, but he immediately believes her when she says she didn't do it.
  Clea: Well? Are you going to ask me, Stephen?
  Doctor Strange: Have I reason to, love?
  Clea: No. I did not kill Aggamon.
  Doctor Strange: Your word is all I require, Clea. As ever.

Fan Works

• A Game of Cat and Cat: "Another Chapter of Just Talking" has Soma's not-girlfriend Mina want to keep a question secret from him because it involves information he doesn't need to know, whereupon he's asked about how he feels about the secret-keeping by someone else, and he says he trusts his friends, which includes Mina:
  "They'd tell me if it's important," said Soma firmly.
  They walked in silence again, until they emerged from the History building.
  "You trust your friends," said Kazuya. It wasn't a question.
  "With my life," said Soma.
• Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse): In Chapter 16, when questioning the Contrived Coincidence start of the source work Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, where couple-in-denial Soma and Mina met up in a specific location at the specific time needed to start the plot, Soma asks Mina if their not-a-date was a lure, and she denies it:
  Mina shook her head. "I had no idea that there was a plan at all, Soma. I asked you because, well, I wanted to see the eclipse with you, and the shrine was the best place."
  "I believe you," said Soma, breaking the grand tradition of romance movies where the main couple always has a falling out that ends with them falling in love with each other once more.
• The Peace Not Promised: Lily knows that Severus is steadfastly loyal to her, so she instantly sees through his pretense that she was just a fling and his offer to become a spy for Voldemort, and realises what's really happening (ie he's just stalling in hopes of creating an opening to Portkey her to safety). Unfortunately, since she isn't protected from mind-reading, she inadvertently gives everything away and ruins his plan, as explained by the narrator giving an Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!.
  She did not believe for one moment that her husband would betray her. Such a firm conviction that everything Snape had said was a lie, that he might be planning what he was planning... in that unprotected mind.
• Second Chances (TheNovelArtist): Marinette walks in on Adrien and Lila in his house on Valentine's Day, with Lila very much dressed for the occasion and within Adrien's personal space. But she knows Adrien well enough to be instantly confident that he's uncomfortable with the situation, and she promptly helps get Lila to leave. The contrast between the two women is stark enough in Adrien's mind to lead him to a Relationship Upgrade with Marinette shortly afterward.

Film — Live Action

• Back to the Future: When Marty gets temporarily distracted by two women in exercise suits, Jennifer calmly and casually tilts his face back towards her and continues flirting as though nothing had happened. Marty, in turn, loves her very much and, throughout the trilogy, never takes advantage of being away from her time-traveling to make moves on other girls.

Literature

• Luccio to Harry in The Dresden Files. In the short story "Day Off", she finds him wearing just a towel, apparently kissing (actually, giving CPR to) his young, pretty, and half-naked apprentice on the day they were supposed to have a date. Instead of throwing a tantrum, she is amused to learn about the circumstances that led to such a situation and helps Harry clean up the mess before proceeding with their original date plans.
• Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai: Sakuta and Mai become the Official Couple at the end of the first story arc, and she explicitly trusts him not to cheat on her when he goes haring off to help the next several girls suffering Adolescence Syndrome phenomena, even when one such gambit involves actively dating a girl trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop. He proves himself completely worthy of her trust throughout the series.
• When the protagonist of Rachel Caines' Weather Wardens series comes home to find a naked woman in her bed, she just dryly asks her husband for an explanation.

Live-Action TV

• Subject of a mini-plot arc on Bones. Big Bad Palant blackmails Booth into not marrying Brennan, and he can't tell her why. He cancels the wedding and after angsting about it for an episode she decides to trust Booth, not demanding a reason. Angela isn't so trusting and starts hating Booth on Brennan's behalf.
• Boy Meets World: In "Hogs and Kisses", Topanga walks in as Angela is giving Cory a platonic comforting hug on a bed, and is completely matter-of-fact, brushing off Cory's offer to explain. Ironically, Cory had just been saying he couldn't trust Topanga after catching her in a compromising position — also a case of Not What It Looks Like — with Shawn.
• The Brittas Empire: A big reason why the marriage of Helen and Gordon Brittas has managed to survive so many years in spite of Helen's cheating ways is the fact that Brittas is entirely trusting of his wife, accepting her story of needing to check up on her sick uncle in spite of the telltale signs that said uncle is not actually related to her at all and not following up on times when Helen accidentally lets slip hints that she's cheating on him. Helen herself acknowledges this in "The Lies Have It" when Brittas is convinced by the story that she had cut short a meeting of her mother in favor of being at Carole's birthday party, unaware that both the birthday and the visit were a cover-up for her going to a restaurant with another man.
  Helen: I've always admired that about Gordon. He really trusts me.
• White Collar. Elizabeth not only lets her husband Peter go undercover on dates, she actually helps him when he needs to take provocative photos of himself with another woman.
• Agent Carter: During a sparring match, Edwin Jarvis ends up pinning Peggy Carter to the ground in a way that looks very intimate, just as Jarvis' wife Ana walks in on them. Far from being upset, Ana correctly guesses what caused them to end up in that position and asks Peggy if she fell for his feint.

Theatre

• Iolanthe: Phyllis breaks off her engagement to Strephon when she catches him embracing what appears to be a 17-year-old girl, not realizing that it's actually his mother. Unknown to her, Strephon is half-fairy, so his mother and all her relatives appear to be young women but are Really 700 Years Old. Fortunately, they finally come to an understanding at the end:
  Phyllis: Whenever I see you kissing a very young lady, I shall know it's an elderly relative.
  Strephon: You will? Then, Phyllis, I think we shall be very happy!

Webcomics

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: Used for a Bait-and-Switch in the 2013-10-14 strip where a Bedroom Adultery Scene is revealed to be a menage a trois marriage with only two of them in bed, with the onlooker second man tiredly saying that the joke is getting old.

Western Animation

• In the Futurama episode "Love & Rocket", Bender starts dating the Planet Express Ship, when she has a femme personality/voice installed. After a while, he decides to cheat on her, jerkass that he is. When she catches him dating two other femmebots, he gives a lame excuse, which she immediately accepts, since she's a computer and therefore able to control her thoughts on the fly.
  Bender: I want to be completely honest...those two women were...my accountants!
  Planet Express Ship: Oh, Bender, I deeply want to believe that...so I do!
• Kim Possible: In the season 4 episode "Homecoming Upset", Bonnie, having been dumped by her longtime boyfriend Brick Flagg, and jealous of Ron and Kim's Relationship Upgrade, rigs the Homecoming King and Queen election so that she will be Ron's Queen. During an obligatory community photoshoot, Bonnie kiss-ambushes Ron just as Kim arrives on the scene. Ron is stammering to Kim that it wasn't his doing, but Kim is fully aware, though still disappointed that he had to wait so long to kiss her, and Bonnie suddenly realizes that antagonizing a girl who is versed in multiple forms of kung fu may not be the best move. The only thing that saves Bonnie is that she breaks down in tears before Kim can give her what's coming.
  Ron: Hey, I was the kissee here, not the kisser!
  Kim: No kidding! It took you twelve stinkin' years to kiss me!

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