Basic Trope: The bad boy love interest becomes a perfect gentleman as a husband.
- Straight: Bob is a sexy bad boy who Really Gets Around. He meets Alice, his One True Love, and becomes a faithful husband who treats Alice well, as well as a Family Man with their kids.
- Exaggerated: Bob is a spike-covered Quincy Punk with a towering mohawk who aggressively shouts everything he says and regularly gets into fights. Once he marries Alice, he becomes an ordinary, squeaky-clean, extremely boring businessman.
- Downplayed: Deconfirmed Bachelor
- Justified: Bob's bad boy lifestyle was starting to catch up with him, and he had already concluded it was not emotionally fulfilling, especially in the long run. Around the time he met Alice, Bob decided on his own that he wanted to turn his life around. So he chose a partner who could serve as a guide and would call him out when he fell short.
- Inverted: Prior to marriage, Bob was a Nice Guy with an inclination toward monogamy. After getting married, he's surprised to realize he finds marriage stifling, and a previously unknown rebellious side starts to immerge. He also finds that women are interested in him for the first time, and he uses this opportunity to be promiscuous.
- Gender Inverted: Alice is a Hard-Drinking Party Girl who becomes a devoted wife and mother after marrying Nice Guy Bob.
- Subverted:
- Bob initially takes well to marriage, treats Alice like a queen, and doesn't look at other women. However, this only lasts as long as the honeymoon phase does, and after a few years his old tendencies reemerge.
- Alice is a closeted cuckquean, who procures various women for her husband's pleasure.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob finds his eye wandering, nonetheless has is able to stick to Alice even after the initial honeymoon phase fades away.
- Alice is surprises when Bob reveals that he wants a normal marriage, and the two stick to monogamy.
- Parodied: ???
- Implied: We meet Bob as a married man, and he's a dedicated husband. We never knew him as a bachelor, but he sometimes makes veiled allusions to a wild past.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: Single Woman Seeks Good Man. Alice wants a man who's kind and dependable, so she takes an interest in Bob because he already exhibits these traits in other aspects of his life. She marries him specifically because she doesn't think he'll change.
- Enforced: The writers don't want to write Bob as a womanizer any more, but the Producers still want steamy fanservice scenes, so they give him a wife.
- Invoked: Alice believes that she can change Bob into a Family Man after reading romance novels where the heroine does just that.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Bob changed a lot for Alice. He worked really hard to be who she wanted him to be, gave up a lot for the sake of their marriage. He assumed this would be reciprocal—surely Alice wouldn't ask so much from him if she wasn't willing to do the same, right? But Alice had no such assumptions. When she isn't willing to make equally large sacrifices for him, Bob feels resentful and under-appreciated. This kicks off a whole new category of marital issues.
- Reconstructed: ???
Back to Reformed Rakes.
