I Will Wait for You

"If it takes forever, I will wait for you For a thousand summers, I will wait for you 'Til you're back beside me, 'til I'm holding you 'Til I hear you sigh here in my arms"

- Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

So someone's love has gone off on a long and dangerous journey: to sea, to war, to find their meaning, something along those lines. She promises to wait for him, right where she is, until he returns. How long could it be, right? Soon they'll be reunited and all will be well.

Only not so much. Years pass and he doesn't return. Most people would have given up by this point, assuming that something has happened to their loved one and he's never going to come back. But not this woman. She's going to wait right here for the rest of her life, if necessary, because she really believes he's coming back for her someday.

...Even though most of the time, he really is dead. This still will often not stop her. She said she'll wait forever for him, and she meant it. Hundreds of years later, a woman-shaped rock can be seen in that spot, waiting for her love to return to her. If she knows that he is dead, The Mourning After may ensue. Or even if she believes it—sometimes other characters think that claiming it will shake her resolve.

When the hero is being faithful, the Standard Hero Reward can lead to some very difficult to wiggle out of scenes -- But Thou Must!!

If she is coerced into marrying, it's You Have Waited Long Enough—whereupon her true love will show up in time to save her from the wedding. If this trope follows a breakup, you have Love Will Lead You Back. If he does return, and she realizes she no longer loved him, it turns to Old Flame Fizzle.

The person waiting, incidentally, is almost Always Female... or a dog. See also My Girl Is Not a Slut, The Slow Path. Compare I Will Find You for when the speaker plans to take a more proactive stance. Contrast Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder.

Anime and Manga
""Girls like her disgust me. Always waiting around for her man as if she were his faithful pet.""
 * The "turned to stone" variant is featured as a local legend in an episode of Pokémon called "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak." The stone girl's spirit is also said to haunt the area.
 * The trope is lampshaded and defied by Jessie in reference to said ghost.

": "I'll be waiting for you."
 * Done again in another episode with a Ninetales (kitsune Pokemon who can reach 1000 years of age) who spent hundreds of years waiting for its master to return.
 * Alpha in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is still waiting for her owner to return at the end of the series
 * Trisha Elric of Fullmetal Alchemist. Not only does she agree to wait for Hohenheim while she's still alive,
 * Voices of a Distant Star has a rare gender inverted variation, as Noboru is stuck on Earth while his girlfriend Mikako goes in to space to be a mecha pilot. As Mikako travels farther into space and her messages to Noboru take longer and longer to arrive, he tries to resolve himself to move on, but can't ever manage it.
 * Also see 5 Centimeters Per Second. Makoto Shinkai likes this trope.
 * The Mizu Sahara manga My Girl has the main character waiting for his girlfriend, who went abroad to study and seems to have decided not to return. She dies before he gets the chance to see her again.
 * It might be worth noting that Mizu Sahara did the manga adaptation of Voices of a Distant Star
 * Shion Sonozaki, of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, does this with Satoshi. At the end of Matsuribayashi-hen, she finds that
 * AWWWWW.
 * A variant of this trope occurs in the CLAMP manga Shirahime Shyo. A couple makes their goodbyes over a frozen lake as he is going to war, and she promises that when he comes back she will be waiting for him in the same spot. Guy returns many years later in the middle of winter thinking she probably didn't wait for him, until he looks down at the frozen river...and there she is, youthful and beautiful as ever, but dead and frozen in the lake. When she said she would wait in the same spot...she meant it.
 * gender inverted in ×××HOLiC when
 * How Himawari reacts to this drastic decision is left to be seen... but one thing is for sure: Doumeki is pissed that  pretty much took this vow of celibacy for... possibly the next hundred years.
 * In the first Cardcaptor Sakura movie, we have
 * An non-dog animal variant of this is Laboon from One Piece, who's been waiting over 50 years for the pirate crew he made friends with to get back from their trip around the world.
 * And in keeping with the trope, it turns out all members of the crew are dead. Good news Brook's Devil Fruit powers aren't going to let that get in the way.
 * Role reversal in Seirei no Moribito. Tanda has been waiting for years for Balsa to fulfill her vow to save the lives of eight people so they can settle down and get married. Then at the end she decides to return to her hometown for a while, and he ends up waiting again. Tanda is a very patient guy.
 * He does express some frustration with Balsa's wandering ways, noting that she seems to thrive on life-or-death situations. When Balsa admits that this is true and jokingly asks him if he has a cure for it, he painedly replies that if he himself isn't enough of a cure, then there's no point in going on waiting. But he goes on waiting all the same.
 * In Sailor Moon, after a lot of agonising on both parts, Reika goes to study in Africa and Motoki decides to wait for her. She eventually returns so that they can have their agonising all over again, since she wants to go back to Africa, this time for ten years. Motoki is still prepared to wait.
 * In an early episode of Slayers Revolution, when Lina is almost arrested for "the crime of being Lina Inverse", Gourry tearfully promises to wait for her until she gets out of prison, no matter how many years it takes. Lina, of course, responds with violence.
 * In Kannazuki no Miko, when Chikane is being, in essence, erased from existence she declares that she will reincarnate. At that point Himeko promises to wait for her.
 * In the ending of the manga version of Chrono Crusade, promises  that he'll return to her because the place he belongs is "wherever you are" before  For a reason that is never explained, he disappears for years, leaving her to wait for him even though . After eight years he eventually does make it back to her.
 * Isn't it just that, a la The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?
 * In the ending of the manga version of Hellsing of all the things, has this when
 * In the finale of Gun X Sword, Wendy parts from the man she loves.  The series ends with a few minutes of Distant Finale in which Wendy reveals that she's learned to cook food he would like, so that she can give him a good meal when he shows up. Though she never explicitly promised to wait for him, it seems to be what she's doing, and she insists that she will see him again some day.
 * An everyday sort of version occurs in The Weatherman Is My Lover where Amasawa supports the reluctant Koganei in going overseas to work and convinces him that he'll be okay without him and wait for his return.
 * In the manga ending of Eureka Seven, Renton refuses to acknowledge that his lover Eureka is dead and will continue to wait upon the day she returns back. The final page indicates they might have finally reunited after 2 years.
 * In the movie version, Eureka waited patiently and hoped for the moment she could be reunited with Renton, considering she thought of suicide throughout the 8 years of imprisonment.
 * Misato tries to invoke this trope in End of Evangelion when she sends Shinji off to fight the Final Battle... only to collapse and die moments after his departure, having lied about the severity of her gunshot wound and her dying monologue quickly getting interrupted by a demolition charge turning her into Ludicrous Gibs. And not only is it implied that she was only trying to get the boy motivation and didn't really mean what she said, her death was a Senseless Sacrifice as well.
 * The final chapter of Kobato. has  asking if   will wait for her. He promises that he will.
 * Windaria: Juilet to her lover and the promise has prevented her from 'achieving enlightenment' and passing on.  Marie too.
 * This was 's promise at the end of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
 * This was 's promise at the end of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
 * "Okay. I won't be long. I'll come running.""


 * Mahou Sensei Negima has  as a (probably) platonic version of this with , waiting and clinging to life until she was 115- the year when the person in question was scheduled to come back.

Comic Books

 * In Justice Society of America, Stargirl basically promises this publically (to a reporter questioning her) about Atom Smasher when he goes to prison for war crimes. "I'll be there for him, no matter how long it takes".

Film

 * The protagonist of  A.I.: Artificial Intelligence  spends millennia at the bottom of the ocean waiting for the "blue fairy."
 * The classic French musical Les Parapluies de Cherbourg centers around this when the man goes off to war for two years, and she promises to wait for him, even if it takes forever—until the woman (played by Catherine Deneuve) discovers that she's pregnant with his child and marries someone else in act III just four months later. Unlike in American films of this type, they never get back together, not even briefly.
 * This film is sort of indirectly the Trope Namer - the main musical theme was also adapted into an English song with this title.
 * In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, apparently decides to wait for
 * A Very Long Engagement has the heroine convinced that her lover is alive despite everyone else insisting that his chances of surviving a bombing during the war are nil. In the end,
 * The main character in Harrison's Flowers decides to go after her husband in war-torn Yugoslavia after receiving news that he is probably dead.
 * When they finally release the film version of Hachiko (see below)...Yeah....
 * The Perez Family subverts this trope. Carmela spends 20 years (and most of the movie) waiting for her husband, who was imprisoned by the Castro regime in Cuba. Then she just gives up, and hooks up with another man.
 * Arwen does this for Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings once he goes off on the quest to destroy the One Ring, which eventually escalates into a war. Although this time they are only parted for half a year.
 * At the end of The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade promises to wait for the woman he's sending to prison to get out!
 * The female lead in Pete's Dragon is waiting for her fiancee to return from the sea.

Literature

 * In the Mexican short story La piedra y el rio, a woman waits for her husband (who went off to try to start a life in America) in one place for so long that her body turns to stones and water.
 * In part of the backstory to The Fionavar Tapestry, a wood nymph marries a human mage. He then sets off across the sea to seek out a fable. She goes into a high tower on the shore to wait for him to return. And wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually she sees a ghost ship passing carrying his spirit, realizes he is dead, and throws herself of the tower to drown in despair.
 * L. M. Montgomery really liked this one and featured it in several stories, usually with a man coming back to meet a woman he knew years ago and finding her still there. The story just about always had a happy ending. Most notable example: in one of the later Anne of Green Gables books, Anne's oldest son, Jem, leaves to fight in World War I, and his dog waits at the train station and meets every train just in case Jem is on it. In the end, he does come back.
 * In the same book, Rilla Blythe waits for her childhood sweetheart to come back. It's a striking example because of her young age: she was only about 14 when the war began; by the time the book ends, she's an adult.
 * Parodied in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Moving Pictures, in a send-up of Greyfriars Bobby: Gaspode the talking dog is named (so he says) after the famous Gaspode, who kept sitting at his owner's grave and howling until he died. As Gaspode said, any dog would do that if his tail was caught under the damn headstone.
 * Also parodied in Reaper Man, where Miss Flitworth tells Bill Door that after the death of her fiancee, she'd thought to herself "What life expects me to do now is moon around the place in the wedding dress for years and go completely doolally", and just to spite narrative convention, she instead buckled down and got on with her life. Intriguingly,
 * Miss Flitworth's comment is a reference to Miss Haversham in Dickens' Great Expectations.
 * Bizarre version in Arthur Miller's All My Sons: son went missing in WWII and is probably dead. His mother assumes that the fact that his fiancee, Ann, hasn't married somebody else means she's waiting for him and uses this to validate her belief that he's alive. In fact, the fiancee is waiting for his brother to own up to his affection for her. The mother is furious that she's not waiting for her (probably dead) son, until Ann shows her a letter showing that.
 * Heart of Darkness: Kurtz's Intended. Presented as pathetic, because she has deluded herself about Kurtz to the point that she's barely functional as an independent person. Even after Kurtz is dead, she begs to know his last words, "to live by," implying that she intends to stay in mourning for the rest of her life.
 * Herman Melville apparently once wrote a manuscript that told the story of a woman who waited years for the return of her sailor husband after he disappeared at sea. Meanwhile, he'd gone off and started another family elsewhere. The manuscript was never published and is now lost, but records of it exist in Melville's letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
 * This is a major plot point in The Time Traveler's Wife. Clare spends most of her childhood and teens waiting to her next meeting with Henry. Even.
 * In Girlfriend In A Coma, Richard continues to visit Karen for seventeen years after she goes into a coma, never once even considering breaking off the relationship.
 * In Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, William and Marygay, who have stuck with each other through firefights, injuries, and the loss of everyone and everything they've ever known, are separated by being given different military assignments. The death toll in the war is horribly high, and Time Dilation caused by near-lightspeed travel means they can never expect to see each other again. William mourns for her as if she's dead, but doesn't take up with anyone else because in the future that he's been thrust into by the time dilation, everyone else is gay. Marygay, on the other hand, leaves a note for him to find if he survives, assuring him that she will wait forever, tells him where she's going, and
 * In the Chivalric Romance Floris And Blanchefleur, the lovers are forcibly separated to prevent a mesalliance. Both of them are not to be shaken by that—even when Floris believes that she is dead.
 * In the Chivalric Romances King Horn, Beves of Hampton, and Guy of Warwick, the heroes all win the hand of a princess by their feats. Unfortunately, Horn is in exile from the court of his true love because of a false accusation, and Beves and Guy are both seeking to win renown so that the princess he is in love with will find him worthy, despite his low birth. All of them wriggle out of the marriage and (in due time) win their first loves.
 * Persuasion by Jane Austen. Mildly subverted in that Anne was persuaded to break up the engagement. Nevertheless she waits for him, and gives an impassioned speech pointing out that women will love longer than men when all hope is gone. The hero overhears and does come back.
 * In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Master Mind of Mars, Dar Tarus was assasinated in order to clear the way for the rival. (Fortunately for him, his body was sold to the Mad Scientist and he got better.) His love, Kara, fled as soon as her father was assassinated, and returned to be reunited with him.
 * In Jan Guillou's Knight Templar series Cecilia patiently waits for Arn for more than twenty years while he's off making penance as a knight templar. Slightly subverted since she too has been sentenced to make penance and spends twenty years at a convent, but it kicks in for real once she's done her time and has to wait to see if he will ever return home.
 * Worked out pretty easily and straightforwardly in The Death of the Vazir Mukhtar (also combined with Jail Bait Wait, at least presumably).
 * In Sidney Sheldon's The Other Side of Midnight, Larry Douglas promises to return to poor, sweet Noelle Page when he has to return to his pilot duties—he leaves her an apartment and some money, encourages her to buy a wedding dress and even gives her a time and place for their reunion. When he doesn't show up, she continues to wait as weeks pass and she learns she's pregnant with his child. She finally tracks down his whereabouts...it turns out he's seeing other women now and never intended to return. She vows that she will exact horrible, horrible Revenge on him, starting with how she handles the matter of the pregnancy, and this drives the remainder of the novel.
 * Played heartbreakingly straight in the Dragonlance short story "Love and Ale" with the in-universe poem "The Song of Elen Waiting" in which the eponymous singer laments that her love went off to war, but she still waits for him as her friends grow up and fall in love and have children and grow old while she waits for her love until she dies old and alone.
 * Deliberately induced in the Sherlock Holmes story A Case of Identity. The client's stepfather courts the client under an assumed identity, then has that persona disappear on their wedding day. Because of this, the man knows his stepdaughter will wait for years for her beloved to return before she will consider accepting another suitor, during which time he can continue to supplement his income with his stepdaughter's trust fund dividends.
 * One of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer's "Legends", "The Promise", has a both heartbreaking and creepy version of this. A count seduces a farm girl named Margarita right before going to war, hiding his social standing to her and giving her a ring as a proof of love and future marriage...
 * In Sarum, Peter Shockley and his childhood sweetheart Alicia Le Portier have a teenage quarrel, which breaks them up. She weds an older knight at the request of her parents, then returns to Sarum after her husband dies in battle, to discover that Peter (although he's had girlfriends) has remained unmarried for twenty years, unable to feel real affection for any woman but her. Unusual in that it's the male partner who'd been waiting.
 * In Warrior Cats, though it's just best friends and not a romantic example, Firestar and Graystripe do this. In the Super Edition Firestar's Quest, Firestar goes away on a quest that leads him far out of the forest, leaving the Clan in Graystripe's care. Graystripe promises "I'll wait for you as long as it takes." Firestar, of course, makes it back safely. In the second series, when and the Clans leave the forest for good to find a new home, Firestar refuses to give up hope that Graystripe will return, leaving the deputy position open, even though most of the cats believe that Graystripe is dead. He even cites Graystripe's waiting for him as a reason why he should continue to wait.
 * In Count and Countess, Vlad Dracula and Elizabeth Bathory are able to send letters to one another despite living more than a century apart in time. They fall in love via this correspondence (though by no means a wholesome love) and Vlad becomes determined to circumvent mortality, no matter how many years he has to wait before he can finally see Elizabeth face to face. Elizabeth is more realistic about the matter and advises him not to hold his breath.

Live Action TV

 * So Weird: "Widow's Walk" features an old woman who has waited decades for her husband, lost at sea, to return. She learns an important life lesson about something or other, then goes right back to waiting. The ghost of her husband seems to approve of this.
 * On Lost, a Mental Time Travel -ing Desmond asks Penny, who he has broken up with in 1996, to wait for a phone call on Christmas Day, 2004, and not change her phone number or move apartments in that timespan so he can still reach her. The ensuing call is the show's most triumphant Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
 * In the Merlin episode "Queen of Hearts", Guinevere (who is only a servant girl in this version) promises to wait for Arthur to become king so that he can change the customs that keep them apart and finally let them be together.
 * In Robin Hood, the titular character is intrigued when he comes back from five years fighting abroad to discover that Maid Marian is still unmarried - not that she's going to admit that he has anything to do with that.
 * During Marian and Robin's scene, Marian tells Robin: "I have waited for you."
 * Used occasionally on Doctor Who.
 * Captain Jack, who waits around in Cardiff for a hundred-odd years for the Doctor to come back.
 * Jackie Tyler, who, a year after her daughter's disappearance, still had stacks of missing posters on her kitchen table.
 * In the fifth season finale "The Big Bang", Rory (possessing the body of an Auton) waited nearly two thousand years beside the Pandorica while Amy healed within it. Even the Doctor was impressed. "Rory Williams. The boy who waited."
 * Anna to Mr Bates in Downton Abbey. She points out after that, "We've waited long enough to be together, you and I." Also, Branson to Sybil.

Music
"Wait for me I shall return again for you, Kallicrates More beautiful than ever I shall live again To walk upon the earth and be your queen again, forever Do not fall beneath the passing years Wait beyond eternity for me..."
 * Connie Francis' Song, Circa 1965. Quite literally titled I will wait for you
 * The Alaskan folk song Susitna is another one where the waiting woman turns to stone.
 * The song Naturaleza Muerta by the Spanish band Mecano, later covered by Sarah Brightman (lyrics can be found here).
 * Mana's song El Muelle de San Blas is about a woman who waited for her sailor boyfriend in the titular dock, still with the same dress, presumably until her death. The Lyrics.
 * The Decemberists' folk-inspired ballad From My Own True Love, Lost at Sea starts out: "Fourscore years / Living down in this rain swept town / Sea salt tears / Swimming round as the rain comes down / Mr Postman, do you have a letter for me? ... From my own true love / Lost at sea"...
 * Also "Yankee Bayonet". "Look for me when the sun-bright swallow sings upon the birch-bough high" / "But you are in the ground with the wolves and the weevils all a-chew on your bones so dry ..."
 * A Fair Maid Walking, an Irish folk song.
 * Dear Friend by Charlie Peacock, where the bride has been waiting for many years for her groom to return, and people around her laugh at her for it. Video
 * The rock opera She (based on the novel of the same name). The titular character, seeing her lover fall for another woman, kills him in a fit of rage and jealousy. After realising what she has done, she nearly commits suicide - until learning of a magical fire that can grant her eternal life, which she uses to wait for him to return, reincarnated. Two thousand years later, he arrives in the form of an English explorer.

"8 rf F 7]_c If it takes another life I'll wait for you On the other side...]"
 * Scissor Sisters' Other Side is about waiting for someone from beyond the veil:


 * In The Hills of Shiloh is a haunting ballad of a woman waiting in her bridal gown for her beloved to return to her, running up and down the hills, written by Shel Silverstein.
 * Insane Clown Posse's "Under the Moon" subverts this: the girl promised the song's character (when he went to prison for killing her attempted rapist) that she would wait for him. He knows she made herself into a liar. He is not happy.
 * The old folk song "John Riley" is the very embodiment of this trope. In it, a young woman is questioned by a prospective suitor. She refuses him, because she's betrothed to the titular man, who sailed away some years previously. He persists, asking what she'll do if her fiancee has died in battle, drowned, etc. She answers that she'll mourn him and remain true to his memory. She persists in this line of reasoning, even when he suggests that her fiancee may have married someone else. After this, he reveals himself to be John Riley, having been satisfied of her fidelity.
 * The Atlantic Canadian folk song "Dark-Eyed Sailor" has the same setup.
 * There's another version of John Riley where it turns out, after the man and woman have spent the night together, that he isn't really John Riley after all. Which explains why she didn't recognize him. (The standard version goes with the old reliable No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me).
 * "Dark-Eyed Sailor", where the sailor reveals himself by showing the maiden his half of a ring they split before he left, is one of an entire subgenre of folksongs called Broken Token ballads, which all have the same plot. At least one version of "John Riley" adds this element as well.
 * In a moment of Genre Savviness, Frederic from The Pirates of Penzance forces his girlfriend to add the line "and ever after" in a successful pitch to avoid Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder.
 * Even without that clause he's still asking a lot. Since he was born on the 29th of February, he won't technically be of age until he's 84. As Mabel notes " It seems so long".
 * The Harry Chapin song "Corey's Coming" is very much about this. Of course, there's a bit question about whether or not Corey even exists. Naturally, due to the singer, it's an extreme Tear Jerker.
 * Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting For You". It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. "Wherever you go, Whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you. Whatever it takes, Or how my heart breaks, I will be right here waiting for you."
 * All of the events in the rock Opera The Who's Tommy are set in motion when Tommy's father returns from war to find his wife didn't in fact wait for him.
 * The Oak Ridge Boys song I'll Be True To You and also the Conway Twitty song Don't Cry Joni, the latter of which ends with Joni not waiting for the narrator to return.
 * In the song "Penelope", the protagonist goes to train station everyday to wait for her beloved. She gets old and finally the guy comes and thanks her for being so faithful and that his wait is over, she only looks at him and says "No you don't look like he use to look (of course not, he is old now) you aren't him! and goes on waiting. (Gee, if the guy was alive all this time... couldn't he write or something?) The song is also in Spanish, notice a pattern here?
 * Although the promise is never made, "Travelin' Soldier" by the Dixie Chicks hardily applied this trope. He meets her the day he's shipped off for the military, ends up sending her letters. She breaks down crying when she hears his name on a list of Vietnam dead at a high school game.
 * The Vocaloid song "Machibito Umi" (roughly "Waiting Person, Ocean") is about... well, with a title like that, what do you think?
 * Subverted in the Great Big Sea song Dream to Live. First, its told from the guy's perspective, who tried to make his fortune in Boston. Second, he hopes desperately that she is still waiting for him... until she lets him down in the letter. He ends up moving on and starting a family of his own, but is left wondering "what if".
 * Joe Nichols, I'll Wait For You
 * The Gordon Lightfoot song "Bitter Green" is about a woman waiting patiently for the return of her lover, who has been missing for quite some time for reasons the singer is uncertain of. In the final verse, the man does return, only to find her grave.
 * Nastily subverted in the folk song "House Carpenter" (aka "The Demon Lover"). A woman promises to wait for her love, but when he comes back after seven years at sea, she's married with two kids. He convinces her to abscond with him (he's rich now), but after a few weeks of sailing her darling turns into a demon and sinks the ship. They both go to hell.
 * Kamelot's 'A Sailorman's Hymn'.
 * Looking Glass's (1972) Brandy (You're a Fine Girl): "At night when the bars close down / Brandy walks through a silent town / And loves a man who's not around / She still can hear him say... 'Brandy, you're a fine girl / What a good wife you would be / But my life, my love and my lady is the sea'."
 * Voltaire's To the Bottom of the Sea is a concept album set at the turn of the industrial revolution. One song has a man going off to sea to become a merchant trading in imported goods, and his wife waiting for him. Other songs imply he has had other partners while at sea, but that she is his true love, in a kind of "that was just sex, you own my heart" kind of way.
 * "Penelope's Song" by Loreena McKennitt, inspired by The Odyssey (see below under Mythology).
 * Averted in The Magnetic Fields' folk pastiche "Abigail, Belle of Kilronan" where the soldier specifically asks the girl to not do this.

Mythology

 * Older Than Feudalism: Both Odysseus's wife Penelope and his dog Argos do this in The Odyssey, although unusually for this trope, Odysseus actually does come back in the end. It's worth noting that they waited twenty years, and Penelope was besieged by over a hundred suitors. Argos dies after Odysseus refuses to approach him, because that would blow his disguise. Fortunately, Penelope lives.
 * One version of the legend of Finn MacCool features his loyal dog being told to wait for him and doing so for so long that he (the dog, that is) nearly starves.
 * There's quite a few examples in Japanese folktales with a creepy variation. The unfaithful husband leaves, and the wife pledges to wait forever, then dies after a few years. The husband returns and finds everything the same... but wakes up the next morning to find a skeleton in the bed.
 * Interesting exception: According to Plutarch, King Leonidas told his wife before he left to fight the Battle of Thermopylae that she should "marry a good man that will treat you well, bear him children, and live a good life."
 * The Greek story of Clytie is a notable variation: Clytie loved Helios, the sun god, but he did not return her affection, though fully aware of it. No one else made her feel the way he did, so she spent the rest of her life waiting under a tree for him to descend to her. He never came, and she eventually turned into a heliotrope flower, turning her face to him at all times. Depressingly, this story is a metaphor for a common real-life occurrence.
 * In the Ramayana, Rama's brother Laxman's wife waits for him in Ayodhya. Rama's wife Sita waits for Rama to rescue her from Demon King Ravana.
 * There's a big rock above Shatin in the New Territories of Hong Kong called Amah Rock which is supposed to be such a woman. Either she's grown since petrification or she was a giantess, it's about twenty feet tall. It has a silhouette resembling a woman with a baby on her back. How come the baby didn't grow up during the wait?

Theater

 * Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona, to Proteus. Until she gets sick of waiting, disguises herself as a boy, and goes after him.
 * Penelope in The Golden Apple, much as in The Odyssey except her waiting period is reduced to ten years.
 * William Shakespeare did it too, at the end of Love's Labour's Lost. After the Princess and her ladies-in-waiting make their respective suitors promise to wait a year and a day for them   It isn't addressed whether or not they actually do wait for them, though.
 * Peer Gynt has Solvei sing, "Though winter may pass, and spring after that, and the next summer also and then year after year; I will hold you, I will keep watch, and I will wait for you."
 * In Federico Garcia Lorca's 1930s play Rosita The Spinster ("Doña Rosita la Soltera"), the titular Rosita is waiting for her fiance who went to America to seek his fortune, for what's implied to be more than 20 years. Subverted when at the end of the piece it is revealed that the fiance married in America long time ago, and Rosita was the only one who still didn't know. Since he didn't bother to cancel his commitment to Rosita, she is now too old to find any prospect, and the waiting has left her too tired to even protest, only lament over her lost years and opportunities.

Video Games

 * Celes plays the waiting woman in the famous opera scene of Final Fantasy VI, right down to the white dress (not tattered, though).
 * Both Millenia and Elena from Grandia II are shown waiting for Ryudo to return to them.
 * In Legaia II: Duel Saga, Maya and Sharon are shown  to be waiting for Lang, as he goes off on more adventures.
 * Ciel, at the end of Mega Man Zero 4, still believes that Zero is out there somewhere and that she needs to help the world for him. Freesia, the slow "I miss you" vocal version of the game's theme, plays over the ending credits, presumably expressing the thoughts of Ciel herself (especially as Rie Tanaka is the singer). After the credits,
 * In Tales of Phantasia Klarth's assistant Mirald promises to wait as long as necessary for his return. Up until that point it had been implied that he wasn't fully aware she loved him (or even that he loved her, depending on how you interpret the character). Made all the more poignant because  If you beat the game, he does indeed return. In a different variant, Arche makes this promise
 * Tales of the Abyss: "Come home! You have to come home... you have to! I'll be waiting... always..."
 * Deconstructed in Tales of Graces. After seven years of waiting for Asbel after the prologue, Cheria is rather bitter by the time the main game starts.
 * In Planescape: Torment, the Nameless One has this effect on his love interests.
 * "Time is not your enemy. Forever is."
 * "I shall wait for you in death's halls, my love."
 * Persona 3 has Koromaru, who went for walks at Naginaki Shrine after his master died. Eventually, he moves into the dorm with S.E.E.S. but the player can still take him on walks there.
 * In Romancing SaGa, this happens at the end of one hero's scenario:
 * Kairi was going to do this for Sora in Kingdom Hearts, but the events of Chain of Memories made her forget who Sora is for most of the year he was gone. It happened when she regained her memories of him, though.
 * A variation of this is used in The World Ends With You.
 * In Knights of the Old Republic II, for three of the four possible choices for the first game's ending (Light Side PC or Dark Side male PC), it's established that the first game's PC left their Love Interest behind when they left. With either Light Side choice, a scene near the end shows that the Love Interest is waiting for any news of the PC's return. For the Dark Side male, Bastila got tired of waiting and went off to find him.
 * This Troper plays a LS Female Revan, and got tears in her eyes during that scene. Raphael Sbarge totally earned his paycheck.
 * Also, the Exile in Knights of the Old Republic 2 goes off to find Revan at the end, leaving his/her love interest behind, and it is established that Atton, the Disciple, Visas, or  the Handmaiden stay behind and wait for the Exile to return.
 * Ghost Trick:
 * And then there's the amazing
 * Aribeth's dialogue near the end of Neverwinter Nights if you saved her when you talk to her before going down to face Morag.
 * In Ocarina of Time, pretty much every age-appropriate girl Link meets promises this by the time he leaves them, except Malon. But that might have been because she thought he was a fairy boy.
 * Also in the Zelda games Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons. That horrible tower Ambi was building in Ages was originally planned so she'd have a place to wait for her lover, who's out at sea somewhere. The skeleton captain in Seasons is frantically searching for a bell given to him by his girlfriend, "the queen of some country".
 * Eventually the two of them do meet each other again if you play a linked game between both versions. They happily thank Link for reuniting the two of them.
 * Also in Oracle of Ages, the Maku Tree is saved by Link when she is only a small shrub of a tree and she falls madly in love with him. She declares to Link that one day she will marry him. Thanks to time travel Link arrives 400 years later to when she is a full grown tree and she tells Link that she had waited all these centuries for him to return. Throughout the story she still gushes over him but realizes there isn't time for a relationship given his quest to save Queen Ambi and stop Veran, though she expresses hope that one day the two of them can get together. The statue that Ambi dedicates to Link even gets built right next to the Maku Tree.
 * In Sharin no Kuni, the first thing the main character Kenichi learns about Natsumi is that she's doing this for someone.
 * In Radiant Historia,
 * In Puyo Puyo, part of Oshare Bones' backstory is this. Before he died, he had a significant other who suddenly disappeared one day. He continues to wait for his lover even in undeath, and in Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary, he makes a wish that they will someday be reunited. The wish is technically granted, but due to a slip-up with how Oshare words his wish, he has no idea when that day will come.
 * Subverted in Skies of Arcadia, where Polly waits faithfully for her missing husband. But she doesn't get him back until she joins your crew and goes looking for him.
 * Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica has an interesting variant. Croix makes what amounts to a Childhood Marriage Promise with Luca who agrees to wait until he's a full fledged knight and he comes to take her to Pastalia. However
 * In the Sacred Weapons (Kyo, Chizuru, Iori) Team in The King of Fighters 97,

Visual Novels

 * The Visual Novel Planetarian features an android girl working at a planetarium. When her human co-workers are evacuated from the city due to the war that is going on, they tell her to wait at the planetarium for them, because they'll come back for her when the war is over. Several decades and one disastrous war that kills off most of the human population later, she's still waiting.
 * Probably subverted, since.
 * The Normal ending of the Heaven's Feel scenario in the Fate/stay night game involves the invocation of this trope, when
 * This also happens in the Realta Nua Updated Rerelease for the Fate path.
 * Akiha's True End in Tsukihime. The maids thing she's given up but in truth, she has more confidence that he'll return than they do. She just sees no reason to keep going to his school if he isn't there.
 * Done significantly darker in Ryuukishi's other work, Umineko no Naku Koro ni.
 * Kazuaki's ending in Hatoful Boyfriend has him promise to do this for the heroine.

Western Animation

 * Fry's dog does this in the Futurama episode Jurassic Bark. Using the Trope Namer song makes it so much worse.

Other

 * The Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland was originally based on this trope: in an old house built on an Indian graveyard, a bride sits in the attic, watching the window. Her beloved was killed in a war years before, but even when she died of heartbreak, she still walked the house, and her wails summoned all the restless spirits for miles around. Now she's been relegated to the small, veiled figure at the very end of the tour, heart still beating, whispering "Hurry back... hurry back..."
 * In 2006, the ride was revamped to give the Bride back her focus, although now she's a "Black Widow" who married several men and murdered them all for money.
 * The Disneyland Paris version Phantom Manor pretty much makes the Bride's story the entire focus. When her father finds out that her groom plans to take her away from the town, he is instantly against it. An earthquake occurs and in the chaos, the father dies, though he murders the groom from beyond the grave and continues to haunt his daughter until her death.
 * A non-romantic and non-animal invocation of this was a cartoon by Herblock that ran when the Pathfinder and Sojourner robot probes stopped reporting from Mars. The cartoon shows Sojourner holding up a sign toward Earth, reading, "I'll wait for you."
 * Bowser The Foodstealer trilogy ends this way with

Real Life

 * The dog examples were probably based on stories of several real-life dogs who have done the same: for instance, Hachiko.
 * And Greyfriars Bobby, who's pretty definitely the originator of the Discworld example.
 * And Shep.
 * And recently, this dog in China.
 * Under traditional Jewish law, this can happen involuntarily to wives who are abandoned by their husbands (or whose husbands simply vanish). A divorce is only valid if the husband signs it, and there's no "legally dead" clause—a woman is not a widow unless there are witnesses to her husband's death. If a husband simply vanished, his wife would be considered legally married to him, and unable to marry anyone else. The custom was that if a man went into a dangerous situation where he might vanish without a trace—for example, fighting in war or sailing the sea—he would leave behind a signed certificate of divorce, which could be delivered to his wife if he were lost for a long enough period. Presumably these sailors wanted their beloved to be happy.