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Relationship Reset Button (view source)

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{{trope}}
They've been doing the [[Will They or Won't They?]] dance for a while, or maybe they've always been [[Star-Crossed Lovers]]. Now finally they've actually [[Relationship Upgrade|gotten together]]. What does this mean? It means that something's about to happen so that for one--andone—and only one--ofone—of them, their relationship never happened. Usually that "something" will either be a form of [[Easy Amnesia]], a suspiciously convenient [[Cosmic Retcon]] combined with [[Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory]], or some brand of [[Literal Split Personality]].
 
This can be a useful if [[Wangst]]-ridden way of ensuring that [[Status Quo Is God]] while still [[Ship Tease|throwing a bone to fans who want to see their favorite couple together]]. A relationship that ''neither'' party remembers might also fulfill those conditions, but is also much more likely to be subjected to [[Fridge Logic|nagging doubts]] of the "[[Law of Conservation of Detail|Why does it matter that this happened at all?]]" variety.
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{{examples}}
 
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* The Ruby/Sapphire arc of ''[[Pokémon Special]]'' ends with {{spoiler|Ruby seemingly forgetting his entire relationship development with Sapphire, presumably as an effect of Celebi's warping of time. However, this is played with as the following arc (Emerald) implies at several points that he does remember and is lying to Sapphire, although this plot thread has yet to be clearly resolved.}} It's vaguely justified as Ruby is 12. How many 12 year olds do you know want to be in a committed romantic relationship?
* ''[[Ga -Rei]]'' gives [[Easy Amnesia]] to Kagura after Kensuke rescues her from the [[Eldritch Abomination|Kyubi]].
* The first season of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' ends with everyone losing their memories of everything relating to the Moon Kingdom and their time as heroes, including Darian forgetting his relationship with Serena. Serena remembers everything before anyone else in the next season, leading to her having restart their relationship from scratch.
* [[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5 Ds5D's]]: The Dark Signer arc placed quite a bit of focus on the development of the relationship between [[The Rival|Jack]] [[Jerk Withwith a Heart of Gold|Atlas]] and [[Intrepid Reporter|Carly]] [[Cute Clumsy Girl|Nagisa]], going as far as {{spoiler|mutual [[Love Confession|Love Confessions]]s and ''attempted'' [[Together in Death]] when Carly dies and [[Back From the Dead|becomes]] a [[Love Makes You Evil|Dark]] [[Brainwashed and Crazy|Signer]] and Jack is [[Kill the Ones You Love|forced to kill her.]] At the end of the season, however, a [[Deus Ex Machina]] [[Death Is Cheap|brings Carly back to life]], [[Laser-Guided Amnesia|stripping her of her memories]] of her time as a Dark Signer in the process.}} Their relationship is never developed or brought up again in the later arcs--Carlyarcs—Carly is reduced to [[Comic Relief]] on the same level of significance as the other [[Fan Girl|Fan Girls]]s in Jack's newly-acquired harem, and Jack essentially ignores her for the rest of the series, as if he forgot the whole thing, too. No wonder the shippers are mad.
 
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Fifty50 First Dates]]'': [[Laser-Guided Amnesia|Every]] [[Overly Long Gag|single]] [[Dude, Not Funny|day]] [[It Got Worse|for]] [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|the]] [[Tear Jerker|rest]] [[Babies Ever After|of]] [[Bittersweet Ending|their]] [[Your Mileage May Vary|lives.]]
* The French film ''[[A Very Long Engagement]]'' is about a woman who tries to find out what happened to her fiancé after he is seemingly killed in World War I. At the end she discovers that he has amnesia and doesn't know who she is but it is implied that she will stay with him because he is still the same person sans memory and she still loves him.
* ''[[The Butterfly Effect]]'': The time-resetting hero knows that no matter what he does, his girlfriend will always be miserable if she's with him, so he goes back to his childhood and scares her off. Years later, he crosses her in the street, but of course she has no idea who he is.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* In ''[[Nursery Crime|The Fourth Bear]]'' by Jasper Fforde, Mary and Ashley go out on a date and have a great deal of fun, even though [[Opposites Attract|Ashley's an alien]]. At the climax of the book, Ashley pulls a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to stop a van-full of nuclear cucumbers from destroying Reading. As an alien, he has his memories backed up, so he [[Disney Death|gets better]]; as he was careless about backing himself up, though, he loses the last two weeks of his life, including the date.
* In ''[[The Graveyard Book (Literature)|The Graveyard Book]]'' by [[Neil Gaiman]], Scarlett is given a choice to forget about Bod and everything that happened, and chooses to forget. Although they were never actually more than friends, she's the first human person that Bod has a relationship with.
* In ''[[Otherland]]'' by Tad Williams, Paul Jonas and Martine Desroubins fall in love while inside the eponymous computer simulation. At the climax, they learn that he's actually an [[Brain Uploading|uploaded]] copy of the "real" Paul Jonas; the book ends with Martine meeting the real Paul Jonas and telling him about his dear friends who he hasn't met yet.
 
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The ''[[Angel]]'' episode "I Will Remember You", in which Angel turns human just as Buffy comes to town, so they can spend the day eating peanut butter in bed (and incidentally having lots of sex). It ends up being a disaster, and they need to beg the [[Powers That Be]] for a do-over. Angel remembers; Buffy doesn't.
* Season 3 of ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'' sees Crichton [[Literal Split Personality|split into two identical copies]], with alternate episodes tracking each copy. One of them gets into a serious relationship with Aeryn, so he's the one that has to die before the two plotlines can converge again. They do work things out in the end, though...
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'':
** The episode "Unending" provides a subtle (and possibly [[Word of Saint Paul|deuterocanonical]]) example. Teal'c is the only one who remembers the events of the episode; it's not explicit in the script, but the actors have said they tried to play the episode so as to imply a relationship between Teal'c and Sam during it.
** "Window of Opportunity" has an extremely compressed version. O'Neill is stuck in a [[Groundhog Day Loop]] and the only people who remember it are him, Teal'c, and the antagonist of the week; during one iteration of the loop, he takes the opportunity to resign his commission for the express purpose of kissing Carter without violating regulations.
** In "Past and Present", Daniel's [[Girl of the Week]] turns out to be a previous episode's villain, courtesy of a [[Fountain of Youth]] and some [[Easy Amnesia]]. When she remembers who she really is at the end of the episode, she decides to undergo the amnesia again rather than revert back to villainy, forgetting her romance with Daniel as a side-effect.
* "Unforgettable" from ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' manages to arrange a relationship where this happens to both parties in quick succession.
* ''[[Eureka]]'' likes to play around with this.
** Future!Carter, who's married to Alison, ends up in the present; ironically, his overfamiliarity with her leads to them not actually getting together. {{spoiler|He eventually gets his memories wiped.}}
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* This temporarily happens after the [[Relationship Upgrade]] in ''[[Kim Possible]]'', where Kim is hit by a memory-erasing ray that takes some time to wear off, and the ''very last'' thing she manages to remember is that she and Ron are dating, to Ron's utter frustration.
* At the beginning of the second season of ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' when {{spoiler|Desiree wipes everyone's memories and Danny forgets who Sam is}}.
* ''[[The Simpsons (Animationanimation)|The Simpsons]]'' had an episode like this, only Marge wound up forgetting her entire ten-year marriage to Homer, even after she recovered memories of everything else about the last decade (the kids, etc.)
* On ''[[American Dad (Animation)|American Dad]]'' Stan accidentally erases Francine's memory of the last twenty years when he meant to only erase the last twenty hours. The rest of the episode is about him trying to woo her again in the hope that it will restore her memory.
 
{{reflist}}
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