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{{trope}}{{Needs Image}}
{{quote|'''Harry Kim:''' ''[after telling Tom he's in love again] I know what you are gonna say...''
'''Tom Paris:''' ''No, no. Actually, I was gonna congratulate you. I mean, she's not [[Cyborg|a Borg]], she's not [[Kiss Me, I'm Virtual|a hologram]], and she's [[Boy Meets Ghoul|not dead]]. Looks like you might have finally found yourself the perfect woman.''|''[[Star Trek
Some people are just unlucky in love. Others seem to have done something to personally piss Cupid off and are spending the rest of their lives paying for it. The
By making sure that the relationships are doomed via the use of flawed love interests, the writers are able to make sure that [[Status Quo Is God]] without having legitimate love interests [[Stuffed Into the Fridge]]. The trouble is, when it's done to a character several times over the course of a long-running series, they end up coming off as either having really bad taste in love interests or being a magnet for psychotics. Or both.
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For this reason, long-running series characters are the main ones to run into this problem, especially ones who use [[Girl of the Week]] or [[Monster of the Week]] format (usually the two end up being combined). Usually only males suffer this problem, but that has more to do with the fact that [[Most Writers Are Male]] than any inherent quality of this trope.
Interestingly, this usually only happens to secondary
Like everything else that he can't catch a break with, the [[Butt Monkey]] is usually the most common victim of this trope.
See also: [[Dating Catwoman]], [[Fatal Attraction]], [[Romantic False Lead]].
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
* Used in ''[[Katekyo Hitman Reborn]],'' where Longchamp Naito has a different girlfriend in every appearance. Played with in the sense that they're all hideous, so it's not like the writers are even pretending that they have a chance.
* Oh god, this is almost a joke in ''[[Code Geass]]''! Poor Lelouch Lamperouge just can't catch a break with his love life!
** The [[Naive Everygirl]]? {{spoiler|Shirley is [[Mind Rape
** The [[Action Girl]]? {{spoiler|He pushed Kallen away from him so she could live a [[
** The [[Mysterious Waif]]? {{spoiler|C.C. [[Laser
** The [[Rebellious Princess]]? {{spoiler|Even when Lelouch admits Euphie was his first love... He accidentally Geassed her to perform a genocide and then had no choice but to kill her. }}
** [[Brother
** His [[Gay Option
** Himself? [[Squick|Not]] [[Screw Yourself|that way!]] {{spoiler|He died too.}}
* Yuuichi Aizawa of ''[[Kanon]]'' is often joked to attract girls with psychological problems or on the verge of death. The one normal girl in his harem? {{spoiler|Her mother gets hit by a car.}}
* Train from ''[[Black Cat (
* ''[[Sakura Gari]]'': Every one of Souma's lovers are shown to have horrible endings. He even notices and mentions it himself. Of course, this doesn't stop him from continuing to take lovers.
* This trope is what [[The Hero|Terry Bogard]] in the [[The Anime of the Game|OVA and animated movie adaptations]] of ''[[Fatal Fury]]'' becomes. At the point in time in which they were made, Terry did not have a canonical love interest (indeed, [[The Smurfette Principle|The One Girl]] existing in the games proper at the time was/is crushing on Terry's younger brother), so a pair of [[Canon Foreigner]] girls were added in to amp of the drama:
** The first OVA gives us [[Broken Bird]] Lily McGuire {{spoiler|who is practically a slave to the [[Big Bad]], Geese Howard, and in fact was partly responsible for an incident in which Geese killed Terry's father, which emotionally broke her. Regardless, the two fall for each other, and just as Lily has made her [[High Heel Face Turn]] and agreed to finally leave Geese to be with Terry, Geese [[Ki Attacks|Reppuukens]] her through a window to her death. His [[Failure Knight|failure]] to protect Lily haunts Terry for the remainder of the trilogy.}}
** In [[The Movie]], Terry meets [[Plucky Girl]] Suila Gaudemus {{spoiler|who as luck would have it, is the [[Mad
* Yoko of [[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann|Gurren Lagann]] had the bad luck of drawing the romantic attention of two characters. {{spoiler|Kamina and Kittan.}} Both of them don't survive the show. {{spoiler|Kamina}} perishing in the battle for Dai-Gunzan, and {{spoiler|Kittan}} [[Heroic Sacrifice|sacrificing himself]] to save the team. These factors {{spoiler|lead her to being alone for most likely the rest of her life.}}
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** [[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]] started out caught in this revolving door for his first few decades. And that's not to mention [[Stuffed Into the Fridge|what happened to Gwen Stacy]]...
** [[Daredevil]] is the king of this trope. If Matt Murdock is attracted to you, your days are almost certainly numbered. Among his girlfriends include Elektra (murdered, {{spoiler|but she got better}}, Karen Page (murdered), Heather Glenn (suicided), Glorianna O'Breen (murdered), and Milla Donovan (insane). And that's not counting the merely misguided or evil ones, like Lady Deathstrike, Typhoid Mary, and Echo. This trope is so prevalent that right after Matt hooked up with {{spoiler|Dakota North}}, fans were already posting "We hardly knew ye" laments.
** [[
*** This trend even continues in the [[New 52]] reboot with his new on-and-off girlfreidn Jaina "Jai" Hudson {{spoiler|who is also the supervillain White Rabbit.}}
** Nico Minoru of ''[[Runaways]]''. {{spoiler|Her first boyfriend,who she still hasn't completely gotten over after his death, turned out to be [[The Mole]] and [[I Want My Beloved to Be Happy|she ended things with her second boyfriend because he fell for another girl.]] She also made out with a vampire at one point.}}
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== Films -- Live-Action ==
* Parodied in [[Shallow Hal]]. Hal's friend laments that they're "cursed when it comes to women". We find out they only pursue women who are way out of their league and then complain about small imperfections.
* This was lampshaded in ''[[
== Literature ==
* Bingo Little of ''[[Jeeves and Wooster (
** Bertie himself is perhaps a better example. While Bingo's romances tend to break off more because the girl dumps him/he falls for some other girl/the girl was never dating him to begin with than because there's a problem with the girl herself, Bertie legitimately
* Chiao Tai, former highway man turned Judge's assistant in the ''[[Judge Dee]]'' mysteries is an ancient Chinese poster boy for this trope. One girl turns out to be an enemy agent who tries to kill him. Another woman is a husband killer and his true soul mate is not only a dancer-courtesan but a murderess. Chiao Tai should give serious thought to entering a monastery.
== Live-Action TV ==
* Harry Kim, from ''[[Star Trek
** [[SF Debris|Poor dumb Harry.]]
* Neither can Xander from ''[[
** And then, when he does finally find himself a stable, (relatively) normal love interest {{spoiler|she's killed by a Japanese vampire a few comics later}}. Now, he is {{spoiler|in a relationship with his best friends little sister. Ah, love...}}
** Buffy herself doesn't fare much better. Her three boyfriends (counting Spike, but not her one-night stand) were, respectively, a Ensouled Vampire who [[Curse Escape Clause|lost the soul]] [[Can't Have Sex Ever|after her night with him]], a Super-Soldier, and an Unensouled Vampire who proceeded to get a soul and whose relationship with her was quite the unhealthy one.
** Lampshaded in Season 1. At the end of an episode, Willow is depressed cause it turned out the "boy" she had a crush on and that seemed interested in her was in fact a robotic demon. Buffy and Xander tries to cheer her up by pointing out that Buffy's current boyfriend is a vampire and that Xander was recently attracted to a She-Mantis. It doesn't quite work, as they ALL end up depressed.
** On ''[[
* Ah, the poor characters on ''[[
* Sam Winchester from ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]''. His girlfriend was killed, he had to kill Madison, Ruby was a demon and evil, he couldn't stay with Sarah because he wanted to find his dad and the demon who killed his girlfriend...
* Daniel Jackson of ''[[
** And, considering her husbands included [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|a religious zealot bent on utter domination of the galaxy and a cook who couldn't make pie]] he was kind of a step up for her too.
* Rare female example: Catherine Willows of ''[[
* Another rare female example is Stella Bonasera of ''[[CSI: NY]]''.
* ''[[
* DI Robbie Ross in ''[[Taggart]]''
* Justin in ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]''. First there was the werewolf, then there was the vampire...
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== Magazines ==
* Parodied by ''[[The Onion]]'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20100219134602/http://www.theonion.com/content/node/34124 here.]
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== Videogames ==
* Non-romantic example: Latooni Subota from ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' seems to be attracting danger for whoever she is close with... First, when she is in The School, she gets to see her friends die one by one due to super crazy training method. When she gets out and found by Garnet and Giado, nothing happens much... until she gets acquainted with Princess Shine Hausen. Said Princess later gets caught by the enemy, [[Brainwashed and Crazy]] and starts attacking her (but recovers). While she thought it'll be over, her two surviving friends Arado Balanga and Seolla Schweitzer got sent to kill her, and while Arado is kind of lucky to avoid it quickly, Seolla got subjected with various brainwashing to the point that she thinks Latooni needs to die, thus putting herself in various dangers on her own, but she got saved eventually. Then when she wanted to save her [[Onee
** Also, before Lamia entered the Aggressors, Latooni was a member of it alongside Raidiese F. Branstein. Did danger come to him too? Oh hell yes. He ends up meeting with his arch nemesis Archibald Grims, ends up temporarily losing his cool and fatally shot, almost killing him...
** Ryusei is almost certainly doomed to his inevitable {{spoiler|[[Heroic BSOD]] when the SRX gets wrecked and Aya is missing presumed dead}} when the plot from [[Super Robot Wars Alpha|Alpha 3]] gets brought over to the [[Super Robot Wars Original Generation|OGverse]].
* Montblanc gets a [[Prank Date]] in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' '''and''' ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics
== Webcomics ==
* Webcomic example: All of [[Ctrl
** Until Lucas DOES reciprocate her feelings and walks in on her taking advantage of the open nature of their relationship...with another man.
* In ''[[Something
* Justin from ''[[Wapsi Square]]'' described himself as a crazy chick magnet. {{spoiler|It turns out that there's a little bit more to it than that. He doesn't just attract crazy women, he attracts crazy ''paranormal'' women, many of whom want to do things that he is uncomfortable with.}}
== Western Animation ==
* Hadji from ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures
** A succubus-like monster who was using him to get to Jessie so it could consume her life force, and
** The daughter of his adoptive father's terrorist arch-enemy. After this particular Reveal, Hadji's friend Jessie Lampshaded his
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Love Tropes]]
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