All Love Is Unrequited

This trope is under discussion in the Trope Repair Shop.

Good Lord, make it stop!

"She thought you were cute, but you were too busy thinking someone else was cute to even notice."

— deathpod, of Cracked, from entry #18 of this article.

This is the state in which nobody seems to be allowed to reciprocate any romantic interest shown in them; since having some sort of love interest is standard for main characters in particular, this inevitably leads down the path of the Love Dodecahedron. Often, a story will begin with this trope, which then evolves into Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends and/or a less restrictive sort of Love Dodecahedron. Also, as the series ends, all bets are off; there might be some resolution.

When fans support relationships that involve unrequited love, you're looking at Starboarding. This may be resolved — or, alternately, made even more awkward — if the unrequited makes their feelings known. The Ignored Enamored Underling may be working under someone Oblivious to Love. Some types of Love Triangles fall into this category.

Another form of using this trope often happens in video games, especially towards the protagonist, especially if female. While some games (particularly those with customizable main characters, which can be made a player's "avatar") allow the player to decide whether someone's love is to be unrequited, many players prefer to keep the potential love interest away to connect with the character themselves. The more the character is intended as Mr. Fanservice or Ms. Fanservice, the more likely this outcome will be.

See also Unrequited Love Lasts Forever, Unrequited Love Switcheroo, Hopeless Suitor.

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Examples

• Anime & Manga
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
• Music
• Video Games
• Western Animation

Asian Animation

• Sparky from Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf has a crush on Tibbie and always tries to do things to impress her or gain her affection. In the end, he never actually gets Tibbie's affection.

Card Games

• The artwork for the Korean-exclusive "Ghostrick Break◊" in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG shows that Ghostrick Yeti has a crush on Ghostrick Yuki-onna, who in turn seems to have a crush on Ghostrick Stein. Unfortunately, Yeti is shown being heartbroken by Yuki-onna showing her affections for Stein (she's seen blowing icy hearts on his back), and Stein seems to be either too dim or oblivious to notice Yuki-onna.

Comic Books

• In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992), Epheremelda seems to have a crush on Link, and blows her stack whenever he ignores her to look for Zelda.
• In the original Runaways miniseries, Gert has a crush on Chase, who has a crush on Karolina, who has a crush on Nico, who has a crush on Alex.
• The Super Young Team of The DCU has a love triangle (that's really more of a love line segment) along these lines; Big Atomic Lantern Boy loves Shiny Happy Aquazon who only has eyes for Well Spoken Sonic Lightning Flash who isn't interested in relationships.
• Ultimate X Men, during the first arc. Mastermind can not get the Scarlet Witch to treat him like anything but dirt, the Scarlet Witch can not get Cyclops to even notice her, Cyclops is too shy to ask Jean to go on a date, and Beast is too shy to open to Storm. Wolverine managed to score with Jean, but ruined their relation forever when he confessed his mission within the X-Men. Some relations would grow in time, but in the initial times this trope was in full effect.
• The ad campaign for the comic Young Heroes In Love explicitly plays with this trope, as does the comic itself.
• The Avengers: During the "Cap's Kooky Quartet" period, Hawkeye was in love with the Scarlet Witch but she only had eyes for Captain America, while Quicksilver stood aside and shook his head at all the lovelornness. Years later both men briefly explored relationships with Wanda, though nothing long-term came of it.

Comic Strips

• In Curtis, title character Curtis Wilkins only has eyes for would-be celebrity Michelle, and barely notices Chutney's crush on him.
• Dogs of C-Kennel had Kenny trying to win over Cocoa's affections, without any success, making it something of a Running Gag.
• Peanuts has this trope as the norm: Unrequited love is practically the only kind of love featured throughout the series.^note In the '90s, Charlie Brown had a girlfriend named Peggy Jean, and their feelings for each other were mutual. She broke up with him just before the strip ended, though. Charlie Brown likes the Little Red-Haired Girl, but she's The Ghost because he can never talk to her. Peppermint Patty and Marcie both like Charlie Brown, who seems generally confused by this. Sally likes Linus and Lucy likes Schroeder, but in both those cases the crushee finds the girl annoying—Linus' usual target is Miss Othmar while Schroeder only likes music. Patty and Shermy were a couple in the earliest strips, but these are never considered canon by fans.
  • Snoopy loves children's book author Miss Helen Sweetstory, who responds to his passionate love letters with obvious form letters. ^note "Dear Friend, Thank you for your letter. Sincerely, Miss Helen Sweetstory." He also fell in love with several female dogs (none of whom were ever shown) and all of them ended badly, with one of them dumping him on their wedding day for his brother Spike.
  • Woodstock pines away for his mother, whom he has not seen since she kicked him out of the nest. Every Mother's Day, he sits on a hill with a flower to give her, but she never shows up.

Fan Works

• In Amazing Fantasy, Phil Urich struggles not to wince whenever Mary Jane calls him a "friend" because he wants things to be so much more. Mary Jane later reveals that his feelings weren't so unrequited after all, but she felt it would be unfair for them to get together when she would be constantly comparing him to Peter.
• Alas, in Blizzard of the Red Castle, battleship Nagato has recently realized that her affection for the Admiral is not only possible due to a legal loophole, but also not a pipedream. Poor woman doesn't realize that he only has eyes for Kongo. Ooi similarly suffers from this. Then again, it's likely for the best: her crush is her sister, and this is Ooi we're talking about.
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: "Insanity is In The Air" runs on a Love Triangle of this nature—Andy is smitten with Maria, but she finds herself more interested in Calvin, who doesn't really care about love at all.
• The Lemony Narrator of Equestria: A History Revealed often goes on a tangent on how she's been trying to get her homeless friend, Crazy Larry, to fall in love with her. He doesn't seem to show any interest in her advances though.
• Peanuts fanfiction Everybody's Gotta Leave Sometime seems to play it straight when Schroeder rejects Lucy for the final time, and Charlie Brown acknowledges he's run out of chances to win the Little Red-Haired Girl over, but then it's subverted when Charlie decides to keep hanging out with Peppermint Patty -who has a crush on him- after his gang breaks up.
• Fate/Black Dawn: Sometime before the start of the fic, Shirou finally realized that Rin and Sakura were in love with him. He refused their advances as he didn't think it was fair to them that he was still in love with Arturia, who was lost. Rin apparently didn't take this well, and became bitter over time.
• Happens to several characters in Forum of Thrones:
  • Rosalie has a one-sided crush on Philip. He does care for her, though decidedly not in a romantic way, but more in the way a father would care for his daughter.
  • Irving Todd holds clear feelings for Maya, even outright admitting so to his drinking buddy Marak. While she is slightly aware of it, she has shown no signs of attraction towards him in return. Given that he is The Load, this is not particularly surprising, not even to him.
  • There are also signs that this is the nature of Alysanne's feelings for Kersea, which are a bit too close to be mere friendship. However, while Kersea values Alysanne as a friend, she certainly harbours no romantic feelings for her.
• In Leave for Mendeleiev...
  • Adrien/Chat Noir yearns after his crimefighting partner Ladybug. However, she doesn't reciprocate his feelings... and unlike the original series, she doesn't have a crush on his Secret Identity, either, as Marinette was transferred into Ms. Mendeleiev's class at the start of the school year, and he didn't show her the kindness that kickstarted said crush in the first place.
  • Marinette's classmate Aurore, meanwhile, has a crush on Adrien... but he's completely oblivious. (Or, given his reaction to learning Marinette isn't interested in him, is so used to dealing with fangirls that Aurore's attraction simply doesn't register as anything special.) When he does start paying attention to her, it's only because he thinks it might help him ferret out Ladybug's Secret Identity.
  • Ondine has a crush on Kim, who's been nursing a crush on Chloe for some time. After getting rejected by Chloe, he realizes that he was ignoring her worst traits in ways that brought out the worst in HIM, and vows to be better... but remains unaware that his friend Ondine might like to become more than friends.
  • Chloe herself has a crush on Adrien, but he's completely uninterested... save for a brief period where he thinks Lady Wifi correctly exposed her as Ladybug, leading him to spend the whole battle harassing the real Ladybug by taunting her about losing her Secret Identity and calling her pet names like Chlohoney. Once the confusion's cleared up, he goes right back to ignoring Chloe's feelings.
• The Light in the Dark: Mulciber only desires Maria Zabini physically, and is implied to be attracted to the power he can reap from her being involved with him.Whatever his motivations, he clearly does not love her, while she is either infatuated with or truly loves him. Severus is in love with Lily, but whether or not his feelings will be reciprocated remains to be seen. Karen Smith of all people has a crush on him, but the feelings are not mutual. Edmund Avery meanwhile is interested in her. James fancies Lily, but she refuses to go out with him due to his bullying of Snape and other students. Evangeline is interested in Kitty, Paris Nott's girlfriend. Bertha had a crush on Alton Avery, who chose her friend Florence instead. Leslie is strongly implied to have loved Veronica romantically, but Veronica dated Regulus Black instead behind her back.
• In the Hetalia fanfic, Love is a Disease, Matthew, a closeted gay teen, accidentally confesses his feelings towards his heterosexual crush Alfred, who reveals this to his friend Gilbert, who (unbeknownst to either Alfred or Matthew) has a crush on Matthew, and uses this information to blackmail and eventually out Matthew to their classmates. The homophobic bullying Matthew faces forces him to change schools, where Matthew is more determined than ever to stay closeted, and gets an unknowing beard in the form of Lilli, who (much to Matthew’s guilt) genuinely likes him. Matthew quickly starts developing feelings for his new friend Ivan who returns those feelings, which is complicated by both Matthew’s attempt to stay in the closet, as well as Gilbert escalating his behavior to Stalker with a Crush and Attempted Rape before finally admitting his feelings after a confrontation with Matthew.
• In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Misty has a crush on Ash, which quickly develops into something much more serious. He's still not aware of this, and he only considers her a friend. The trope is somewhat subverted by the fact that he starts to show hints of being attracted to her as well as the story progresses, and Word of God is that her love won't remain unrequited forever.
• Saving the Boy: Subverted with Katniss and Peeta, but played straight with everyone else. Gale had feelings for Katniss that she never knew about nor returned, while Misu is one of the many girls who had feelings for Gale before his death.
• In the Reborn! (2004) Fanfic Sehnsucht, the audience is initially led to believe that Cynthia, Noriko's past life, spared Daemon Spade after he betrayed the First Generation out of respect for her adoptive sister, Elena. While that may have played a part, the actual reason why Cynthia spared Daemon was because she was in love with him.
• In Sophistication and Betrayal this is a major source of angst for several characters.
• In The Story of Apollo, Daphne and Luca: An Italian Tragedy, resident Big Jerk on Campus and Chick Magnet Vincenzo slowly falls for Luca, who has already a massive crush on his best friend, Alberto.
• Tales of the Undiscovered Swords: Hatsuzakura falls in Love at First Sight with Ōkurikara and is his Stalker with a Crush, but the latter predictably doesn't appreciate it. To make matters worse, Tsurumaru further taunts him that maybe he's just being a Tsundere about it.
• Total Drama: Battle of the Generations: Rodney believes he and Amy are a couple, though the later is merely using him as an easily exploitable extra vote.
• Transformers Animated: Cybertronian Genesis: Both Optimus and Sentinel had feelings for their classmate Elita-1, who wasn't interested in any romance (though it's implied she felt something for Optimus), only dating the latter because he asked her out. Now, as Blackarachnia, she despises both of them. As for Optimus, he is still in love with her, won't even entertain the idea of entering a relationship with anyone else, and futilely hopes that she can still be redeemed.
• In Merlin fanfic A Very Hairy Situation, Merlin and Gwen are both in love with Arthur, who is in love with Gwaine. In the past, Gwen had a crush on Merlin, who didn't even notice. Due to his Magic Hair, Gwaine is actually a common target of unrequited love.
• White Sheep (RWBY): Subverted; in canon, Illia's affections for her friend Blake were unrequited. Here, they were apparently in a relationship when Blake was in the White Fang, in addition to Blake's relationship with Adam. While Illia and Adam weren't together, it seems like all three were aware of everything and fine with it. When Adam and Illia show up, Yang calls them Blake's "psycho ex-boyfriend" and "psycho ex-girlfriend," and no one disagrees. After Adam is killed, Illia sticks around and does her best to help, and in the epilogue she's living with Blake and Sun in what everyone assumes is some complicated sexual relationship.
• Played for Laughs in Chapter 64 of You Got HaruhiRolled!, which features a severely dysfunctional Love Quadrilateral in which no crush is requited. To wit, Kuyou plans to brainwash Fujiwara into having sex with her, Fujiwara tries to catch Kyouko in the shower, Kyouko practically Squees over Sasaki, and, to top it all off, Sasaki makes the polygon open-ended by attempting to kiss her own reflection.

Films — Animated

• In ParaNorman, Alvin has a crush on Courtney, who has a crush on Mitch, who already has a boyfriend.

Films — Live-Action

• Happens to Tessa in the film The Constant Nymph.
• Dance of the Dead: Steven likes Gwen and tries asking her to go to prom with him. Gwen wants to go with Nash Ramble instead, as her first choice bailed on her due to sickness. Nash, however, shoots her down. Steven still likes Gwen, but she takes a while to realize it.
• Easter Parade: At least until about a half hour before the end, Hannah loves Don, Don loves Nadine, Nadine loves Johnny (for his money), and Johnny loves Hannah. Then, of course, Don loves Hannah ("Why didn't you tell me I was in love with you?"), Johnny gives his blessing, and everyone forgets about Nadine.
• Farewell, My Queen: The Queen is implied to be in love with Gabrielle de Polignac, who is ungrateful to her. Sidonie Laborde is implied to be in love with the Queen, who sends her on a suicide mission to protect Gabrielle de Polignac.
• Played straight in Love and Death, where Boris has been in love with his cousin Sonja since they were kids, but she pines futilely for his idiot brother Ivan, who in turn only has eyes for Anna. Later parodied when Sonja's mopey cousin Natasha lists a long string of her acquaintances who are all pining after each other.
• Happened to all the characters in The Love of Siam.
  • Played straight for Ying. She is in love with Mew, but Mew tells her he will always only see her as a good friend.
  • Played straight for Donut and her love for Tong. Granted she actually did date him but Tong wasn't actually in love with her.
  • Played around a bit with Tong and Mew. The two boys loved each other, but they ultimately couldn't get together due to reasons.
• Main Street Meats: Sis is revealed to have had a crush on Tommy since they were in kindergarten. Tommy, however, NEVER seems to remember interacting with her.
• Miao Miao. The main three characters play this straight, but even the side characters get this to a platonic degree.
• In Red Riding Hood, Valerie's sister is in love with Henry, who crushes on Valerie, who only sees Peter. Also, Valerie's mother Suzette was in love with and had an affair with Henry's father and it's left ambiguous whether she loved Valerie's father at all.
• In the Japanese DVD Sea Of Dreams, one short centers around a group of five friends spending a day together at Tokyo Disney Sea park. The story is narrated by a boy who has unrequited feelings for a girl dating another guy in the group. Throughout the short, it is revealed that all five teens have unrequited love for another in the group, but no one really acts on these feelings and life goes on.
• In She's the Man, Viola likes Duke who has a crush on Olivia who likes Sebastian (who is actually Viola in disguise). Stalker with a Crush Malcolm also likes Olivia. Eunice likes Sebastian (who is actually Viola) with Toby habouring a crush on her. Thankfully, this gets all sorted out in the end.
• Tara towards Jake in Shrooms. It's implied (and mentioned in the Director's Commentary) that this, combined with the deathcap-induced craziness, unleashes Tara's repressed rage and causes her to kill everyone.
• Sky High (2005): Mr. Boy is in love with Josie a.k.a. Jetstream, and it's implied he's loved her since they were at the titular school together. Unfortunately for him, she's Happily Married to fellow superhero The Commander who Mr. Boy used to be sidekick to.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), both Mikey and Vernon have made it clear that they are attracted to April but she either ignores their advances or brushes it aside.

Podcasts

• Jessica and Keri in the Cool Kids Table game Bloody Mooney have mutual undisclosed crushes on each other, but of course neither of them know because they run in different circles.

Puppet Shows

• Glenis the Guinea Pig was introduced to the Roland Rat franchise in the TV-am days as hopelessly in love with Roland, who was far too self-centred to care. Season two of Roland Rat: The Series introduced Roxanne Rat, who Roland was instantly smitten with, but who was more interested in taking his job.

Radio

• Our Miss Brooks:
  • Averted with Miss Brooks and her Love Interest Mr. Boynton. There, her main problem is that Mr. Boynton is too shy or awkward to make a move; or sometimes just wary of a relationship that would end in marriage. For example, in "The Wrong Mrs. Boynton", Mr. Boynton all but tells Dean Faraday of State University that he would like to someday propose marriage to Connie Brooks. Mr. Boynton and Miss Brooks marry at the end of The Movie Grand Finale
  • Played straight with Dumb Jock Stretch Snodgrass and his unrequited love for Harriet Conklin. Harriet just happens to be the girlfriend of his Walter Denton, his best friend. His resultant depression is a problem in "Stretch Has A Problem". Stretch's sitting with Harriet at the movie theater helps set off a fight with a jealous Walter in "Stretch v. Walter Grudge Match". Finally, Stretch's attempt to "worship [Harriet] from afar" by sending her anonymous love letters, sets off the events of "Poetry Mixup".
  • "Poetry Mixup" was remade for television as "Bones, Son of Cyrano". Only instead of Stretch falling for Harriet, it was his brother Bones.

Theater

• Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw: Raina does start out in love with Sergei, but she's more in love with the romantic ideas she holds about what he's doing out on the battlefield, and once Bluntschli shatters her notions of romantic battle (in the first scene), we've got… Raina starting to want Bluntschli, Bluntschli thinking she's far too young to pursue, Sergei still thinking he's going to marry Raina but really more lusting toward housemaid Luca, and Luca seemingly going to marry a fellow servant. Of course, near the end, Luca pulls the rug out from under this arrangement, and everyone falls over into the right arms.
  Bluntschli: 23? 23?! If you were 23 when you said those things to me, I shall take them very seriously indeed.
• Stephen Sondheim's Follies loves this trope. Buddy is having an affair with Margie, but it leaves him unfulfilled. All he really wants is for his wife Sally to reciprocate his feelings. But Sally has never gotten over having her heart broken by Buddy's best friend Ben, who married her best friend Phyllis. Phyllis still loves Ben, but has become increasingly bitter and jaded as she's grown to realize that Ben only loves himself.
• In The History Boys: Posner loves Dakin, but Dakin is (if not in love with, then at least attracted to) Irwin. More amusingly, Scripps has a theory that this is the defining characteristic of Christianity.
• In Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos/No Exit, Estelle wants Garcin (more specifically, she wants a warm male body, and Garcin will do); Garcin, on the other hand, is attracted to the intelligence of Ines; but Ines is fixated on Estelle, who reminds her of her former lover Florence. The fact that they're stuck in a love triangle that will never be resolved is their chief torment in hell.
  • Peter Fenton's spiritual successor to No Exit, Abandon All Hope also has a love triangle like its predecessor. The fundamentalist Evan likes Melissa. Jerk with a Heart of Jerk Melissa likes Sean. Armored closet gay Sean likes Evan.
• Jasper in Deadland:
  • An odd mutual example. Agnes directly tells Jasper that she loves him, but assumes that Jasper doesn't love her back because he insists that they are Better as Friends after Their First Time. Meanwhile Jasper fears that Agnes doesn't actually love him, because she's so far out of his league.
  • Gretchen falls in love with Jasper while guiding him through Deadland, but he's so worried about finding Agnes that he doesn't even consider that love might be the thing that motivates Gretchen to stay with him as the quest gets more dangerous.
• Kimberly Akimbo (2021) has a quartet of students in a love square: Aaron likes Delia, who likes Teresa, who likes Martin, who likes Aaron.
• A Midsummer Night's Dream has several human characters falling in love with one another, then out of love and into love with someone else, all at the wrong time, thanks to the fairies using love potions to mess with their already confused relationships for the lols. This trope arises temporarily after Lysander has been induced to love Helena and before Demetrius has.
• Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan: the soldiers love the maids, who love Bunthorne, who loves Patience, who loves nobody.
• The Sea Gull: Medvedenko for Masha, Masha for Treplev, Treplev for Nina, Nina and Arkadina for Trigorin.
  • Quite a few in Uncle Vanya, too. Chekhov sure loved his Love Dodecahedrons.
  • And The Cherry Orchard as well, mixed with Cannot Spit It Out.
• Twelfth Night, up until Sebastian says "madam, I will".
• Team Starkid loves this trope. In both A Very Potter Musical, the sequel, and Me and My Dick, unrequited love is everywhere. Just for the sake of listing, in A Very Potter Musical and its sequel, we have:
  1. Draco and Ron both like Hermione and are in denial about it.
  2. Pansy likes Draco, who's just using her to cover up his crush on Hermione.
  3. Hermione likes Ron (and, according to A Very Potter Sequel, Harry), but neither one is very nice to her.
  4. Snape liked Harry's mother, much to Harry's disgust. That, and Lily was married.
  5. Ginny likes Harry, who likes Cho Chang, who is dating Cedric Diggory.
  6. Ron is implied to be bisexual for Harry.
  7. Umbridge has a crush on Dumbledore, who's gay. Dumbledore also seems to have a crush on Snape.
  8. Bellatrix loves Voldemort, who seems to love Quirrel…
• Wicked: Nessa → Boq → G(a)linda → Fiyero. The only requited love is between Fiyero and Elphaba, the latter of whom thought it was unrequited at first.

Visual Novels

• In Little Busters!, Sasami is interested in Riki's friend Kengo, but also attracts the attention of Aikawa, a very minor character whose love sickness Riki and Rin are asked to cure during one of Lennon's missions. The two succeed in helping him out not by playing The Matchmaker, but by helping him realize his feelings are unrequited and helping him get back on track with his studying, which he was too distracted to do. Kengo is implied to have feelings for Miyuki Koshiki, though she ended up committing suicide in the real world, making her The Lost Lenore for Kengo. Although Sasami does become a heroine with her own route in the Updated Re-release, the fact that her route takes place after the events of Refrain implies the other girls' feelings for Riki would be unrequited. The ending to Sasami's route even makes it explicit that Rin was jealous of Sasami when she revealed she was dating Riki.
• Majikoi! Love Me Seriously!:
  • Moro loves Miyako, and due to Miyako's crush on Yamato it will never amount to anything.
  • Hideo loves Kazuko, but on the routes where he tells her as much, she turns him down for being so rambunctious.
  • Most notably, Miyako is completely in love with Yamato, and while it isn't completely unrequited, outside of her route he always tells her that he'd prefer to stay just friends.
  • And the one time Cap experiences any romantic or sexual feelings, they are for Momoyo, at the end of Momoyo's route when she'd already fallen for Yamato.
• Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair has a Love Dodecahedron that includes all the main cast besides Nobara and Mika.
  • Rie is in love with Taiko, who seems somewhat more interested in Raiko. While Raiko seems to feel something for Taiko, she doesn't seem to have any romantic feelings for him.
  • Kotoba has a crush on Momoko, who's in a relationship with Hiro. While he's a pervert who lusts after boys and girls, he apparently has a particular fixation on Momoko. It's apparently strong enough that he started stalking her, and she could manipulate his feelings for her to use him in her plan.
  • Runa was in love with Hiro, who forgot about her as soon as Momoko made her debut at the concert. Of course, Hiro doesn't actually love Momoko either. He claims to be in love with Kamen, who definitely doesn't return the feelings, but despite him being a womanizing jerk, she doesn't entirely dismiss the possibility that his feelings were genuine.
  • Kamen was in love with her best friend, Momoko, but never told her how she felt. At the end, she seems to be developing feelings for Raiko.

Webcomics

• From Aisopos, we have two examples:
  • Yadmon, the Big Bad of the series, was in love with Elli, Aesop's mother. However, she chose a humpty dumpty, named Frontis, and together, they ran away to Athens.
  • Happens again with his son, Rikes, who fell in love with a beautiful woman from Samos, but it turned out that she planned to marry someone else…
• In All Roses Have Thorns, Galvan is in love with Auron, but Auron very obviously still has feelings for Collamair, and Collamair is in love with Faylin, but Faylin was in love with Isleen, but she rejected him. Wow.
• Bittersweet Candy Bowl has a chronic case of this. Almost every character in the cast suffers from this trope at some point.
• In El Goonish Shive, Catalina had a crush on Susan who while gender-swapped had a thing for female Justin who had a crush on Elliot. All of them have an Incompatible Orientation. This was eventually resolved with everyone finding alternative partners except Susan who decided she wasn't ready for a relationship anyway.
• Girl Genius:
  • Happens between minions. Violetta and Snaug both crush on Moloch, who goes after Sanaa instead, who finds it stupid. After Moloch becomes more assertive as Agatha's chief minion, Sanaa starts being genuinely attracted to him... while he decides he needs to reevaluate his feelings and sort out how he thinks about any of the girls.
  • Happens everywhere in Paris. Colette has a crush on Agatha (though she might have been joking, and wasn't too worried about it anyway), while Agatha is still pining for Gil and Tarvek. Hoffman has a giant crush on Colette, and while she admits he's not as bad as the blatant gold-diggers, she still dislikes how he can't form coherent sentences around her. Larana has a crush on Hoffman, and is similarly incoherent around him, but he doesn't even notice. This gets worse when Larana finds out that Hoffman accidentally entered them into an Arranged Marriage to keep her kingdom and his adopted kingdom from fighting.
    Zeetha: Everyone in Paris can't be like this. I mean, I've seen kids.
• Homestuck: Okay. Karkat had a confirmed one-sided crush on Jade, as did Tavros, and she rejected both. Gamzee at one point had a flushed crush on Tavros, and it's unknown how he responded. Vriska also had a very one-sided crush on Tavros and also had a crush on John that he seemed to return at first but has since grown out of. Kanaya had a one-sided crush on Vriska. Karkat seems to still have feelings for his ex-girlfriend Terezi. Nepeta had a one-sided crush on Karkat, while Eridan was also after Nepeta for a while, as well as half the cast, but most dramatically a red crush on Feferi and a black crush on Sollux. Both Sollux and Equius had things for Aradia which were complicated after she died. After being brought back to life as a robot, Aradia seemed to retain some feelings for Sollux, at least to the point where her last action before randomly causing herself to explode was to hug him, though at that point he was dating Feferi. Both WV and AR had things for PM which she never found out about before AR died and WV was, at the least, gravely injured. PM has a black crush on Bec Noir, who has a red crush on her. Finally, all of the Alpha kids have a crush on Jake, plus Roxy also has an unrequited thing for Dirk, while Jake wouldn't have minded the idea of going out with Jane or Dirk, and tried to date Dirk, but isn't really that interested, and also has a crush on Aranea, who seems to have a pretty similar lukewarm interest in him.
• In Hooves of Death, Combat Medic Blaze is obviously enamored with Sergeant Glitter, and he's moody and sarcastic unless in her presence. Glitter is most definitely aware of his crush, frequently making him take over her squad-training duties so she can undertake dangerous mission to impress Commander Sprinkles. Sprinkles, meanwhile, has time for anything except making sure everyone under his protection survives the Zombie Apocalypse they're currently facing.
• I Don't Want This Kind of Hero: Barring minor characters/characters who eventually die, the examples of happy, requited couples is limited solely to Haze and Raptor and Gregor and Eunbidan. Dana is in love with Osu, who appears to be Oblivious to Love. Lady is in love with Naga, who would prefer that she stay far, far away from him. Orca is in love with Medusa, who sees him more as a surrogate son than anything. Also, the entire plot happens because Baek Morae is in love with Raptor while she would very much rather see him dead.
• Jack: The American Ghost: Cindy’s obsession with Jack, Jack’s obsession with Misha, and Aidan’s feelings for Go-Eun.
• Jupiter-Men:
  • Rick Chang, a member of the Jupiter High rugby team, has a clear crush on Jackie and he invites her to his party without a second thought. While Jackie is down to party, it's clear in Episode 8 that the feeling isn't mutual and she'd rather shove him onto resident Alpha Bitch Victoria.
  • Victoria's much more demure Beta Bitch, Pepper, clearly has a thing for Quintin, stammering and getting tongue-tied while triyng to talk to him and Cannot Spit It Out. Quintin is oblivious to this and only watches in confusion as Pepper gets called away by Victoria.
• Davey of Maggot Boy is hopelessly in love with Sam, which will never go anywhere because he's dead, and she has a huge crush on her boss Lazaro, but he just hates everyone in general.
• The gods in A Moment of Peace form a love conga line. The god of Trust and Betrayal loves the goddess of Stories, who loves the god of In-Between Places, who loves the goddess of Glory.
• In Monsterpop, love is everywhere. Sasha has a crush on George, who's in love with Marina, who turns out to like Franny, who's in a relationship with Percy already.
• In 19 Days, it's lightly implied that He Tian might have a thing for Jian Yi, while Jian Yi is definitely in love with Xheng Xi.
• In Sandra and Woo the Alpha Bitch Zoey is revealed to be a lesbian and has a crush on her friend Michelle. However, Michelle is shown as being homophobic and doesn't return her feelings after she kissed her. Cue pity.
• The Frederick, Leif and Canta triangle in Sire. Frederick loves Canta who loves Leif who is withdrawn and closed off to everyone. It should be noted that as Lineage Children of Raoul, Erik and Christine this alters their fated narrative a little bit.
• In Sluggy Freelance Zoe cycles through this trope pretty darn quickly in this strip. Before she'd always rejected Sam's advances, finding him creepy. Then, when he goes missing, she laments how she let her "last hope of true love" slip through her fingers. Then, when Sam turns up alive and well, she's back to thinking he's disgusting. And then, no more thirty seconds later, she finds out Sam's gotten married. Instantly she's calling him her one true love again.
• The webcomic Supermegatopia features Grease Monkey in love with Weasel Boy, Weasel Boy in love with Tiger Lass, Tiger Lass in love with Mighty Yak, and Mighty Yak is too dumb to notice the Love Dodecahedron. More links on the chain get added over time.
• xkcd strip #642 "Creepy" shows a man imagining himself trying to talk to a woman on the train, and then getting shamed for hitting on her when she doesn't want it; the comic then shows that the woman really is attracted to the man, but is too shy to tell him directly.

Web Original

• In the TV Tropes original series Echo Chamber, Shannon pines for Tom, Tom pines for Porn Girl, Zack pines for Dana, and Dana might or might not pine for Tom. Probably the only character who isn't in some way involved in the Love Dodecahedron is Mr. Administrator, and that would just be weird.
• A "story arc" on Channel Awesome, mostly centered around the Psychotic Love Triangle of The Nostalgia Chick, Todd in the Shadows and the only innocent one being Obscurus Lupa. (The Chick not only kidnapped Todd multiple times, but turned into Alex Forrest when Lupa turned up in her apartment.)
  Lupa: Did you just attack me with a butter knife?!
  Chick: (licks blade) IT'S NUTELLA, BITCH.
• RWBY Chibi: In the main show, Jaune liked Weiss for a while before moving on, Nora doesn't know how to tell Ren how she feels because she doesn't know if he reciprocates, and Pyrrha won't tell Jaune how she feels while Jaune is pining over Weiss. Chibi mocks the teenage drama during a skit where Jaune is rejected by Weiss when he wants to study with her. Dejected, he rejects Pyrrha who asks the same of him. Upset, Pyrrha then rejects Weiss, who wanted to study with her. Witnessing the entire thing, Ren declares it's unbelievable that they cannot see the obvious. Nora growls a sarcastic agreement while waving a placard at him that says "Notice me!".

Real Life

• Almost everyone has experience with this trope in Real Life. The vagaries of dating being what they are, you end up having a lot more crushes that go nowhere than the ones that result in anything. It's hard to generalize, but a ratio of 5 unrequited crushes to 1 relationship is what a lot of people may end up experiencing.
• Very often happens amongst taken best friends.
• Dante Alighieri is considered the posterboy for unrequited love, although his situation was Courtly Love.

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