Bickering Couple, Peaceful Couple

In a work which features more than one couple, usually a main pairing and a beta couple, the writers will try to differentiate the two couples from each other. An easy way to do this is to have one couple bicker constantly while the other gets together easily and are sweetly in love. The main couple can be either type, as long as the beta couple are the other type.

Note that while many fictional couples argue a bit before they get together, this trope is about long-term relationships- the bickering couple will always bicker, even after they're together.

See Slap-Slap-Kiss, Belligerent Sexual Tension and Everyone Can See It for the bickering couple, and Sickeningly Sweethearts or Happily Married for the peaceful couple. Also related to Beta Couple, Official Couple and Pair the Spares, which may happen to the Beta Couple.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The epilogue of Beauty Pop shows that Seki and Kanako and Iori and Chisami are married/engaged. Both partners of former pair are laid-back, considerate and shy, while the latter are selfish and boisterous. Naturally, the first pair is calm and lovey-dovey while the second is constantly bickering.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Ed and Winry bicker constantly and are obviously going to be a couple from the beginning. Al gets together with Mai in what seems to be a much more peaceful relationship.
  • While Alexander and Olivier Armstrong certainly aren't a couple, during the battle with Sloth, their constant bickering happens to compliment Sig and Izumi Curtis's lovey dovey relationship.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • Early on, Kaguya and Shirogane, stuck in an eternal Battle of Wits, are contrasted by the comparably more functional Kashiwagi and Tsubasa. Ironically, Kashiwagi and Tsubasa frequently go to the latter two for romantic advice while erroneously assuming they're love experts.
  • After Kaguya and Shirogane finally get together, they're much happier and more functional than Beta Couple Ishigami and Iino, who frequently clash and are plagued by insurmountable Belligerent Sexual Tension.
• Love Stage!!: Main couple Izumi and Ryuma, after a few initial arguments, are quick to say that they're in love with each other, and the rest of the conflicts in their relationship come from outside interference. Beta Couple Shougo and Rei spend almost ten years as Friend with Benefits, all the while fighting constantly and refusing to admit they actually love each other.
• Random Walk has Touko and Tsukasa (bickering) and Katsura and Terakado (peaceful). While Touko constantly breaks up and makes up with Tsukasa, Katsura seems to face no relationship trouble with Terakado once they get together (though granted, it takes a lot more effort for the latter pair to actually get together).
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Yoko and Kamina relentlessly bicker and insult each other, are in obvious denial, and even have Accidental Pervert moments to top it off. In contrast, passive Simon and sweet Nia fall in love very easily.
• Wife and Wife juxtaposes the relationship between the Sickeningly Sweethearts Sumi and Kina and the one between their neighbors, Komugi and Hayase, who keep fighting over most trivial things (well, it's mostly Komugi fighting, while Hayase just takes it in stride). Both couples are incredibly devoted to each other, however.
• Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku contrasts the protagonist Narumi and her boyfriend Hirotaka (who get along and are lowkey and laidback) with their office seniors Hanako and Tarou (who are constantly at each other's throats). Hanako and Tarou are actually the Beta Couple, however, since despite their bickering they have been dating a long time, while Narumi and Hirotaka still go through some new-relationship growing pains.

Fan Works

• Teen Titans: While not quite canon, Fan-Preferred Couple Raven and Beast Boy are always arguing about everything while Official Couple Robin and Starfire seem to get along better. They usually end up becoming this in fan works.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics, by virtue of consisting of nothing but various love triangles and teen romances, often has stories with this dynamic. Most often has Reggie and Veronica bickering and Archie and Betty being the sweet couple, but it can switch depending on the needs of the story.

Comic Strips

• Blondie (1930) often contrasts the Ditherses (bickering) with the Bumsteads (peaceful).
• Played with during Dykes to Watch Out For. Initially Toni and Clarice had the happiest relationship (and marriage), while protagonist Mo and girlfriend Harriet could barely reconcile. A decade later, though, Toni's and Clarice's marriage declined due to the latter's workaholic tendacies, while Mo entered a relationship with Dr. Sydney and the two formed a fulfilling dynamic up to the strip's current day.

Films — Animation

• Anastasia has Anya and Dimitri as the bickering couple, and Vlad and Sophie as the peaceful one.
• Shrek: Shrek and Fiona spend most of the first movie (and the subsequent movies) bickering about everything, while Donkey and Dragon fall in love in their second scene together and have kids by the third movie. Shrek and Fiona do love each other very much though and really are happy around each other. Even when they fight, they do maintain the same love and affection and go to the ends of the earth for each other.

Films — Live-Action

• In Beauty and the Beast (2017), Belle/Beast and Lumiére/Plumette are mild examples of this trope. Belle and the Beast despise each other at first, and even as they become friends they retain a slight Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic due to this version of the Beast remaining prickly and snarky even as he becomes kinder. Lumiére and Plumette, by contrast, are unabashed Sickening Sweethearts. This is a change from the previous versions, where Belle and the Beast are the peaceful couple (after their stormy beginning, that is) while Lumiére and Babette do more playful bickering.
• Dungeons & Dragons (2000). Ridley and Marina argue every moment they're together, while Token Minority Couple Snails and Norda fall in love pretty much immediately.
• The Huntsman: Winter's War: The two dwarf couples have this dynamic, with Nion and Doreena as the sweet couple and Gryff and Bromwyn as the bickering couple.
• It: Chapter Two: The second It movie, and to a lesser extent, the first has this dynamic with Ben and Bev acting as the peaceful couple and Richie and Eddie as the bickering one, with plenty of parallels between the two pairs.
• Old: Jarin and Patricia are the Happily Married peaceful couple, in sharp contrast to the divorcing Guy and Prisca, who bicker constantly until they realize how severe the situation is. Charles and Chrystal are in the middle, as they have a shallow but less obviously unhappy marriage.
• Us has the protagonist couple, Adelaide and Gabe, and their frenemies' "bickering couple" (who might actually hate each other), Josh and Kitty. Adelaide and Gabe get along well, and he tries to comfort her when she seems frightened, promising he'll protect her and doing his level best to fulfill that promise when the shit hits the fan. Meanwhile Kitty insults Josh constantly, who in turn is dismissive and uncaring when Kitty is scared and asks him to check to see if someone has broken in. Unsurprisingly, Adelaide and Gabe survive the movie along with their kids, while Josh, Kitty, and their daughters do not.

Literature

• Emma has Emma and Knightley as the Bickering (constantly criticizing each other, snarky, in denial about their feelings for each other) vs. Harriet and Martin as the Peaceful (both sweet people and are kept apart only by Emma's interference).
• Harry Potter. Harry and Ginny get together with only a few arguments (and a few false starts), but for the most part their scenes together are sweet and loving. Ron and Hermione, on the other hand...
• Pride and Prejudice casts Nice Girl Jane and amiable Bingley as the peaceful couple (they fall in love almost immediately and all complications in their relationship arise from outside intervention) and snarky Elizabeth and aloof Darcy as the bickering couple (Elizabeth initially can't stand him and her behavior towards him reflects this).
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Eddard and Catelyn Stark's Perfectly Arranged Marriage (with the only snag being Eddard's illegitimate son) is contrasted by Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister's mutual abuse and infidelity.
  • It's also contrasted with the deeply unhappy relationship between Catelyn's unstable sister, Lysa, and her much older husband, Jon. While Catelyn is devastated by Ned's death, Lysa actually killed Jon.
  • Robb Stark is a foil for Jon Snow, just as Jeyne Westerling is a foil for Ygritte. While Robb and Jeyne have a very sweet love marriage, Jon and Ygritte's are in a Dating Catwoman-type relationship.
  • The Martell brothers. Doran's relationship with his wife Mellario all but dissolves due to fighting over cultural differences and they've been estranged for years. Meanwhile, Oberyn maintains a easy, stable relationship with his paramour Ellaria Sand. Ironically, Oberyn is known for being the more argumentative one.
• In The Sorcerer's Daughter, for most of the time, Rothbart and Odette are either icily polite or engaged in a Snark-to-Snark Combat quarrel, while Siegfried and Odile are sweet, tender and teasingly flirtatious. It has a lot to do with the fact that, for a number of reasons, Rothbart and Odette have a much harder time even admitting their feelings to themselves, let alone confessing them to each other.

Live-Action TV

• Alta Mar: There are few moments when Fernando and Carolina are not in any sort of disagreement. Nicolás and Eva haven't had a single fight as of the second season's finale; even when Eva is forced to threaten him with a gun to save Carolina's life, he doesn't seem to be angry in the least, and when it's revealed that Nicolás's wife is alive, they discuss the matter calmly.
• Bones: Cam and Arastoo, as of the moment they get together show a relationship more well adjusted and less prone to complications than Booth with Brennan or Angela with Hodgins. The latter two had considerably large Will They or Won't They? filled with tensions and a relationship with plenty of fallouts (Booth and Brennan have a hard time agreeing on things while Angela and Hodgins are both hard headed and Hodgins becoming a jerk after getting crippled didn't helped), while Cam and Arastoo have a secret relationship free of pressure and fit each other pretty well. Things did get seemingly derailed when Arastoo left to find work and broke up with Cam so she wouldn’t feel forced to choose, but he came back later and they reconciled. There was one argument about Arastoo mentioning Cam’s home shopping channel obsession in the lab,and a brief time of tension about how Arastoo’s parents would react, but it didn’t last and they ultimately married.
• Ever Decreasing Circles: Martin, the protagonist, is pompous and obsessive, and his wife Anne, while she loves him, frequently runs out of patience. They're contrasted with the Sickening Sweethearts Howard and Hilda, who show no signs of having ever disagreed about anything.
• Friends: Ross and Rachel are the iconic bickering and breaking up Will They or Won't They? couple. The contrast is Chandler and Monica: they simply went from friends to a perfectly stable couple until the end of the show.
• How I Met Your Mother has Lily and Marshall by default playing the peaceful couple to whatever bickering couple their friends organized themselves with:
  • One of the flashbacks show that Lily and Marshall were the romantic and peaceful counterparts to Ted and his controlling and serial cheater ex-girlfriend Karen, with whom he constantly broke up and got back together again after catching her several times with other men, in his bunk bed.
  • Season 5 briefly inverts this dynamic, with an episode that shows Barney and Robin as a loving couple who managed to avoid fighting months into their relationship while Lily and Marshall have a huge fall out due to some misguided tips from Barney. The end of the episode reveals that Robin and Barney's fights are in much bigger number and intensity than anything Marshall and Lily deal with.
  • Season 6 has Ted dating Zoe, the two constantly argue and fight over everything as well as Marshall and Lily, who are capable of meeting each other halfway and agreeing with things. An episode is dedicated to comparing his relationship: Ted and Zoe think that Marshall and Lily's relationship is lazy and stops them for growing while Lily and Marshall think that their relationship is exhausting and toxic. At the end of the episode, Ted confesses that a supportive relationship is better and realizes his relationship with Zoe is awful and taking a lot out of him.
• I Love Lucy is the classic TV example, contrasting the Happily Married Ricky and Lucy with their always-bickering neighbors Fred and Ethel.
• Love Is Blind: couples either get along peacefully or get into frequent screaming matches. In season 1, Cameron and Lauren are the peaceful pair contrast the bickering of couples Damian and Gia and Jessica and Mark.
• Malcolm in the Middle:
  • An episode has Malcolm's parents be the former while Stevie's parents are the latter. By the end, the latter couple become the ones bickering through the former couple's influences.
    Malcolm: I think we're contagious.
  • A later episode revealed that Abe and Kitty's relationship had been built around staying together for Stevie's sake and they had been in a failing relationship for a long time but chose to hide it, where as Lois and Hal had always been deeply in love with each other and despite numerous fights, never lost sight of this fact.
• The first season of Married... with Children contrasts the bickering Bundys with the newlyweds-in-love Rhodes'. By a few years into the show the Rhodes have been "corrupted" by the Bundys into bickering too. And then the Rhodes divorce, while the Bundys stay together.
• Moonlighting: Alpha couple Dave and Maddie are the bickering pair. Agnes and Herbert are the pair whose road to true love runs true.
• Parks and Recreation has, in season 4, this dynamic between the constantly fighting and breaking up just to get back together Ann and Tom against the well adjusted and loving relationships between Andy and April as well as between Ben and Leslie.
• Tetangga Masa Gitu revolves around the life of two neighbouring couples: Adi and Angel who bicker with each other almost every episode and Bastian and Bintang who start the series as newlyweds and never stop being Sickeningly Sweethearts.
• The White Lotus: Harper is aghast to learn that Sickeningly Sweethearts Cameron and Daphne never fight and considers it abnormal. She contrasts them against her relationship with her husband Ethan: even though she and Ethan are at odds on the trip and bicker often, it's because they talk about everything. Ultimately deconstructed in that both approaches to a relationship are seen as unhealthy: Cameron and Daphne's affection and dishonesty makes for a happy, but deeply dysfunctional relationship that is implied to be long-term inviable and will eventually cause trouble for them, their kids, and the people that get involved with it. Meanwhile, Ethan and Harper's disaffectionate honesty has less dramatic troubles, but still causes a rift on their relationship that they can't bridge, and is also implied to have negative long term consequences.

Theatre

• A mild example in the stage version of Beauty and the Beast, despite a very rough start, Belle and the Beast settle into a peaceful, friendly dynamic following their After Action Patch Up scene, whereas Lumiére and Babette are prone to playful bickering and making each other jealous.
• While neither couple is actually peaceful – both relationships are on-and-off ones plagued with jealousy – La Bohème contrasts Rodolfo and Mimí with Marcello and Musetta this way. Even when both couples break up, Rodolfo and Mimí do it gently and sadly, putting it off as long as possible, while Marcello and Musetta throw plates and scream insults at each other.
• This is the main plot of Donald Marguiles' Pulitzer Prize-winning play Dinner with Friends, as happily-married Gabe and Karen watch their best friends' marriage fall apart.
• Used in a few plays by William Shakespeare, most prominently in Much Ado About Nothing, where the lovey-dovey Hero and Claudio are contrasted by the "merry war" of Beatrice and Benedick. Interestingly, Claudio and Hero's relationship is shown to be much less solid and trusting than Beatrice and Benedick's, who are only able to bicker so much because they know and understand each other very well.
• West Side Story contrasts Maria and Tony (peaceful couple) with Anita and Bernardo (bickering couple). Both couples are happy, though, and both girls are devastated when their lovers are killed.
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? showcases two pairs of wedded people, Nick and Honey and George and Martha-the former which is a (comparatively, at first) normal couple, and the latter which is a pair of belligerent alcoholics that try their damnedest to demolish the other every time they talk about or at each other as well as team up to attack the normal couple when they try to help. It is implied that they do this constantly as a way to direct their frustrations to a third party and not destroy each other.

Video Games

• Aveyond: Ean's Quest has Ean and Iya as the peaceful couple, and Emma and Rye as the bickering one. This can be easily observed from their attraction events. Ean and Iya's relationship develop by Ean giving gifts to Iya and generally being nice to her. Rye and Emma's develop when one of them lose a bet and must fulfill 5 commands of the winner's choosing, and this generally involve them trying to humiliate the other.
• In Kindred Spirits on the Roof, this trope applies to the two couples that are already together at the start of the game- Matsuri and Miyu, and Sachi and Megumi, respectively. Matsuri and Miyu often bicker Like an Old Married Couple, and while this is mostly lighthearted, there is some significant tension over Miyu's insistence that they refrain from public displays of affection to keep their Secret Relationship secret. After Matsuri tries to make out with Miyu during the summer training camp, Miyu angrily rebuffs her advances and the two end up in a feud until the end of the school festival. By comparison, Sachi and Megumi have no major arguments or conflicts over the course of the story.
• Played with in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, with Sly and Carmelita appearing to be the bickering couple, and Bentley and Penelope being the peaceful couple. Although the former have their problems throughout the game, they made amends in the end. The latter couple is revealed to be "not-so-peaceful", as Penelope turns out to be a sociopathic yandere who sees Bentley as a Meal Ticket, and their relationship falls apart completely. In the end, it's Sly and Carmelita who becomes the peaceful couple, and Bentley and Penelope briefly being the bickering couple, then Arch-Enemies with Penelope a Psycho Ex-Girlfriend.
• In Tales of Phantasia, Cress and Mint got along very well ever since Cress rescued Mint from the jail cell and escaped together. Arche and Chester, on the other hand, can't even interact for a second without getting furious at each other.

Western Animation

• Classic Disney Shorts:
  • Donald Duck and Daisy Duck are constantly bickering. In contrast, Minnie Mouse and Mickey Mouse are usually content together.
  • Played with in the 2013 Mickey Mouse short, "The Adorable Couple". Donald and Daisy start out as the former and Mickey and Minnie start out as the latter. Mickey and Minnie try to help cheer Donald and Daisy up, but only end up making themselves bicker just like them. At the end of the short, both couples are a mix of the two; they make themselves happy by insulting each other.
• Code Lyoko: Discussed by Aelita and Jérémie. Aelita once wondered why Yumi and Ulrich argued all the time, and Jérémie answered that people who like each other show it by fighting often. Thus it make Yumi and Ulrich the bickering couple. Aelita then pointed out that Jérémie and herself never argued, making them the peaceful couple.
• Futurama: This is seen most commonly amongst the Beta Couple, Kif and Amy. It was a major plot point in an episode where Kif dumps Amy and she starts dating Bender. But they are affectionate just as often. Official Couple Fry and Leela do bicker occasionally and have a lot of Will They or Won't They? but they don't fight as much on screen and are rather loving to each other.
• Justice League has Hawkgirl and Green Lantern as the sweet couple and Batman and Wonder Woman as the bickering couple.
• Played with on The Simpsons. Homer and Marge's relationship is complex enough that they can be either a bickering couple or a peaceful couple depending on the needs of the story. When they are fighting, they are usually paired up with a more loving couple, usually the Flanderses; other stories have them paired up with a bickering couple (such as the van Houtens), resulting in the Simpsons either giving them relationship advice or trying to avoid becoming like them.
• Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!: Chiro and Jinmay are head over heels for each other right from their first meeting and their interactions are super lovey-dovey. In contrast, Sprx and Nova constantly bicker and refuse to admit they're in love until their Last-Minute Hookup.
• Young Justice (2010): Miss Martian and Superboy get together with relatively little brouhaha and remain stable throughout the first season while Artemis and Kid Flash go through a ton of Belligerent Sexual Tension before finally getting together. Reversed in the second season, when Miss Martian and Superboy have broken up due to disagreement on the usage of her powers while Artemis and Kid Flash are still very much together.

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