Demoted to Satellite Love Interest

Epic Voice Guy: Natalie Portman is back. And she's...just kinda there. Weep as this once proud queen, senator, and warrior spends the whole movie barefoot and pregnant.
Padme: Ani, I wanna have our baby back home on Naboo. I can go early and fix up the baby’s room.

— Honest Trailers for Revenge of the Sith

A character starts out significant and important on their own, playing a valuable role in the plot. Then they become another character's love interest. Suddenly, the story stops paying them as much attention as before. Narrative-wise, the character is now mainly treated as "X's wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend", essentially turning into a supporting character for their partner. Sometimes other characters even stop mentioning the character's previous accomplishments, while their partner's deeds are still remembered and talked about.

More likely to happen to female characters than male ones due to Double Standards, but there are plenty of male examples as well.

For this trope to be in play, the following conditions must apply:

• Only one of the partners is "demoted". If both partners get more-or-less equally Demoted to Extra at roughly the same time, this trope does not apply. E.g., neither Eowyn nor Faramir from The Lord of the Rings fit this trope because both became background characters soon after they fell in love.
• The character played a more important role before becoming a love interest. If the character was already not quite significant before, and simply switched their focus to a new romantic subplot, this trope does not apply. E.g., Nymphadora Tonks and Fleur Delacour from Harry Potter don't fit this trope because they weren't more significant characters before they became love interests to Remus Lupin and Bill Weasley, respectively. Conversely, Jadzia Dax from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine didn't get noticeably less focus or characterization after becoming Worf's fiancee and, later, wife.

A subtrope of Demoted to Extra and Satellite Love Interest. Not to be confused with Promoted to Love Interest, which is about a character who's turned into a Love Interest (but not necessarily a Satellite Love Interest) in an adaptation of the original work. See also Career Versus Man, Family Versus Career, Quitting to Get Married^note Note: if a female character quits her career to be with her man, it doesn't necessarily mean she gets Demoted to Satellite Love Interest. She could still continue being a prominent and important character in her new status. Compare Demoted to Comic Relief.

Please don't use this trope as an excuse to bash characters whom you dislike for X/Y/Z motives. Becoming a love interest doesn't immediately equal being demoted to SLI, and many accusations fit less in this trope and more in Die for Our Ship.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Attacker You!: Sho Tachiki is introduced as You's potential love interest. Like You, he's also a volleyball player and initially serves as a Big Brother Mentor for her, and also has some Ship Tease with You's Friendly Rival Nami. However, after the first few episodes, Sho is very soon Demoted to Extra and very rarely appears in the anime. This is a case where we don't even see a Relationship Upgrade between the partners and the guy is only known as "the heroine's object of affection" who is completely irrelevant to the story. To make things worse, in some foreign adaptations, specifically European, the anime is known with a Name and Name title that makes it look like that You and her "boyfriend" Sho are both equally important protagonists.
• Syaoran Li of Cardcaptor Sakura started off as The Rival and for a while had almost equal footing with Sakura, his own supporting cast, and many limelight episodes (so much the English dub tried to play him as co-lead with Cardcaptors). After Sakura becomes Master of the Cards, the rest of the main arc must be resolved by her with the others providing marginal assistance. As such, most of Syaoran's spotlight at this point consists of one or two short scenes concerning his growing crush on Sakura (he does still get limelight episodes but they revolve entirely around being a love interest).
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Android 18 was introduced as an independent villain alongside her brother, but then receded into the role of Krillin's wife and more-or-less retired from fighting. She does participate in trying to stop Beerus during Bulma's birthday party and lampshades the fact that she's still stronger than Krillin when he goes off to face Freeza's army when the villain returns to life but agrees to stay behind to protect their daughter. This would be averted come Dragon Ball Super, where she is one of the ten representatives for Universe 7, and not only lasts longer than her husband but takes down several opponents on her own and alongside her brother, 17.
  • Videl was introduced as a powerful fighter and someone who was suspicious of Gohan and the other Saiyans' unusual power. But once the Buu arc got serious she was sidelined and after marrying Gohan and giving birth to Pan she seems to have retired from fighting. This is probably reasonable since she is a Badass Normal with low-tier Charles Atlas Superpowers at best, while the other heroes throw around military-grade energy attacks, and she can't really do much on that sort of battlefield.
• Genshiken: Sasahara's character arc focuses exclusively on his relationship with Oguie after they finally get together. After the series was Un-Canceled as Genshiken Nidaime, Sasahara went from the main character to Demoted to Extra as the focus shifted squarely to Oguie as the new main protagonist. This makes perfect sense, as Sasahara graduates, has little reason to interact with the other characters, and moves Out of Focus, and Oguie takes his place as president of the titular club.
• In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, Mirai Yashima takes on the important role of first mate and helmsman of the White Base, but when she reappears in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, we find that she married Mr. Bright and started a family with him. And even though her husband soon becomes one of the key figures of AEUG, she makes very few appearances, instead staying on Earth to take care of her children.
• Reborn! (2004): There are examples of this in both the anime and manga:
  • Poison Scorpion Bianchi started off as a pretty capable hitman who could turn everything into poison. But she was also the titular Hitman Tutor's lover, and by the Future Arc, she is reduced to an older sister figure for the girls.
  • Lal Mirch is probably the most badass character in the series, she has strength, agility, incredible weapons and she even trained one of the Strongest Seven, being chosen for his position initially. And yet everyone just recognized her as one of the Arcobaleno's Love Interests and as one half of the token het couple.
• Sailor Moon: Mamoru aka Tuxedo Mask suffers from this in the anime, but not in the manga. In the manga, Mamoru is one of the most important and developed characters: while somewhat weak on his own, the major villains are usually defeated by combining his powers with Sailor Moon's. His future as King Endymion is also of great importance. By the 4th season he becomes the character with the most focus (after Sailor Moon herself), because of his connection to Pegasus/Helios, and his weak health that fuels that arc's drama. Compared to the manga, the anime starts forcing Mamoru out of the focus after the first season. In the first season, he still has an important plot role, due to his forbidden love with Usagi/Princess Serenity. However, in the second season, his importance gets considerably downplayed — and by the third season onward he's turned into a mere extra, to the point that when in the fifth season he's Put on a Bus, it really lessened the impact that event had in the manga.
  • While Umino was never a major character, after he got together with Naru, his only role was being her boyfriend.
• Sword Art Online:
  • In the initial Sword Art Online arc, Asuna is a badass, give-no-fucks Action Girl who carries her weight as one of the most powerful and well-known players in the lead group. When the game is shut down, though, she's one of the players who is "captured" and prevented from logging out. Immediately after this, during the ALFheim Online arc, she is a textbook Girl in the Tower held prisoner by the Big Bad (who plans on marrying her in the real world despite the fact that she's comatose, and sexually harasses and/or assaults her on numerous occasions in the game), giving The Hero Kirito all the motivation he needs to beat the game and rescue her. Finally, in the Gun Gale Online arc, she's... Kirito's girlfriend. She has almost no plot significance whatsoever, and does not appear in GGO's game world; all of her scenes are either milling about in ALO wondering what Kirito is doing, or having conversations with him in the real world.
  • Averted with the Mother's Rosario arc where Asuna is firmly the protagonist and the story focuses on her friendship with Yuuki and her relationship with her mother.
  • A mixed example with the Alicization arc, where she continues to be heavily involved in the plot (including the rather awesome feat of tricking a Government Conspiracy into bringing her into their secret base, when she was somebody they were specifically on alert for), while her character still pretty much revolves around loving Kirito.However in the War for the Underworld arc, she steps up as a protagonist with Kirito down for the count.
  • Sword Art Online The Movie Progressive Aria Of A Starless Night gives Asuna a Day in the Limelight by focusing on her story, showing how she got involved with Sword Art Online and her perspective on the events.
• Riku is introduced as Wandering Son as a classmate of Maho that she has a crush on. He has a crush on her little sibling at first but eventually, they begin dating. By high school, though, he's pretty much "Maho's boyfriend" when before he had some chemistry with Nitori at least.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, Akiza starts out as roughly the third most important character, with an ongoing plot involving uncontrolled psychic powers, estranged parents, membership in a cult, despising her own mystic destiny, and moonlighting as a terrifying underground duelist. By the end of the Dark Signers arc, all these plots are resolved, sometimes in as little as one or two episodes, and her personality shifts from moody and violent to a very typical shounen main-girl with a crush on the protagonist. For the remaining 90 episodes of the series, on the rare occasions where she does get focus again, you'd struggle to describe what she has going on outside of "is in school now, has feelings for Yusei and wants to get closer to him."

Comic Books

• Runaways: Victor Mancha was first introduced as a teenage boy who was fated to become Gert's mortal nemesis when he grew up. He was shown to be highly intelligent and powerful enough to fight off the rest of the team. After the Runaways managed to change his fate, he ultimately became the love interest of the team leader Nico. Since then, Victor's importance and power diminished considerably: e.g. he got outwitted by Chase, the least intelligent member of the team (who had also temporarily turned against his former teammates.) And then, after Nico dumped him, he spent the rest of the series doing almost nothing except ineffectually pining after her.
  • Happens again in Runaways (Rainbow Rowell), where he becomes Gert's boyfriend. In theory, he does have a character arc of his own, as Chase accidentally restores his Superpowered Evil Side and he tries his hand at becoming an actual superhero, but in practice he spends most of the series being moral support to Gert before discovering that she will eventually get bored of him and dump him to get back with Chase, which will set off his Face–Heel Turn.
• Spider-Man: Marla Madison was a scientist who built a Spider-Slayer for J. Jonah Jameson. He subsequently fell in love with her and they eventually married. Since Dr. Madison stopped building Spider-Slayers, she gradually settled down into the position of Jonah's wife as few writers seemed to be interested in developing her as a character (while JJJ continued being important). As she was killed off, there is little chance of that being ever rectified.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Steve Trevor started out as an integral part of Diana's team. Not only was he perfectly ok with doing things she could not as an Amazon, like kill, he also had experience in spy craft and a military position that made him very useful. Writers following Marston's death quickly turned him into the poster boy of Useless Boyfriend and he only mattered because he and Diana were in love, seemingly having nothing else to really offer.

Comic Strip

• In the Flash Gordon comic strip, Princess Aura began as a fairly important character who drove several plots. After her Betty and Veronica love triangle with Dale over Flash was resolved (in Dale's favor), she was married off to Prince Barin and lost most of her agency and narrative importance, making few new appearances and (from what could be seen of those she did make) becoming a much more domestic and pacific love interest than her previous characterization.
• In later strips of Peanuts, Schroeder only appeared whenever Lucy was leaning on his piano.

Film — Animated

• How to Train Your Dragon:
  • In the first film, Astrid is initially set up as a competitive student who's determined to ace Gobber's training and become a fully-fledged Viking. Hiccup's aversion to fighting irritates her and his sudden improvement makes her suspect foul play, resulting in her following him into the forest to find out what his secret is. After their first romantic encounter, she becomes much more subdued, existing solely to provide Hiccup with support and advice.
  • How to Train Your Dragon 2 makes a conscious effort to remedy this, giving Astrid an independent solo role while still maintaining her relationship with Hiccup.
• In The Lion King, Nala plays a significant role in getting Simba to return to Pride Rock and face his past, not to mention being a fierce and determined character in her own right. In the sequel, however, she has a maximum of 20-ish lines and hardly does anything to contribute to the plot besides fighting in the pride-on-pride battle near the end. What makes it worse is that there were many opportunities and times that she could've said or done something of importance, but she still hardly affected a thing through the whole movie.
• The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea demotes Eric to a sounding board for Ariel's worries about their daughter's future. Once Ariel turns back into a mermaid he disappears until the climax - attempting an (unsuccessful) Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Frozen II has Kristoff, who goes from ice-delivering loner who gradually falls for Princess Anna over the course of the first movie because he admires her pluck and determination while also giving her some important life lessons to spending the sequel attempting multiple times to propose to Anna and only managing to spit it out right at the end. It doesn't help Anna repeatedly ditches Kristoff to chase after Elsa and even after Elsa forces Anna to stay behind (since Anna has no powers and Elsa doesn't know if she'll come back from her voyage) to look after the people of Arendelle, Anna still barely interacts with Kristoff and remains obsessed over her sister "abandoning" her.

Film — Live-Action

• Star Wars: In The Phantom Menace, Padme Amidala is the ruler of Naboo who fights bravely for her people. By Revenge of the Sith she's given up the throne and married Anakin, and while she's still a Senator, it's all about Anakin becoming Darth Vader because the scene where she planted the seeds that would later become the Rebel Alliance was left on the cutting room floor.
• The Fast and the Furious: Mia is downgraded into a dutiful housewife and mother starting on Fast & Furious 6, being absent for most of the film until the climax, where she serves as a Damsel in Distress. In the seventh, she is taken out of the main action plot and doesn't even do anything other than giving some moral support to Brian.

Literature

• The Good Prince Antar in Black Trillium is a complex character torn between his loyalty to his royal father and to his country and the realization that his father and king has been corrupted by an Evil Sorcerer and pushes their country into ruin and dishonor. In Julian May's sequel novels, his role mostly boils down to being the King Consort and frequent Distressed Dude to his queenly wife, the ex-princess Anigel.
• The Cyber Dragons Trilogy: G AKA Case Gordon was the protagonist of the Agent G series but becomes Keiko "Kei" Springs' boyfriend and partner in the Cyber Dragons series. Somewhat of a Downplayed Trope because he remains a Sixth Ranger to their party.
• Invoked in the Robotech Expanded Universe. Miriya was the greatest Zentraedi female ace, and when she got her High-Heel–Face Turn and married Max Sterling, for the rest of the original series she was his counterpart and got equal screentime with him. Then during the Malcontent Uprisings, the brass made the official decision to turn her into a propaganda piece; "homemaker, mother, former freedom fighter." Miriya abided by it but still played an important role in the finale (and returned to badass status during the Sentinels series).
• Sherlock Holmes: Mary Morstan, a central character in The Sign of the Four, marries Dr. Watson at the end of the book. After that, she's mentioned by Watson once in a while, typically as "my wife" rather than by name. She eventually dies off-page in the interval between two books. A sample of how she typically appears in later stories:
  One night — it was in June, '89 — there came a ring to my bell...I sat up in my chair, and my wife laid her needle-work down in her lap and made a little face of disappointment. (From "The Man with the Twisted Lip")

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Oz was introduced as a werewolf character who had an interest in Willow, but still a role in the plot. Around mid-Season 3, he was defined more by his status as Willow's boyfriend. Seth Green ultimately left the show over this.
  • Inverted with Willow's next love interest Tara. She was defined more by her relationship with Willow - one episode even lampshading that the rest of the gang don't know her that well. In late Season 5, continuing into Season 6 she developed a Cool Big Sis instinct for Dawn and had a growing friendship with Buffy even after she and Willow split up.
  • Anya first played it straight and then subverted it. She was introduced as a vengeance demon, playing the antagonist for two episodes. Then in Season 4, she became Xander's love interest there to provide comic relief and rarely got episodes of her own. When Xander left her at the altar, she became a demon again and still had a role in the plot beyond their relationship.
  • Deconstructed with Riley. In Season 4 he had his own adventures as an Initiative soldier. By Season 5, he left the Initiative, and his cover as a grad student, and was nothing more than Buffy's love interest. Having nothing in his life except his relationship with Buffy caused him to become insecure and clingy, eventually resulting in the end of their relationship and his return to the military.
• Charmed (1998):
  • Dan Gordon first appeared on the show as a next-door neighbor that was having trouble trying to act as a surrogate parent to his preteen niece. Then the niece was Put on a Bus and he spends the rest of his time on the show in a Love Triangle with Piper and Leo.
  • Leo played this straight and subverted it. While always intended as Piper's love interest from his introduction, he ended up there around Season 4 to mainly act as The Heart. Season 6 saw him becoming an Elder and having to deal with his Kid from the Future, while Season 7 had him driving the storylines. After he lost his powers in Season 7, he arguably slipped back into this in Season 8.
• How I Met Your Mother: In season 7 Barney's character is appropriated as Robin's love interest, and his main significance is to be a source of angst for Robin. This makes the single brief look at his perspective in "Tick, Tick, Tick" all the more heartbreaking, as the audience knows that while Robin is busy going through character development and struggling with her personal conflicts, Barney is miserably and silently Out of Focus, waiting for her to address her relationship with him.
• Perry Mason: Defied. Della Street turned down several proposals of marriage by Perry because she wanted to be a part of his life and she knew that meant being a part of his work — and she expected that to end after marriage.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Will Scarlet was a main character in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. When he shows up in season four, he's credited as part of the main cast but is quickly demoted to the rebound guy for Belle. Sometimes his only appearances are holding her hand in the background, and he only has a quick, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, unspoken cameo in the finale. To make things worse for him, Belle herself has rarely been more than the love interest of Rumplestiltskin in the series, making Will Scarlet demoted to the satellite love interest of a satellite love interest.
  • Robin Hood also gets this treatment big time. In his initial appearance, he was a fully independent character, but upon his return (and recasting) he became not a lot more than Regina's true love. This progressively gets worse and worse, until Season Five (ironically the season he got a Promotion to Opening Titles) where he is basically a shadow/occasional Dude in Distress until he is killed off towards the end of the season, probably at the actor's request.
  • Hook as well in Season 4. He gets defined almost entirely by his status as Emma's boyfriend, and all his storylines revolve around his relationship with Emma. Season 5, however, reversed this by giving Hook a character arc that, while Emma heavily factored into it, spanned other elements and relationships with other characters as well. As of Season 6 however, he was right back into it.
  • Inverted with Belle, who began entirely as a love interest for Rumplestiltskin. When she was made a series regular, she started having more agency in the plots, though it is Played Straight in later seasons.
• NYPD Blue: Once Andy and Sylvia get married and have a baby, Sylvia is relegated to one scene every few episodes at home with Andy and their son Theo. She decides to quit her job in order to stay at home with their son so Andy gets a second job working airport security, meaning we see her even less. Eventually, she goes back to work as an Assistant District Attorney just in time to get killed off.
• The Flash (2014): This happened to Julian Albert after he started dating Caitlin about halfway through the show's third season. As she became Killer Frost, his role was reduced to trying to find her a cure and acting excessively overprotective of her to the point of risking his own life.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: This happened to Claire Temple over the course of the Marvel Netflix shows. At the start of Daredevil season 1, she was initially emphasized as an outsider, the audience stand-in, the mortal in a world of gods and monsters. By the time Iron Fist and The Defenders come around, Claire has become a part of the strangeness now. And while that is a major development, it also means she loses the key elements that made her such a compelling character in the first place. This change is particularly obvious in The Defenders, in which Claire is actually one of the most informed, well-connected, least fazed characters in the show, and thus one of the least interesting. She is no longer the funny, baffled, exasperated, badass civilian. She's now just one of a large crowd of side characters, and the narrative actually regards her more like a Luke Cage side character than a crossover character, with the show barely even acknowledging her past connection with Matt. The second season of Luke Cage reduces her even further to being merely Luke's girlfriend, thus placing her firmly in a secondary role. And then she breaks up with Luke and leaves in the third episode.
• Once her storyline as The Mole in Peaky Blinders was concluded, this happened to Grace, who reappeared in the second season just to make up a Love Triangle between herself, Tommy, and May and then has no purpose in the story at all after that besides being Tommy's wife and mother of Charles, which is likely why she was killed off in Season Three, since there wasn't much more they could do with her.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand:
  • While Naevia was always Crixus's love interest from the beginning, she is introduced as Lucretia's personal attendant and has other roles outside of her romance with Crixus - such as having to help cover up a murder - and the Gods of the Arena prequel developing her further by showing her past from before she met Crixus. By the Vengeance season, her role in the story is to be rescued by Crixus and act as his lover. While she trains to become a Dark Action Girl, her role in the story is usually tied to Crixus in some way.
  • Inverted for Aurelia, who entered the story as Varro's wife, and only shared scenes to serve his story. After his death, she becomes a main character in her own right, even avenging his death by murdering the man who ordered it. She dies too but leaves more of an impact on the story besides her marriage to Varro.

Music

• Confession Executive Committee:
  • Koyuki Ayase becomes this in the "Right Now, I'm in Love." arc and The Moment You Fall in Love, its animated counterpart. Just before, he played a huge role in "Confession Rehearsal"/I've Always Liked You as the active rival in a Love Triangle and showed how he came to the decision to pursue Natsuki, the previous heroine. Now just contrast that here; he's practically defined by Hina (Moment's heroine)'s crush on him, having little else to do in the story than call out to her or say hi while she pursues him unaware of his crush on another girl, and all the drama stems from her insecurities and her childhood friend Kotaro's feelings for her. He gets out of this when his own love interest, Ryo Ogino, is introduced later into the franchise.
  • The more time progresses, the more Midori Hamanaka from the same series falls under this bracket. His debut song, "Friday's Good Mornings", had him in the starring role and his love interest Sena Narumi created to be his ideal love interest. As time went on, it was Sena who received further characterization away from their romance and has plenty of stories and songs about her relationships with her family and inner feelings. Midori, however, only gets content related to Sena, and his non-singing cameos only have him interacting with her despite small hints at a social life beyond his love.

Professional Wrestling

• Debra Marshall was originally a manager to multiple wrestlers, had a stint as Co-Commissioner with Mick Foley, and occasionally wrestled. Her last two years in the company saw her only appearing as Stone Cold's wife. Lampshaded when she was on The Weakest Link.
  Debra: I'm famous for being Steve's wife.
  Anne: So you're a real feminist then.
• Inverted with Vickie Guerrero. Originally only appearing in segments as Eddie Guerrero's wife, after his death, she became an onscreen character and eventually evolved into her own entity.
• Lita in the last two years of her career. Thanks to her ACL injury, she wasn't able to wrestle and instead appeared as Edge's on-screen girlfriend. While she did win the Women's Championship twice more, she was still heavily associated with Edge until the weeks leading up to her retirement storyline. As of the 2010s and 2020s, she returned to WWE evoking her old persona, being remembered more as a WWE legend.
• Maria Kanellis was an independent presence for the first few years of her career. But showing that Tropes Are Not Bad, she became a manager to her husband Mike Bennett - and that was seen as a real Growing the Beard moment for her (as beforehand she'd just been a Faux Action Girl who provided Fanservice in the ring).
• Inverted for Torrie Wilson, who spent the first couple of years in the business as the love interest and valet of various males. Then around 2002, she received a push to become the top Face of the Smackdown brand.
• Maryse went from being a Divas' Champion (the longest reigning one until A.J. Lee surpassed her) to the valet of Ted DiBiase and later The Miz. Again, this was playing to her strengths, which were more as a character than a wrestler.
• Brie Bella around 2014 came to be defined more as Daniel Bryan's wife when she wasn't managing her sister Nikki. People sometimes forget she was a Divas' Champion at one point too.

Theater

• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—Many fans feel this way about Ginny. Though she was not one of the "big three" characters in the books, she was one of the few people who could stand up to Harry's temper when he was making a stupid decision. Given that the play's father-son drama is largely based on Harry making stupid decisions, one wonders why Ginny comes off so passive, especially in the face of her son's obvious unhappiness.
• Historically, productions of Othello downgraded Desdemona into this. This is due to Values Dissonance; audiences weren't sympathetic to a heroine who would disobey her father's wishes to marry a man of a different race. Thus her role was downplayed to better serve the back-and-forth between Othello and Iago. In the middle of the 20th Century, productions have been adding more fire and sexuality into their Desdemonas to avert this.

Video Games

• Kairi in Kingdom Hearts had limited screentime, but still managed to have her own personality and character arc concerning her anxiety and fear of change based around her Dark and Troubled Past. In Kingdom Hearts II, almost all her scenes and actions revolve around Sora and her love for him and little else (though to be fair, she does have a few short friendship moments with Riku as well.) This issue persists in Kingdom Hearts III, although she does have some portions of the game that also focus on her fire-forged friendship with Axel/Lea.
  • While the romantic part of the attachment is underplayed, Naminé in the same game is Demoted to Extra and, beyond plot exposition, her role is to care about Roxas and want to help him / reunite with him.
• Anna from Metro: Last Light. Despite her hostility from the beginning towards Artyom, and insignificance later in the game, she suddenly falls in love with him with absolutely no build-up whatsoever, and solely exists as his love interest alone from this point and a bit of an incapable solo combatant into the next game, Metro Exodus.
• SaGa Frontier 2: The Knights family gets a bad case of this. Cordelia (assuming she marries Wil Knights) and Diana are both exceptional fighters (in Diana's case, more than exceptional), but once they get pregnant, both retire from the battlefield, settle down and raise their children. Even when Wil Knights returns to the battlefield (with his granddaughter as the party leader!), neither his wife nor Diana are there with him.
• In a few Story of Seasons games such as the original game, Tale of Two Towns, and Grand Bazaar all the love interests have hopes and ambitions of their own...until they marry you. It's especially true of some of the women in Tale of Two Towns. For a female main character, the guys will continue to run their businesses and go travelling after they marry. When a male main character marries, the female love interest will not leave your farmhouse. So, Laney gives up on moving to the city and Georgia stops working at her father's stable.
• Jude in Tales of Xillia 2 gets this treatment, with most of his sidequests being focused on his relationship with Mila. Unusually for this trope, this may have been an attempt at an Author's Saving Throw, as Jude and Mila's relationship was considered Strangled by the Red String in the first game due to their interactions not being all that romantic.

Western Animation

• In Voltron: Legendary Defender, this happens to Lance in Season 8, once he and Allura become an Official Couple. The team sniper, moral support, and Plucky Comic Relief with Hidden Depths in previous seasons, Lance spends Season 8 as "Allura's concerned boyfriend." If he's not in a fight, he's with her, talking about her, or worrying about her. Even when the current Paladins meet their predecessors, while all the other Paladins are told what worthy and talented warriors they are, all Alfor tells Lance is basically that he's a good boyfriend. Even when Allura dies, Lance's entire epilogue is about how he dedicates himself to her memory — basically becoming an evangelist for Allura's "message".

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