A romance setup where two people are madly in love with each other, but, due to communication mishaps or simply missing the signs, each is convinced that there's no way the other person returns their feelings, or at least not nearly to the same extent. While this usually applies to couples that haven't gotten together yet, it can also apply to ones that have recently gotten together or are casually dating but have both of them worried that the other is only putting up with them or would lose interest in them easily.
Sometimes it's from insecurity or lack of confidence: disbelief in being good enough or the right type for the other person, believing the other person is out of their league, or thinking someone else would make them happier. Other times, it's more circumstantial and comes from making the wrong assumptions, assuming the other would reject them for not swinging that way, having a Dark Secret that the other would supposedly never approve of, having rejected the other in the past and believing that they must have moved on by now, or being convinced that external circumstances are too impossible to overcome. Whatever it is, something has convinced them that it's better to sit around pining in agony than to risk trying and being hurt.
How they deal with it can also vary:
- They may simply accept the idea of their feelings being seemingly unrequited and conclude that it's better to maintain a friendly relationship with them at all than to risk it and ruin things for good.
- They may try to drastically reinvent themself to become "good enough" for their Love Interest, unaware that their Love Interest is already interested in them the way they are already.
- They may consider themself to be too much of a burden for their Love Interest and push them away for their own good.
This kind of setup usually emphasizes selflessness between the lovers, since the reason each of them is pining after the other is rarely out of possessiveness, but the fact that they can't be the person close enough to them to make them happiest. A payoff and romantic resolution will often involve them recontextualizing everything the other did beforehand as things done for their sake, allowing to finally accept that the answer to what would make the other happiest was them the entire time. Still, this doesn't mean it's an entirely selfless trope; being disliked sucks no matter how you look at it, so it's only natural that characters involved in this dynamic may get overly defensive and/or do drastic things out of fear of getting hurt.
If an outside party notices the signs of Mutual Pining, expect them to be a Shipper on Deck and try to get the two together. If it's something only communicated to the audience, then that's Ship Tease.
This trope tends to have good chemistry with the Belligerent Sexual Tension dynamic (if both characters assume the other dislikes them, it's easier for both to pretend they dislike the other back instead of admitting they secretly care about each other, right?) and Loves My Alter Ego, especially the Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman and Hates My Secret Identity variants (an easy way to depict a Dark Secret that will seemingly turn off the other person if revealed). Star-Crossed Lovers can be this if the nature of the relationship itself is unresolved thanks to the obstructive factors in question. Twice Shy is a Sister Trope that also involves mutual inabilty to confess feelings but usually has much less severe causes and effects (although being Twice Shy may serve as an additional explanation as to why a Mutual Pining couple won't do anything about their situation). Contrast Unrequited Love Switcheroo, which similarly centers around Irony regarding two people in mutually unrequited love but legitimately does (at least temporarily) involve one person moving on from the other.
Note that for a work to be this trope, it has to be mutual pining; the drama needs to come from both parties actively agonizing over wanting to be with each other but not acting on their feelings for specific, concrete reasons, rather than simply having a mild crush or happening to be more open to a relationship than expected. Mutual pining involves both parties being each other's primary object of affection, meaning that most variants of the Love Triangle don't qualify as this trope (although a Two-Person Love Triangle can apply depending on how it's executed, and one character mistakenly thinking there's a Love Triangle would certainly work).
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
Examples by author:
- By her own admission, this dynamic is one of manga author Megumi Tachikawa's Creator Thumbprints in general:
- Kaitou Saint Tail has the titular Phantom Thief fall in love with her own Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist Asuka Jr., who just so happens to also be a classmate of her civilian identity Meimi. Although he clearly has some kind of fascination with Saint Tail and even considers her to be his Worthy Opponent, that doesn't change the fact that his job is to arrest her, and Meimi is worried about him coming to hate her if he finds out the truth. On top of that, Meimi and Asuka Jr. have a semi-hostile relationship at school, so Meimi copes by channeling all of her affection into the Saint Tail persona because she knows anything Saint Tail does will actually mean something to him. What Meimi doesn't know is that not only does Asuka Jr. happen to be far more secretly devoted to Meimi than she thinks, he's also already suspecting her of being Saint Tail, which means what seems like mere Foe Romance Subtext to her is actually him unconsciously spilling all of his pent-up feelings for Meimi that he can't act on out of fear of crossing her boundaries and turning her off.
- The protagonist of Portrait of a Morning Glory, a oneshot chapter that Tachikawa referred to as an indirect prototype of Saint Tail, is a morning glory flower that makes a The Little Mermaid-esque deal with a divine entity to temporarily become a girl named Saaya so she can spend some time getting to talk to Kazuma, a boy she'd fallen in love with. Although the deal stipulates that Saaya can keep her human form if she manages to get him to return her feelings within a week, Saaya thinks the idea of that actually happening is hard to believe and stays laser-focused on getting to spend as much of the week as she can with him without expecting anything back. However, after she sacrifices her own life so he can have more paint to use for his art, it turns out that he'd taken the fact she'd supported him when no one else would really seriously, and he ends up yelling for her to come back with such despair and anguish that it convinces the divine entity to retroactively extend the time limit and let Saaya come back as a human.
- Even in most of Tachikawa's other works, particularly her oneshot chapters and Dream Eater Guide, some variant of mutual pining is usually behind the plot's main conflict. A common recurring Tachikawa plotline involves a heroine being resigned to the idea of her Love Interest not returning her feelings and trying to settle for being able to stay around him at all, only for it to turn out that he'd been far more devoted to her than she'd expected (something that may have Foreshadowing beforehand but usually isn't fully revealed until late).
- Full Moon has Oshige, Full Moon's manager and a failed former idol, and Wakaoji, Full Moon's producer and a former bandmember whom Oshige had been fostering a Celeb Crush on since her idol days. The failure of Oshige's idol career had left her as a Broken Bird who believes she'll never get to be happy, which is only reinforced by Wakaoji talking about having had Mitsuki's mother Hazuki as his First Love. On the other hand, after Wakaoji starts becoming extremely invested in Oshige, he learns about her Celeb Crush on him but also that she's currently sleeping with the company president in an attempt to get favors for Full Moon's sake, which plants doubts in him about what Oshige really wants or whom she loves. Eventually, Wakaoji realizes that the pen cap on Oshige's bus pass case is the other half of a very important pen he'd treasured from someone who'd sent him a life-changing message in his band days; he'd fallen in love with Hazuki specifically because he'd attributed it to her, but a younger Oshige had been the actual writer, and she'd been keeping the cap on her bus pass wistfully hoping but not actually believing Wakaoji would figure it out. Upon learning this, Wakaoji is invigorated enough to go into the company president's room, drag Oshige out, acknowledge her feelings, and start a relationship with her.
- Kaguya-sama: Love Is War protagonists Kaguya and Shirogane are head-over-heels in love with each other, but both have far too much Pride to confess, getting them to engage in the titular "love war" Battle of Wits and try to make the other fall for them and confess their love. Kaguya's reason for hesitating is that she doesn't want to risk ruining their existing relationship, while Shirogane is worried about whether he can stand next to her as an equal, and both are worried that they may not be good enough for the other.
- Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch has a somewhat more complex take on the usual Loves My Alter Ego scenario: Kaito does actually suspect that Lucia is the mermaid from his childhood, but as long as he doesn't have proper confirmation, he'll still need to make a choice between committing to "the girl who's currently actively involved with his life" or "the mermaid he promised to find but is only a vague existence to him". After deciding that the former is more sensible, he makes a Love Confession to Lucia, but since a Geas prevents Lucia from telling him she's the mermaid no matter how much she wants to, there's something hollow about it and Lucia isn't nearly as happy as she feels she should be. Eventually, the Geas turns out to be irrelevant when it's revealed Kaito isn't even human to begin with, and Kaito confirms her identity when Lucia's sheer feelings manage to get across, giving both him and Lucia closure and allowing them to love each other more openly the way they actually want to.
- Moriarty the Patriot: A friendship variant—Sherlock and William both admit in volume 14 that they've been secretly thinking of the other as friends and wished desperately to spend more time together and solve mysteries together... if only it weren't for William's grand plan to murder people and cast himself as a villain.
- A bonus post-series chapter of Phantom Thief Jeanne has Shinji aggressively pursuing his neighbor Natsuki, who keeps pushing him away. Eventually, Natsuki reveals that she actually does return Shinji's feelings, but she's been having dreams of a lover from her past life coming for her, and she's terrified of what'll happen when he returns to the point she's been losing sleep over it. Naturally, Shinji himself is the reincarnation of the lover in question, and he'd been so aggressive about pursuing Natsuki in the first place because he still has his Past-Life Memories, including memories of his promise to see her again when she was on her deathbed.
- The Ruby and Sapphire arc of Pokémon Adventures eventually reveals this to be the case behind Ruby and Sapphire themselves, with their entire respective motives being a Gift of the Magi Plot for each others' sakes. Both of them had met as young children and gotten along well, only for both of them to be attacked by a Salamence and for Ruby to accidentally scare Sapphire by battling it to keep it away. Ruby decided to cut all ties with Pokémon battles out of shame for hurting her so deeply, while Sapphire felt shame for being too weak to fight back and went on to become a full-on Jungle Princess via sheer Level Grinding. When both of them met again years later, neither had recognized each other, and during the climax of the arc, Sapphire confesses the truth behind the person she was doing this for and the fact she'd been torn between her feelings for him and for Ruby, which gets Ruby to reveal his identity to her and inform her that, indeed, he'd also loved her this entire time.
- Superman Vs. Meshi: Clark expresses a desire to take Lois to the restaurant in Japan, but knows he can't without revealing his secret identity. He believes he'll have to keep quiet....until Jimmy informs him that Lois is upset that he doesn't spend much time at work anymore, because she's been wanting to take him out for lunch.
- Tokyo Mew Mew:
- The series initially presents protagonist Ichigo's crush Aoyama as an all-around perfect boy whom Ichigo is thrilled to have a chance with at all, making her terribly self-conscious about her life as a Mew Mew threatening her potential dating life with him and constantly wondering when will be the last straw for him. Despite her fears, he seems to enjoy flirting with her and is quite the Understanding Boyfriend, even confessing his love to her on the same day she'd just stood him up on a date, baffling her. That's not even the half of it; he'd already known her identity as Mew Ichigo, had confessed to her because he was absolutely terrified of losing her, and had even manifested an entire separate Mysterious Protector persona for her sake. Eventually, it's revealed that she'd been his entire reason for living since when they'd first met and elevated him beyond his original intended role as a vessel for the Big Bad. Notably, Tokyo Mew Mew New does away with presenting it as anything but clearly mutual from the beginning, adding extra scenes that required Once More, with Clarity or reading between Foreshadowing lines on a Rewatch Bonus to figure out in the original manga.
- Tokyo Mew Mew à la Mode features Berry and Tasuku, childhood friends who both have a severe case of I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship. Making things worse, Tasuku invokes this and asks to be Just Friends just around the same time Berry is having her Love Epiphany about him, demoralizing her for a while until Tasuku gets brainwashed and Berry has to pull an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight, getting them to eventually work it out.
- Wedding Peach has Momoko and Yosuke, who are constantly in extremely loud denial about having mutual feelings while everyone else can blatantly tell they're an item. While the reason for them staying in denial for so long isn't explicitly stated, the series Central Theme about relationships requiring effort and commitment suggests that they're both emotionally unprepared to accept the risks and requirements that come with dating and are aware that the other is as well. What ends up breaking the dam is that keeping things within the allowable range of a Belligerent Sexual Tension dynamic means there's only so much they can do for each other when they need it, and they both eventually become so frustrated with the status quo that they subtly shift into a Relationship Upgrade without much fanfare.
Fan Fiction
- In the Star Trek: Enterprise fanfic Hoshi's Birthday Surprise
, Malcolm and Hoshi are in love, but neither feels they can pursue the other, since Hoshi thinks Malcolm is gay due to him accidentally entering a Gayborhood, and Malcolm knows that Hoshi thinks he's gay.
- In the Ghostbusters (1984) fanfic Sick, Egon and Ray are in love, but Ray isn't sure if Egon really does like him or if his romantic behaviour toward him is more out of curiosity, and Egon isn't sure how Ray feels at all.
Films — Live-Action
- Emma. (2020) more strongly emphasizes this with Emma and Knightley than the original novel does, with Knightley convinced that Emma has Frank while Emma is convinced that Knightley has Harriet.
- The Lake House involves two lovers separated by San Dimas Time, with things becoming much more complicated by an incident involving Kate believing she'd been Stood Up when in actuality he wasn't there because he couldn't be, resulting in them being broken off for a time while still obviously both struggling to get over each other. (The original Korean version of the story, Il Mare, also has this aura but does somewhat toe closer to a Love Triangle.)
- Zerophilia has protagonist Luke get his crush Michelle to agree to date him, something he believes to be a downright miracle, only for him to learn that he has a rare genetic condition that causes him to turn into a girl and back under certain circumstances. This makes him terrified that his new girlfriend would be off-put by the idea of having a boyfriend who isn't a "real man", resulting in him desperately trying to hide it from her and find a way to make it stop. To make things worse, he's started feeling attraction to her brother, and although he considers it to be Inconvenient Attraction given his devotion to Michelle, he still feels guilt anyway. Meanwhile, Michelle is more concerned about why Luke keeps pushing her and her brother away and takes this as a sign that Luke doesn't really care about her that much after all. In fact, she and her "brother" are actually the same person, and her last breakup had left her with a fear that Luke would abandon her out of Shapeshifting Squick once he learned she has a male form, so his attempts to keep distance from her are naturally making things worse. Fortunately, they work it out in the end.
Literature
Examples by author:
- Jane Austen has quite a lot of this trope:
- Pride and Prejudice has Elizabeth reject Darcy for the terrible, arrogant first impression he'd left on her, only for her to learn that he's actually a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and start falling in love with him for real. Since she'd turned him down beforehand, she's convinced that he'll never give her another chance ever again, especially after her sister Lydia disgraces the family by eloping with Wickham, a man who has no chance of marrying her. Of course, not only is Darcy desperately trying to fix his behavior and antsy about not doing Elizabeth wrong again, he's actually the one who ends up secretly saving her family's reputation by getting Wickham to marry Lydia, all while not expecting Elizabeth to find out about it and doing it purely out of concern for her.
- The aforementioned Pride and Prejudice also has Beta Couple Jane and Bingley, who are obviously fond of each other but are convinced that the other is indifferent to them after some (well-meaning but ultimately harmful) interference from Darcy, which both are too Twice Shy to do anything about. Fortunately, Darcy fixes his mistake after the aforementioned Jerkass Realization.
- Persuasion has Anne and her former fiance Captain Wentworth, whom she'd let go in the past after being persuaded to do so. Wentworth returns in search of a potential wife, proclaiming very loudly that he'd like a woman who isn't as indecisive, and Anne is convinced that Wentworth will never love her again after what she did. Of course, all of his Passive-Aggressive Kombat is him trying to cover up the fact that he still hasn't gotten over her, and he especially starts feeling remorse once he realizes just how badly Anne has had it herself after her initial rejection.
- Sense and Sensibility has Elinor and Edward, who have mutual affection for each other that's held back by Edward having a prior engagement to Lucy Steele, whom Edward had made a Childhood Marriage Promise to but is only still keeping up with due to an obligation to preserve her honor (something that was a much bigger concern in the era the story takes place in). Elinor, for her part, is torn between sincerely wanting him to be happy with Lucy and feeling tormented over knowing Lucy is actually a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
- Anne of Green Gables has Rosemary West and John Meredith. Rosemary is compelled to reject a marriage proposal from John even though she loves him due to a promise she made to her sister years earlier. Consequently, John is devestated that the woman he loves seemingly doesn't return his feelings, while Rosemary believes that John will never forgive her for breaking his heart. Rosemary resigns herself to being alone even after her sister releases her from the promise. When John's daughter Una reveals to Rosemary that he's still in love with her, she wastes no time confessing her true feelings and they quickly get engaged.
- The Web Serial Novel Iol and Carnelia features a couple of Artificial Humans named Iol and Carnelia trapped in a cycle of Eternal Recurrence: one would find the other in an underground cave and awaken them, take them around the world and teach them about music and emotion for a year, then pass away and leaving the other Walking the Earth until the world ends and is reborn. Eventually, the other would find a recreation of the first one in an underground cave, and the cycle would repeat. While both of them are in love with each other during their short times together, both are also afraid that doing anything different would trigger a Butterfly of Doom and render them unable to meet again, so their feelings remain unspoken just so they can continue seeing each other for short periods of time. Eventually, Iol confesses his feelings, allowing him to retain his memories the next time they meet and for them to spend their happiest year together, and with the cycle broken for good, he returns to the hill where they met so they can be Together in Death.
- In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, both Cavendish brothers are revealed to have it with their respective love interests (leading Hastings to assume the love interests were unattached, at least emotionally if not in Mary's case legally, and develop crushes on them):
- Mary got together with John out of convenience. He loved her from the start and gave her space, and eventually she fell in love with him too but was too proud to admit it. By the time the plot of the novel happens, each of them is trying to get the other's attention via a fierce Operation: Jealousy.
- Lawrence loves Cynthia but thinks she is in love with John. It leads to him acting aloof around her, and she, who actually loves him too, is convinced that he can barely stand her.
- No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished reveals that Chelsie and the Great Dragon of China had a forbidden affair six hundred years ago and have been estranged ever since, while still in love with one another and believing the other would never want them back. They make no steps to rekindle their relationship, and it's through Julius' intervention that they finally do in the next book of the series (A Dragon of a Different Color).
Live-Action TV
- Mahou Sentai Magiranger has a late-stage example. Urara and Hikaru turn out to have fallen in love with each other over time, and the entire family can tell, but when Hikaru has a vision of his incoming death, he tries to leave Urara and her family behind for their own good, reasoning that the emotional pain will be much easier for them if he leaves as few attachments as possible. Urara respects his reasoning but is still miserable, and Miyuki convinces him to come around by telling him Urara would be happier to have his love at all, leading him to change his mind, deliver a Love Confession, and marry her.
- While every iteration of Sailor Moon has an Usagi/Mamoru Two-Person Love Triangle in some form, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon makes it less about the usual Reincarnation Romance and more about their interpersonal relationship via Disposable Fiancé Hina Kusaka, who's in an Arranged Marriage with Mamoru and serves as the biggest factor convincing Usagi that she has no chance with Mamoru and should just let him be. As a result, as Sailor Moon, she hands off her Valentine's Day gift intended for Mamoru to Tuxedo Mask, telling him that it was originally intended for someone she likes who currently has someone else. It just so happens that Tuxedo Mask is none other than Mamoru himself, who's aware that Sailor Moon is Usagi and absolutely is falling in love with her, and takes this to mean that Usagi already has someone else in her thoughts... which doesn't change his compulsion to protect her at any cost in any way, but definitely gets him to internally sulk about it for a while.
- In Some Assembly Required, Jarvis and Piper do this for the majority of the show, though for the early parts of the show we don't know that it is mutual.
- It becomes increasingly obvious as Son of a Critch continues that Mark and Fox have feelings for one another, but Fox is too stubborn to admit that she loves the dorky Mark, and Mark doesn't dare make the first move because he's afraid Fox won't hang out with him anymore if it turns out that she doesn't love him back.
- In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Melora", Melora and Bashir fall in love, but Bashir thinks that she's taken, since he saw a photo of her with a man. When she informs him that this man is actually her brother, they kiss.
Music
- Miou Aida and Haruki Serizawa from Confession Executive Committee best fit this dynamic among the first-generation couples. While they are both part of the same friend group and regularly walk home together, both of them are unaware that they like each other and always stop short of confessing out of a fear of ruining their existing relationship, with one of Haruki's songs even named "Goodbye, Our Mutual Unrequited Love". It takes them until the end of high school to acknowledge it a little, and six years after graduation before they even decide to date. By that point, everyone else is baffled at why they hadn't gotten together yet.
Theatre
- In the musical Double Digits, the duet "Oh, no!" is sung by a popular jock-boy and a quieter girl who is tutoring him in maths. To wit:
Boy: She's so smart, I'm so dumb.
Girl: He's so cool, I'm so glum.
Boy: Why would she...
Girl: Why would he...
Together: ... have any interest in me?
Video Games
- Final Fantasy VII: Depending on Cloud's Relationship Values with her, he and Tifa demonstrate that they have feelings for the other in their late-game interactions, but thanks to emotional hang-ups caused by their shared trauma as well as the impending threat they face taking priority, neither are really able to act on it until near the end of the story.
- Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth has a circumstantial one with Haku, who's been forced by circumstances into doing an El Cid Ploy for his late friend Oshtor, and Kuon, who figures out his identity after he slips up and accidentally breaks character for a moment in front of her. Haku is so dedicated to playing the role that he can't afford to let up even in private, while Kuon recognizes that he has to maintain the persona to prevent Yamato from falling apart without their Universally Beloved Leader. Kuon has to cope by waiting for the day things settle down so he can go back to being Haku (or at least no longer have to act like someone else) again. They effectively manage to communicate a mutual Love Confession (if not verbally, at least mutually acknowledged in spirit) right before Haku dies and is made to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, and while this results in Haku Walking the Earth, Kuon is free to go look for him and is implied to eventually reunite with him where they first met.
Western Animation
- The Dragon Prince: After a fairly traumatic experience where Callum falls into a Dark Magic-induced coma near the end of Book 2, Rayla undergoes a Love Revelation Epiphany and almost confesses how she feels to him while he's unconscious, but he wakes before she can. Early in Book 3, it's heavily implied Callum feels the same way about her but hasn't yet realized it himself with a couple of Crush Blushes occurring on their travels through Xadia, that is until "The Midnight Desert" where a heartfelt You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech from Callum causes Rayla to kiss him catching him off guard. It doesn't take long for both to officially get together afterwards once Callum's feelings have crystalized and he reciprocates her kiss while getting caught up in praising her as a hero.
- Miraculous Ladybug involves a square variant of the Two-Person Love Triangle where Marinette Dupain-Cheng is pining after Adrien Agreste, whose superhero alter ego Cat Noir is pining after Marinette's alter ego Ladybug. The two are classmates as civilians and partners as superheroes, but they have an agreement to not reveal their own identities and thus remain unaware of the full truth behind their respective Love Interests. Eventually, Adrien decides to give up on Ladybug for Marinette while Marinette puts civilian romance on hold, only to develop a crush on Cat Noir... resulting in a double Unrequited Love Switcheroo that's actually technically just the same thing.
- Disney's version of Robin Hood (1973) has Robin and Marian doing this because they haven't seen each other since they were children and have no way to know whether the other's feelings have changed. Robin also agonizes because his status as an outlaw leaves him Unable to Support a Wife and he thinks Marian deserves better.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars has Obi-Wan Kenobi and Duchess Satine, who fell in love when Obi-Wan was younger and stationed on Mandalore. Obi-Wan's position as a Jedi led to them becoming Star-Crossed Lovers, but it's also stated that Obi-Wan would have dropped everything and willlingly left everything behind if she'd just been a little clearer about wanting him at the time. It's very obvious that neither of them have gotten over each other, and by the time Satine finally does give Obi-Wan an Anguished Declaration of Love, it's on her deathbed.
