Stepping Stone Spouse

The nuptials say "for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health" but sometimes, things don't quite work out that way. Partner A and Partner B struggle together through unemployment, bankruptcy, a medical crisis, or just the general growing pains of a newly married couple, relying on each other to survive. They are confident that they just need to hold on and then they'll be able to enjoy their Happily Ever After together. But once the crisis has passed and they reach the point where they should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, Partner B leaves their spouse for someone else.

For this trope to be in play, the couple has to have experienced some type of difficulty with one partner noticeably bearing more of the load than the other with the belief that it's their duty as a spouse. The benefiting partner must then leave the relationship once the hardship lifts and establish a new relationship with a higher quality of living that is only possible because of the sacrifice of their previous partner.

Stepping Stone Spouses can result from a variety of situations such as:

1. Partner A works to put Partner B through college or specialty training (doctor, lawyer, etc.) only for Partner B to leave once they get a successful job with the education/training.
2. Partner A and B live extremely frugally and work multiple jobs to pay off a financially crippling debt that partner B accrued. Partner B gets a financial windfall and leaves for a better life with a new partner.
3. Partner B is ill and Partner A does everything they can to help Partner B recover. Once Partner B is healthy they leave Partner A for someone else. Double dagger if Partner A donated an organ in order for Partner B to recover.

While it is possible for the partners to split amicably, it's usually portrayed in media as the beginning of a revenge story. Partner A (usually female) may feel used and betrayed by this state of affairs, and Partner B (usually but not always male) is likely to be portrayed as a Jerkass who never truly cared about Partner A. If Partner A is Not Good with Rejection, they may become some variety of Woman Scorned. In extreme cases, things might turn deadly for Partner B and/or their new spouse. If the partners can come to a mutual agreement and understanding, on the other hand, it might instead become I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.

Sub-Trope of Starter Marriage, Sister Trope of All Take and No Give.

As various true-crime programs can attest, this does happen in real life but No Real Life Examples, Please!.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, Zeon Zum Deikun married a woman named Roselucia, who supported him emotionally and financially since his days as a street activist. He later left her because he wanted children and she couldn't provide them, but he never actually stopped being married to her. This winds up being a problem for his children by his mistress Astraea, since he never actually married their mother and after his death Roselucia takes advantage of the situation to get revenge on Astraea by separating her from her children and effectively putting her under house arrest.

Films — Animated

• Hercules: Megara literally sold her soul to Hades in order to save her boyfriend's life only for him to immediately dump her for another woman shortly after being revived. This leaves Megara trapped for eternity in Hades' servitude while the boyfriend enjoys his second shot at life with his new lover.

Films — Live-Action

• Acrimony: Melinda and Robert marry fresh out of college. They spend nearly eighteen years struggling as Robert tries to get his battery invention off the ground. When Melinda suspects that Robert is cheating on her with Diana, she divorces him only for Robert's invention to be picked up shortly after. Robert and Diana living the luxurious lives of multimillionaires sends Melinda on a Sanity Slippage that results in her attempting to kill the new couple.
• Diary of a Mad Black Woman: Charles and Helen marry right out of high school. She supports him as he goes through college, law school, and then works his way up the ladder at a law firm. However, Helen later discovers that with his success came adultery, and Charles has a mistress with whom he has two children. When Helen confronts Charles, he kicks her out of their home and starts the proceedings for a divorce. As Laser-Guided Karma, Charles is shot by a disgruntled client and paralyzed. Brenda, his mistress, immediately tries to take him off life support, and he is only saved by Helen, his legal wife, asking the hospital to maintain care. Brenda cleans out his bank accounts and absconds with their two boys, leaving Charles broke, crippled, and alone.
• All three of the wives in The First Wives Club suffer this fate. The movie begins with their mutual friend dying of suicide because her husband, whom she helped make rich, leaves her for a much younger woman, leading to them seeking revenge against their ex-husbands and against their friend's husband in turn.
• She-Devil: Ruth Patchet acts as a stay-at-home mother for her high-powered accountant husband Bob, maintaining the home and children while he focuses on his career. The fact that she's supposed to be unattractive allows Bob to treat her less like a partner and more like a servant, ultimately throwing it in her face that he can rely on her to be waiting for him when he begins to cheat on her with a celebrity client. After Bob leaves Ruth for Mary, his rich celebrity client, the film's comedy draws from Ruth making him pay for this by systematically dismantling every part of his life that he only has because of her efforts.
• Waiting to Exhale: Despite being highly talented and educated, Bernadine puts aside her career goals and her dreams of raising a family with her husband John in order to do everything she can to help him build his company. For eleven years, Bernadine does menial labor tasks to support the fledgling company, only for John to turn around and leave her for another woman once his company is profitable and it's his turn to support her start-up venture. Bernadine is pissed at this betrayal, and her subsequent burning of his car and a good amount of his expensive wardrobe in revenge sets up a contentious divorce battle between the two of them.
• Teresa, Jordan's first wife from The Wolf of Wall Street, sticks with him through a lot, encouraging him as he tries to build a career in the cutthroat world of stockbroking, and standing by him even after he loses his job on Black Monday. When he strikes it rich, he repays her support and kindness by screwing around behind her back with prostitutes and a long-term mistress and then dumping her for said mistress after she finds them together. While Teresa basically vanishes from the narrative after that, this is one of the first major signals that Jordan is a Villain Protagonist.

Literature

• Bel Ami: Madeleine Forestier marries Georges Duroy, a penniless former soldier. She provides him with important contacts in the Parisian high society, gives him half of the inheritance she receives from an old tutor, and helps Duroy write his articles, establishing him as a prominent writer. In reward for her invaluable aid, Duroy divorces her and marries a young heiress.
• Death on the Nile: Subverted. Jacqueline introduces Simon to her old school friend Linnet as needing a job, she puts him in charge of her estate... and marries him soon after. Jacqueline follows them on their honeymoon, culminating in her apparently murdering Linnet, but it's quickly established she was elsewhere at the time of the murder. Jacqueline and Simon were in on it from the beginning, intending for Simon to inherit Linnet's fortune and remarry elsewhere.
• One, Two, Buckle My Shoe: Subverted. Alistair Blunt married his first wife, Gerda, before marrying his second wife Rebecca Arnholt whose family fortune helped finance his rise to power. Not only has Blunt remained with Gerda throughout his marriage to Rebecca until the latter's death, but Gerda's also an accomplice in covering up Blunt's bigamy which would have ruined his fortune and career, which resulted in the three murders Poirot investigates.
• The Starter Wife tells the story of Molly Kagan, the faithful wife of a Hollywood mogul whose life changes for the worse overnight when her now successful husband dumps her for a younger woman.

Live-Action TV

• Dirty John: Season 2 of this true crime series features the story of Betty Broderick, who murdered her ex-husband Daniel T. Broderick III and his new wife Linda. Having been the sole provider for their family of five for years while Dan attended both medical and law school, Betty felt betrayed and cheated when he divorced her and remarried shortly after landing a highly lucrative partnership.
• Jessica Jones (2015): Jeri Hogarth leaned heavily on the financial support of her wife Wendy while going through law school. As she advanced in her career, Jeri focused much more on work than on Wendy. After making partner at her law firm, she started having affairs with other, younger women. This leads to a messy divorce and Wendy being manipulated by Kilgrave (after Jeri foolishly tried to use Kilgrave's Compelling Voice to get Wendy to drop her legal proceedings) into attempting to do literally to Jeri what Jeri did to her emotionally: Death of a Thousand Cuts.
• Saturday Night Live: In the "Meet Your Second Wife" sketch, the first contestant is incredulous that he would remarry in the future to a girl who is only in 7th grade at the moment, crediting his wife with supporting him while he writes his novel. When the game show hosts explain that one of his future novels will be a bestseller that gets optioned for a movie, he admits that he now understands why he'll leave her for a much younger woman.
• Played for Laughs on Seinfeld. Elaine was dating a med student who kept failing the test to become a doctor. When George discovered that abstaining from sex made him smarter, Elaine tried it with the boyfriend. It worked, and he dumped her.
  Elaine: What about my dream of dating a doctor?
  Boyfriend: Elaine, I always knew that when I became a doctor, I would dump whoever I was with and find someone better. That's my dream of becoming a doctor.

Music

• The male voice in "Don't You Want Me Baby?" from The Human League's album Dare seems to think that the female used him as a stepping stone.
  Now five years later on you've got the world at your feet.
  Success has been so easy for you.
  But don't forget it's me who put you where you are now

She disagrees.

• Kanye West: "Gold Digger" (2005) primarily focuses on the opportunistic woman looking for a Sugar Daddy, but one verse also talks about how unfair this is to the sacrificing partner who gets dumped.
  He got that ambition, baby, look at his eyes
  This week, he moppin' floors, next week it's the fries
  So stick by his side
  I know there's dudes ballin', and yeah, that's nice
  And they gonna keep callin' and tryin', but you stay right, girl
  And when you get on, he'll leave your ass for a white girl
• Mary J. Blige: The song "Not Gon Cry" (1996) is sung from the POV of a Stepping Stone Spouse:
  I was your lover and your secretary, Working every day of the week
  Was at the job when no one else was there, helping you get on your feet
  Eleven years of sacrifice, And you can leave at the drop of a dime
  Swallowed my tears, stood by your side, I shoulda left your ass a thousand times
• "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" by Paul Revere and the Raiders (later recorded by The Monkees) is about a rising star accusing his girlfriend of using him to boost her status so that she can then leave him for someone more impressive.

Theatre

• Dream Girls: Effie, Deena, and Lorelle, the Dreams, are a girl group trying to get out of the slums of Detroit. As they play gigs to establish themselves, their manager Curtis begins to date Effie, the full-figured powerhouse singer of the group. They date for several years. However, as the group gets more and more famous, Deena, the more traditionally beautiful singer, is pushed to the forefront. When the lead singer changes, so do Curtis's romantic attentions and the influence he wields along with them. Effie is hurt to be pushed aside and her feelings are captured in the ballad "And I am Telling You I'm Not Going." Effie goes on to be pushed out of the group and ends up on welfare, raising Curtis's child. Curtis and Deena marry and go on to launch a very successful solo career for Deena.

Western Animation

• In Walter Lantz's Broadway Bow Wow (1954): John and Mary, two anthropomorphic dogs, are talented but not very famous dancers. They agree to marry, but just as they finally become successful and achieve fame, John jilts Mary at the altar. Heartbroken, Mary seeks him out and watches as he wastes money on his new flame. Eventually, the fickle John experiences a conga of humiliation: after he spends himself broke, the new woman leaves him for a rich farmer. His reputation is ruined and he can no longer book solo acts. He ultimately tries reconcile with Mary, only to be thrown out by security. He struggles with suicidal ideation until a reluctant Mary appears and agrees to forgive him and take him back.