Turned Off By The Jerkass

People reject or dump people for a wide variety of reasons depending on their standards; if someone's standards involve being a decent person, treating others like crap will naturally be a turn-off, or grounds for a breakup. The jerk can be an ex-crush who someone lost interest in after seeing the crush's true colors, an ex-partner who someone dumped for their toxic behavior towards friends and/or family, or an admirer who is considered repulsive because of how terrible they are towards people other than their crush; overall what leads to a person being rejected/dumped is how crappy they are towards people other than the one doing the rejecting/dumping.

The cruel act itself could manifest itself in different ways; someone who believes in being Nice to the Waiter would naturally be repulsed by anyone who is rude to those beneath them in social standing. Someone who is protective of their friends and/or family won't be pleased to learn that they are being abused or insulted and won't be in a hurry to get/stay with anyone who does so. If the person discovers that their crush/partner treated their previous partners poorly, then they would dump them for not only being an awful person but also out of a sense of self-preservation. If a crush/partner is A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, their admirer/partner will end up losing interest/dumping them once the crush/partner's true nature is revealed. If the Jerkass is a bigot, their non-prejudiced crush/admirer will be disgusted even if they aren't part of a group the Jerkass is prejudiced towards, especially if one of their loved ones are a member of said group.

One popular form of cruelty used for this trope is child abuse, since it is considered one of the most heinous things a person can do. If a caring parent is married to an abusive one, then they won't hesitate to divorce their spouse the moment they learn of the abuse. A good-hearted single parent won't hesitate to dump or reject anyone who hates or abuses children, as they wouldn't want their kids to have to endure having an evil stepparent. Even if a person doesn't have children, the act of abusing a child is considered so vile, that seeing someone hurt an unrelated child is enough to lose someone's interest.

This trope is often used in Love Triangles between a good guy and a bad guy, with the latter being rejected by their crush for being cruel towards others while the former earns the crush's affections due to their kind-hearted personalities. If the jerk is more superficially desirable than the nice person, expect the former to become confused that someone wouldn't want to be with someone more desirable.

Sister Trope to Single Woman Seeks Good Man, which this trope tends to overlap with Love Triangle stories. Overlaps with Wasted Beauty if someone is turned off by an attractive person's rotten behavior. Contrast All Girls Want Bad Boys, where treating others badly is a turn-on rather than a turn-off, and Love Forgives All but Lust, where someone tolerates any sort of bad behavior except for infidelity. Opposite of Samaritan Relationship Starter, where a person starts a relationship with someone because of their kindness towards others (and it occasionally goes hand-in-hand with this trope if used to contrast a character's love interests).

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Fruits Basket: Kakeru Manabe calls Tohru whiny and disgusting for openly grieving during her mother's funeral and tells her that she's not the only one who lost a parent in the accident. His girlfriend Komaki Nakao (who lost her father in the same accident that killed Tohru's mother) is utterly furious with him and rejects his claims that he was doing it on her behalf, almost breaking up with him as a result and forcing him to apologize to Tohru.

Fan Works

• Danny Phantom: Stranded:
  • Forgotten has Danny lose his memory, temporarily forgetting that he's dating Star. Colette and Ember both try to exploit this; however, while he finds both girls pretty, he's not attracted to either one of them, and their aggressive advances only turn him off further.
  • Costumed: Michelle was willing to give Dash a chance thanks to his persistence in pursuing her. However, after he failed to get tickets to a show she'd really wanted to see, he tries to convince her to sneak in. When she refused, he started threatening another guy to hand over his tickets, getting them both in trouble with security.
• In The Loud House fanfic Diary of a Loud (now taken down but covered on Episode 7 of Peeking Through the Fourth Wall), Ronnie Anne breaks up with Lincoln after he punches his little sister Lola in the eye, knocks out two of her teeth, and knocks her downstairs because she shared his diary with her classmates.
• The Many Dates of Danny Fenton:
  • Dash, despite being a handsome, popular high school quarterback, ends up repulsing a lot of the girls he hits on, mostly because he's an obnoxious bully who tries to steal other guys' girlfriends.
  • Danny doesn't hesitate to cancel his dates with Cree and Vicky after learning that they're child abusers. He gives them a score of '0', something he did for no other girl, simply because he found their abuse of children that reprehensible.
    • Tucker, despite his poor track record with girls, is appalled to learn that Cree is a child abuser and actually refuses to date her when Danny warns him about her.
• Miraculous Ladybug Salt-Shots:
  • In A Price to Pay, Emelie is revived by Gabriel making a reality-rewriting Wish. As part of the price, Tom Dupain-Cheng is killed in a car accident which her husband caused. Gabriel bribes his way to being found "innocent" in court; when the verdict is handed down, he bursts out laughing, convinced that he's just pulled a Karma Houdini. Emelie is so disgusted by his Lack of Empathy that she divorces him, disowning Adrien as well for defending his father and claiming he hadn't done anything wrong.
    Emilie: You paid for them to be in your favor. For you to win the case. Even though the evidence clearly showed that it was your fault. I will never be with a man like that. You had the audacity to laugh when it was over. I realized you weren't the same person that I married that day.
  • A Price to Pay also has Marinette make clear to Adrien that he has absolutely no chance of rebuilding any kind of positive relationship with her after his betrayal and how he helped his father make that Wish in the first place.
  • More generally speaking, several stories in the collection have Marinette/Ladybug rejecting Adrien/Chat Noir for acting entitled to her, as he refuses to take no for an answer. Masked Hearts stands out as he spends two years dating Kagami there, only to immediately reveal his identity to Ladybug and ask her out after Hawkmoth is defeated, in front of his girlfriend.
  • In It Was Always You, Alya, Marinette was secretly crushing on the New Transfer Student ever since she stood up for her against Chloé. However, dealing with Alya's overbearing, pushy attitude and refuse to LISTEN to her eventually helped Marinette realize she was Loving a Shadow all along. By the time Alya learns about her crush, it's long since faded away.
• A Possible Encounter for a Phantom:
  • While Tucker is initially attracted to Bonnie, he quickly loses interest when she calls him a loser. Danny also rejects the idea of dating her, and she doesn't do herself any favors by trying to Blackmail him with his Secret Identity.
  • For her part, Bonnie considers dating Dash as part of a plan to make Danny jealous. However, upon witnessing him assaulting Nathan with trash at the mall, she calls him an immature loser and storms off.
• Resurrected Memories has Danny completely abandon his crush on Paulina, accepting that she's nothing more than a shallow, Clingy Jealous Girl and Alpha Bitch.
• Women of Eden: Both Lilith and Eve find Adam's boorish, self-centered behavior utterly unpleasant and want nothing to do with him.

Films — Animated

• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1998): Zoey breaks up with Arrow after he gets Rudolph disqualified from Reindeer Games with his cheating.
• Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: Lady Tottington disapproves of her fiancé Victor Quatermain's love of hunting, but not strongly enough to break off their engagement, and even reluctantly authorises him to shoot the titular Were-Rabbit when Wallace's effects prove futile. When she learns, however, that Victor knew all along that the Were-Rabbit was Wallace and is perfectly content to kill him, she dumps him almost immediately.

Films — Live-Action

• Look Who's Talking: When Mollie goes on dates to find a father for Mikey, she rejects the guys she goes out with for mistreating the employees of the restaurants they go eat at, complete with an Imagine Spot where she imagines them bossing around Mikey.
• Run Fatboy Run: Dennis' ex-girlfriend is quite okay with her new boyfriend Wint, who is The Ace (at least comparatively to Dennis), while Dennis can see that he is a jerk but cannot convince her of it. But she ditches Wint the very second he becomes irritated about her son changing channels on the TV of the hospital room where he is staying after a minor accident on a marathon and yells at the kid, "Choose one channel and stick to it, you little shit!"
• You've Got Mail: Played With:
  • Downplayed with Joe and Patricia. When they get stuck in an elevator with two other people, first, Patricia yells at Juan the service guy over the elevator emergency phone. Then, when the other two passengers are genuinely worried about their safety and discussing deep, meaningful things they would do for their loved ones if they ever got out of the elevator, Patricia is wholly focused on shallow, self-centered concerns. Joe breaks up with her offscreen and moves out of her place.
  • Subverted with Kathleen and Frank. While they get into a fight after Frank calls Kathleen's family friend Birdie crazy for falling in love with Generalissimo Franco as a young woman, Frank ends up relenting and apologizing to her, confessing he's not in love with Kathleen and has fallen in love with someone else. Kathleen, who is also not in love with Frank, forgives him and they break up amicably.

Literature

• Animorphs: Early in the series, Cassie and Rachel have crushes on a teenaged heartthrob that go away pretty quickly once they find out he's willing to work with the Sharing (the organization used by the Yeerks to find and make more Controllers).
• In The Diamond Girls, Martine spends a lot of the book obsessing over her boyfriend Tony, but in the end she reveals she broke up with him because she got sick of him and his mother constantly slagging off her family, particularly her mother (who often gets slut-shamed for having five kids by five different men); while they're not perfect, Martine still loves them and knows they love her, warts and all.
• In Lola Rose, Nikki insists she loves her husband Jay and sticks by him even though he is frequently physically and verbally abusive towards her, including never telling on him even when his abuse lands her in hospital. However, when he hits their daughter Jayni for calling him out on his abuse, Nikki leaves him that very night and takes their kids with her, saying she won't stand for him beating Jayni and believes that once he's started on her he won't stop. Nikki later takes Jay back in a Moment of Weakness, as she's lonely, physically frail, and terrified due to a recent breast cancer diagnosis, but she ditches him for good after he tries to hit her again and attempts to attack her sister for defending her (emphasis on attempts).
• In Murder is Easy, Honoria Waynflete claims that she broke up with Lord Whitfield after he strangled her bird to death. It turns out that she killed the bird, and he broke up with her because if this.
• In My Sister Jodie, Jodie is initially attracted to Jed for his 'bad boy' attitude, but she's disgusted and immediately stops dating him after he deliberately and fatally runs over a baby badger, and is utterly indifferent to its suffering and towards the distress it causes Jodie's younger sister (who is emotionally attached to the badgers and witnesses the incident). Jed quickly moves on with other girls, proving he never much cared for Jodie in the first place (that she's 14 and he's 18 was also a big red flag, though Jodie didn't see it that way).
• Pride and Prejudice: Zig-Zagged Trope. Elizabeth's main reasons for rejecting Darcy's first proposal are his meddling in the courtship of her sister Jane with Mr. Bingley, and his allegedly withholding George Wickham's inheritance from Darcy's father for selfish reasons. However, she realizes Jerkass Has a Point when Mr. Darcy sends her a letter explaining his behavior. On the first count, he genuinely believed Jane only wanted Bingley for his money because Jane is so passive in expressing her feelings and her mother was raving in public about Bingley's fortune. On the second count, George Wickham lied about the inheritance issue — he did receive the money, but wasted it, and then preyed on Darcy's little sister to get at her fortune. Because of this and some character development on both their parts, they eventually get together.
• Sherlock Holmes: In the short story "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", Mrs. McFarlane was once engaged to the titular character, Jonas Oldacre, but broke up with him after being appalled at his cruelty in setting a cat loose in an aviary. He wickedly plotted revenge for this, and retaliated years later by faking his own death and trying to frame her only son for his "murder", but fortunately Holmes put a stop to this.

Live-Action TV

• Avataro Sentai Donbrothers: Downplayed with Tsubasa. While he's firmly on the side of good, his fugitive lifestyle has robbed him of the patience and empathy needed to really be there for people. He spends the entire show effectively trying to get the mentally despondent, homicidally-sensitive Tsuyoshi into "getting over" his body-duplicating wife Miho running off on him after her cover is blown. This mindset persists even after Tsubasa finally finds Natsumi and the three meet up to hash the martial issue out. This causes Natsumi to forsake Tsubasa when he expects her to join him on the run during an encounter with inquisitive cops. His unwillingness to tell her what happened the past year because he knows her well enough is simply the last straw. Natsumi finds herself repulsed by both his Lack of Empathy and his secrecy. Not only does she break things off, but gets together with Tsuyoshi; whom she grew fond of thanks to knowing him through Miho's link to her.
• Moon from Cobra Kai ends up dating Hawk once he becomes a a bad boy. However, she gradually loses interest in him because of his bullying so she breaks up with him.
• One episode of Friends has Phoebe waking up in bed with her boyfriend Gary, who she'd just moved in with... only to see him casually shoot a bird that was singing on the window. Needless to say, this ends their relationship there and then.
• Homicide: Life on the Street: In the Season 5 premiere, Munch offers to let Brodie stay in his house after he's evicted, but rescinds the offer when Brodie calls him out for bullying Pembleton after he suffered a stroke. Brodie replies Munch can't kick him out because he'd never want to stay with someone who treats people so cruelly.
• Marley's Ghosts: In "The Art Teacher", Marley's short-lived romance with an art teacher falls apart when he brushes off Marley's concerns about her sobbing niece Mia (whose boyfriend isn't talking to her, has a mother who is off drinking, and whose painting didn't succeed as well as she hoped it would have been), and instead insists on kicking Mia out so that they can be romantic.
• In the second-season premiere of Son of a Critch, Fox is dating an older boy, Millard. She puts up with a lot of his controlling behavior, even after he tries to "claim" her by tying a piece of fringe from his jacket around her wrist, but she dumps him soon after he threatens and belittles Mark, as while she was willing to put up with a lot of his behavior towards her, she won't tolerate towards her friends.
• In one episode of live-action adaptation of Zbeng! , the class is taken hostage by a terrorist. Sigal is very much smitten with him, especially as he describes with tears what jerkasses surrounded him that he had to get rid of them. Then Gal, displeased at his girlfriend being interested in another, manages to access the criminal's background and finds out that in addition to all the murders, he also has a background of puppy abuse. Of course for Sigal, nothing can ever justify that.

Music

• In the song "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus, the girl dumps her boyfriend, because of how he treats the titular teenage dirtbag.

Video Games

• Warriors Orochi 3: In one side mission, Okuni is chasing after Zhong Hui because of his handsome face, much to the latter's annoyance. After defeating him, she gets a good look at him but is turned off by his arrogant personality which Zhong Hui takes offense.

Web Animation

• Etra chan saw it!:
  • Hiiragi divorced his wife Azami for her habit of victim blaming people.
  • Akane calls off her wedding with Akamatsu and the marriage because of a childish prank he pulled on Yuri as revenge for rejecting him back in college. In addition, she knows that he would do the same thing to her if they ever got into a fight.
• Refreshing Stories: Sakura combines this trope with Single Woman Seeks Good Man; when the bullying jock Kaminoke asks how a pretty girl like Sakura can prefer a "gloomy" otaku like Hiroshi, Sakura explains that it's because Hiroshi is a Nice Guy who goes out of his way to do good deeds like volunteering at retirement homes, unlike Kaminoke who has no problem acting rude to elderly people and pregnant women.
• Revenge Films:
  • The main character broke up with her boyfriend, who she was considering marrying, after finding out that he and his mother abused the boyfriend's younger stepsister. In addition, the young girl's father divorced his wife after finding out that his daughter was being abused.
  • Ken broke off his engagement to his seemingly nice fiancèe Mia, after finding out that she verbally and physically abused Rhea, Ken's wheelchair-bound mother.

Web Video

• Elisabeth Wheatley's short video "The Romance Genres discuss what they can work through #booktube" discusses this, as Contemporary Romance decides to break up with her billionaire love interest for kicking her dog. While Paranormal Romance, Historical Romance, and Fantasy Romance have all successfully worked through things like parental murder, genocide, and drugging with their own love interests, they are all horrified by the dog-kicking, with Paranormal threatening violence against him.

Western Animation

• In the Family Guy episode "The Kiss Seen Around The World", Meg develops a crush on news reporter Tom Tucker. But when he tries to edit a suicide attempt in a humorous way for views, Meg is disgusted with Tom and loses her crush on him.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In "Frankie My Dear", Mac and Bloo find out that Frankie is going out on a date with somebody and try to ruin the date, mistaking two other guys for her date who get dragged into the mess. When they meet her actual date Dylan, he outright tells them that he owns Frankie and that no girl would be interested in them at all. This gets Frankie, who is right behind him, to respond by beating him to a pulp for insulting her friends and acting like he owns her.
• Futurama:
  • In "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", Fry and Morgan's forbidden affair is going well until Bender catches them and threatens to spread gossip about them. Morgan coldly responds by downloading Bender's brain, reverting him to his factory settings, and shipping it to Central Filing. Fry is outraged and breaks up with her the very next time they meet.
  • In "The Cyber House Rules", Leela has a second eye grafted onto her face and begins dating Adlai, the surgeon responsible. When they decide to adopt an orphan, Leela favors one with a mutation like her own, but Adlai refuses unless he can surgically fix her mutation too. Realizing how shallow Adlai is, Leela not only dumps him but forces him to revert her own surgery.
  • In the episode "The Why of Fry", Leela is on a date with The Mayor's Aide (as he loves to remind everyone). He shows off by using his status (dubiously), culminating in booking the entire ice rink so he and Leela can skate alone. Unfortunately, the children of the local Orphanarium were planning to go skating and look on sadly. Leela suggests they let them skate, which he scoffs at, shouting at them to get connections. This goes over as well as you'd expect.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: Sheldon attempts to invoke this with Silver Shell, whom Jenny is madly in love with. He built Silver Shell (which he pilots) to be so big of a jerk that Jenny rejects him and other male robots so that he could have her himself. Despite this, she frequently goes back to being interested in Silver Shell, despite Sheldon's best efforts to convince Jenny to ditch him.
• The Proud Family: In the episode "I Love You Penny Proud", Penny dates a wheelchair-using boy named Johnny, who seems angelic at first. During her family's ski, trip he turns out to be very rude and obnoxious, When Penny breaks up with him, she makes it clear that it's not because he's in a wheelchair, it's because he's not a nice person.
• Spongebob Squarepants: The episode "Love that Squid" has Spongebob trying to help Squidward get ready for a date. After numerous disasters, Squidward finally snaps at Spongebob, not realizing his date is right behind him as he is doing so. Seeing her disapproving look, Squidward asks if she's now turned off by seeing his brutish behavior. It ends up being subverted as she actually likes Squidward even more after seeing that as she appreciates a man who doesn't suffer fools, much to his delight.

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