Basic Trope: Anyone who has feelings for someone else does not have those feelings reciprocated.
- Straight: Alice → Bob → Christabel → Danny → Alice
- Exaggerated: Alice → Bob → Christabel → Danny → Ethan → Franklin → Gilda → Hannah → Imogen → Jasper → Kay → Luke → Marcy → Norman → Owen → Phoebe → Queenie → Ross → Suzannah → Terrence → Ulla → Victor → Wendy → Xavier → Yvette → Zeke → Alice
- Downplayed:
- Alice → Bob → Christabel
- Alice wants to be Platonic Life-Partners with Bob, but he doesn't feel the same way.
- Justified: The characters are young and hormonal but each have different ideas of what an ideal partner/relationship would be like, and so they fall for the 'wrong' people left and right.
- Inverted:
- Everyone likes people who like them back.
- Everyone hates people who don't hate them back.
- Subverted: Alice likes Bob, who doesn't reciprocate her feelings at first, but later does.
- Double Subverted: ... for a little while. Before returning to Christabel, who doesn't like him.
- Parodied: Alice → Bob the Robot → Christabel the Cube → Danny the Dog → Ethan, Alice's brother → Alice
- Zig Zagged: Affections change so frequently that it varies.
- Averted:
- Everyone likes people who like them back.
- No Hugging, No Kissing is in play.
- Enforced: Rule of Drama and/or Rule of Funny
- Lampshaded: "Why do you have a thing for people who don't like you at all?"
- Exploited: A villain approaches one of the lovebirds and promises that they'll be able to both repel their Abhorrent Admirer and get the one they like if they follow the villain's advice.
- Defied: Alice goes on a date with Yvette when she asks her out. She doesn't really like her, but she's trying to like her, because she's tired of the unrequited thing.
- Implied: There are interactions between all the characters that can be viewed as romantic subtext (such as a Longing Look) or as something completely platonic.
- Discussed: "I can't take being the one everyone goes to for advice anymore! It's so hard keeping track of who of my friends are having trouble getting away from whom!"
- Conversed: "And Wendy is in love with — gah! Can someone make a flowchart?"
- Deconstructed:
- Because everyone focuses on their feelings for people who don't love them back, the population of the planet starts to slowly dwindle because those focused on their unrequited feelings aren't reproducing and having children.
- Alice's unrequited feelings for Bob cause her to not give as much attention to future boyfriends who do love her back because the possibility of a future with Bob is always tempting her.
- Alice begins to develop limerence for Bob, who becomes more and more creeped out with Alice's constant desire for his love and her need to be with him all the time. It takes years for Alice to move on from Bob, if she ever moves on from him at all.
- Danny realizes that he'll never have a chance with Alice as long as Bob exists and gradually grows to resent him. He then decides that Bob has got to go and pays for it for it dearly when he finds out the hard way that Bob doesn't even like Alice, being more into Christabel instead who loves Danny. Danny breaks down upon realizing that Christabel had feelings for him and he never noticed.
- Alice realizes there is a chain of feelings and tries to organize an orgy. Everyone gets pissed at Alice and accuses her of being a massive pervert trying to use them to live out her fantasy.
- Reconstructed:
- Those focused on unrequited relationships do not form families out of a sense of obligation, while the couples make families because they genuinely want to spend their lives together as best as they can. The net result is that while there are fewer people in the world, the new generations of children grow up in safer, happier homes.
- At least one character realises that their desired partner's well being matters more than the prospect where their feelings are reciprocated. Ultimately, they decide to stop angsting about unrequited love and do something more worthwhile instead.
- Alice's attempts to organize an orgy starts out uneasy but then everyone decides to go for it, feeling there is nothing left to lose. Years later, they all look back on it and laugh about it.
- Played for Laughs: Many farces use this trope for laughs.
- Played for Drama: The writers focus on how painful being in unrequited love can be for all parties involved.
- Played for Horror: One of the characters, after years of rejection after heartache after betrayal and you name it, gives up on love for other potential love interests in all its various forms and definitions to such a monstrously extreme degree, that everyone is just going to throw them under the bus romantically, the character who has drawn the short straw in terms of sex/romance ends up deciding to rape one of their former love interests that rejected them, or worse.
Back to All Love Is Unrequited.
