Basic Trope: An intense and turbulent romantic relationship that takes a toll on the people involved. The narrative's framing of the relationship walks the line between "electric and passionate" and "exhausting and destructive."
- Straight: Alice and Bob fight often, and have hurt one another many times. Regardless, they are rather obsessed with each other and care about each other deeply. Their intense fights are usually matched and book-ended by intense sex.
- Exaggerated: Destructive Romance
- Downplayed: No Accounting for Taste
- Justified:
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other
- Alice and Bob's relationship began as Belligerent Sexual Tension. They moved from sexual tension to sex and never altered the belligerent part.
- Inverted:
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: Alice and Bob's relationship is loving and free of conflict.
- Awful Wedded Life: Alice and Bob's relationship is full of conflict, but sexless, cold, and detached.
- Subverted: Bob realizes that this relationship is really taking a toll on him, and breaks up with Alice.
- Double Subverted: But it's a Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario. They get back together, and their relationship isn't much different than it was before.
- Parodied: Alice and Bob show their deep mutual love by giving each other life-threatening injuries, to the natural bafflement of everybody they know.
- Zig-Zagged: The nature of Alice and Bob's relationship is hotly debated among fans.
- Averted:
- All romantic relationships are Sickeningly Sweethearts or Happily Married.
- There are no romantic or sexual relationships at all.
- Enforced: There is some mandate for a Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario, and they need some way to justify that.
- Lampshaded:Carol: I think Alice and Bob aren't good for each other. I know they really does love each other—I get that—but sometimes I wonder if that's really enough.
- Invoked: Alice and Bob are "broken goods" and accept that they cannot show love in a conventional way — but they still try to follow a certain set of rules in their "masochism" play to prevent things from actually hurting them.
- Exploited: Charles the Big Bad makes Alice and Bob Heroes with Bad Publicity by convincing everybody else in the cast that their relationship is not "vitriolic yet loving," but rather flat-out abusive.
- Defied: Alice and/or Bob refuse to enter a relationship that is tainted with acts of hatred, no matter how much it is supposed to "spice up" things.
- Discussed: "Alice and Bob's relationship is the sort of intense but unwise relationship you find in old novels."
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: After talking about it with some friends, Alice breaks up with Bob because—although she loves him—she thinks they would both be happier without each other. Alice goes on to have a much more peaceful relationship with Dan.
- Reconstructed: Two years later, Alice breaks up with Dan to reunite with Bob. When her friends ask about it, Alice explains: "Bob makes me feel more alive, not just more comfortable. Choosing something just because it's easier—it would be the cowardly choice, and I know I would've regretted it eventually."
- Implied: Alice and Bob often go out with unexplained new wounds, attribute them to each other, and when their conversation partners suggest they dump the other, they say something to the effect of "Are you crazy?"
Back to The Masochism Tango, and if you slip, it's because I love you!
