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Website / Not Always Romantic

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Not Always Romantic is a sister site to Not Always Right, added to the network alongside Not Always Related in 2011. The site hosts stories revolving around romance and relationships, such as messy break-ups, Wacky Marriage Proposals, dodging creeps, awesome or silly (or awesomely silly) boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses/partners, and the like. (As usual, it's best to take these stories with a grain of salt.)

Note: Due to a restructuring of the entire NAR site network, the hyperlinks below may or may not work anymore.

Contains examples of:

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    A-M 
  • Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: The "Time to Bite the Bullet" stories detail a specific variant in Singapore: "Potong Jalan." That means that a guy's girlfriend broke up with him while he was doing his mandatory two years of military service. Over half of men lose their girlfriends during this job, and it's bad enough that the drill sergeants are trained as breakup counselors.
  • Acronym Confusion: A girlfriend says that she wants to adopt a gorilla through the WWF. His boyfriend replies, "What does Vince McMahon have to do with adopting a gorilla?" note 
  • Action Girlfriend:
    • A married couple, both of whom are in the military, go to a restaurant. A stranger gives the wife backhanded, sexist praise, to which she goes on a long rant and ends up earning a free meal from the waitress. Her husband says, "I love you, beautiful, but stop scaring people."
    • The writer's girlfriend ends up punching a mutual friend's sexist, condescending boyfriend.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Several. In one, a teenage girl calls her boyfriend "my dumb pig", which is probably the strangest.
  • All Take and No Give: The girlfriend in this story has this attitude, giving the submitter 'advice' which is just 'telling him and not letting him say no'. This fails to raise a red flag for the submitter, since they aren't particularly minded towards the areas she's ordering them about in, and they actually get compliments from work over the improvement of their wardrobe. But then, the Berserk Button is pushed - the girlfriend gets rid of the submitter's sizable gaming collection, because time spent playing games is time that could be spent being with her instead. This directly leads to their breakup. (Fortunately, she attempted to sell them to a secondhand games store whose clerk knows the submitter well, and was able to save everything.)
  • The Alleged Car: This couple owns one, although it just got that way due to age. In particular, their doors can't shut.
    Husband: This is not a car. It is a sentimental object with wheels!
  • Amicable Exes: This couple had a very difficult divorce, but subsequently reached the point where they not only had regular lunches to discuss the kids, but were comfortable joking about the circumstances of the split.
    • Even moreso with this couple. As a pair of opposite-sex friends, they married because they thought it was natural given their closeness, and then divorced when they realized it wasn't working out because there was actually no romantic attraction between them, but have remained best friends throughout it all. OP even indicates that they've agreed that if things don't work out on the marriage front for them, they'll grow old together as Platonic Life-Partners.
  • And Call Him "George": Discussed in this story, complete with a quick debate over whether the Trope Namer was Of Mice and Men or Looney Tunes.
  • Artistic License – Biology:
    • This genius genuinely believes women naturally exude various pleasant fragrances, and perfumes are only used by women who don't exude a pleasant enough scent to attract males. When he finds out he's been smelling his girlfriend's shower gel, he immediately dumps her.
    You really thought the smell of citrus just… came out of my pores? Dude, I’m not a grapefruit.
    • This guy throws a tantrum when nobody agrees with him that marrying somebody with children will automatically change their DNA to make him their biological father. Not even his own parents could get through to him that that's not how it works.
  • Attempted Homewrecker: This woman's (now evidently former) friend decides to hit on her via text, and claims that "I'm married, and I don't think of you like that" isn't an answer. When he continues to press her over it, she understandably grows angry, which leads to him insulting her and making posts online about the "friend zone" and calling her "blind, slutty slutty, and stupid". She responds by posting a screenshot of their original conversation, which he promptly deletes and blocks her.
  • Attempted Rape: This coworker complains to the submitter that he got fired and needs someone to comfort him. She is already married and vehemently refuses several times (blocking two numbers in the process). The epilogue states that the local newspaper ran a story about the coworker luring another woman to his home and trying to assault her. He ended up in jail.
  • Bait-and-Switch: A man asked a restaurant to set up a table with fresh flowers and a greeting card, leading the serving staff to think this was a proposal. Nope; it turns out that he was cheating on his significant other, and this was a last-ditch attempt to save the relationship.
  • Battle Couple: One married couple met while deployed overseas. And she outranks him.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: This story, which outright quotes the trope-naming phrase. The poster's grandfather had an "old-school", Stay in the Kitchen attitude toward gender roles. His wife had her own car, but only for the purpose of running household errands, transporting the kids etc. However, one day they got into a blazing argument over various chores not being done, which led to him declaring that women shouldn't drive. She promptly handed him the car keys and refused to drive a car again. Ever. After several months of having to handle all the driving himself, he gave in and apologized, but she refused to take the keys back, and never got behind the wheel again as long as she lived.
  • Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Big Sister Instinct: When a teenager purposefully touches the submitter's first-grade sister's thigh, she screams "PERVERT!!" and beats him with her backpack.
  • Bilingual Backfire: A boy and girl visiting a yogurt store are unaware that the cashier speaks Spanish. After some sweet talk with the girl, the boy asks the cashier out. She reveals that she knows Spanish, too, and calls him out on it, saying "Have a great day, pig!" as he walks away.
  • Birds of a Feather: The host of a Dungeons and Dragons group answers the door in Klingon to get rid of door-to-door salesmen. One salesman responds in the same, and manages to deliver his entire pitch in Klingon. The impressed host buys the product, invites the salesman to join the next D&D session, and three years later they're married.
  • Bluff the Impostor: How one woman and her sister catch her husband's ex in a lie.
  • Bridezilla: While weddings are often stressful for brides, especially those envisioning the “perfect” wedding, there are particularly egregious examples:
    • One bridezilla gets a karmic slapdown in this story. After throwing her sister out of the wedding for daring to become pregnant (after three years of trying), Bridezilla's only reaction to her sister's miscarriage is to decide that her sister can be in the wedding after all. Bridezilla's mother immediately announces that she isn't going to pay for the wedding and dumped full financial responsibility onto the 'zilla. More Laser-Guided Karma: Her fiancé cancels the wedding less than 24 hours later.
  • Buffy Speak:
  • Cane Fu: Discussed - the submitter's partner has a limp that will likely be permanent, but refuses to use a cane... until they point out to him that it's also "a weapon that’s socially acceptable for you to take literally anywhere."
  • Captain Obvious: While watching a bike race — "I think the guy in the front is winning."
  • Christmas Every Day: Invoked in the title of this story, in which a man buys a CD of his wife's favorite Christmas song so "it can be Christmas whenever you want."
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: This girl accuses a person whose phone number her boyfriend called about once a week of trying to "steal her man". The number in question was the company number of an insurance office. Even when told that her boyfriend was probably just hashing out insurance details with them, she refuses to listen.
  • Closet Key: A case of Incompatible Orientation turns into this here, when the submitter advises her friend to imagine making out with the girl who confessed to her and see how she feels. May instead be an example of If It's You, It's Okay.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: During a couple sweet-talking back and forth:
    Boyfriend: You’re the fork to my spoon.
    Girlfriend: (excitedly) We’ll get to have spork babies!
  • Combat Pragmatist: In this story, the submitter's parents recount how they fell in love. Mom, a kendōka, challenged the fencing club at her high school to an informal sword fight. Dad, one of the fencers, accepted a match to 15 points, anything goes. Down 13-14 and tiring out, Dad got desperate and resorted to punching Mom in the face before stabbing her to even the score. Mom retaliated in kind, but Dad managed to parry her final blow and score the winning point.
  • Comeback Tomorrow: This lady knows a way around the problem - when she came up with lines to tell off her husband's boss, who'd been harassing her, after the fact, she wrote them down so she could use them another time. She ended up giving them to another girl whom the boss had started harassing, and it worked like a charm.
  • Consummate Liar: This lady has a serious problem, and her boyfriend (the submitter) ultimately dumps her over it. The sad thing is, she seems to know she has a problem, but without professional help it's entirely likely that she will keep burning bridges this way, and probably losing jobs like the girl in this Not Always Working story, until she has nothing and no one left and is less than a living wreck.
    "No, wait! I never told you but I really have problems. I've been a mythomaniac for years. I'm a living wreck. But you're such a great person, and you can help me! I need you!"
  • Conviction by Contradiction: In an attempt to drive a wedge between the submitter and her boyfriend, this girl makes a fake cheating claim, stating that she knew it was the submitter because of her green hair. Unbeknownst to her, the submitter had dyed her hair pink a month previously. To add insult to injury, because the boyfriend is on the autism spectrum, he had no idea that the girl was trying to break them up, and was instead more concerned about her inability to distinguish between pink and green.
  • Crazy Jealous Guy: This one started demanding his girlfriend delete the celebrity photos she had on her computer... and was shocked that she immediately threw him out for snooping in her computer and trying to control her.
  • Crazy-Prepared: A Wacky Marriage Proposal, which is accepted, leads to a cake being brought out that congratulates the engaged couple. The boyfriend's father says that, if it didn't work out, they "had another cake that said 'Thanks Anyway!' just in case."
  • Cuteness Proximity: A girl is furious about her boyfriend. The dog comes over for pets. Anger vanishes in a flood of baby-talk.
  • Dating Service Disaster: The perils of online dating are a frequent topic among some posts, ranging from just bad luck to exceptionally terrible experiences.
    • This woman turns out to have lied about everything on her profile: appearance, hairstyle, food preference, hobbies, musical tastes, the list goes on. She tries justifying herself by saying "everyone lies a little on [dating sites]", but the OP's trust is so thoroughly violated they end the date and go home right then and there.
  • Didn't Think This Through: In this story, a guy tried to avoid Potong Jalan by getting five girlfriends simultaneously, thinking that he'd still have one or two of them at the end of his service. It falls apart when all five of them turn up at his sendoff, realize he is five-timing them, and dump him instantaneously.
  • Discriminate and Switch:
    • This story features a woman who is introducing her older sister's wife to her coworkers. One coworker is horrified and speechless... because she thinks the wife is underage. Once the wife assures her that she is 26, the coworker says, “Oh, thank God! Don’t scare me like that!”
    • Mentioned in the comments to one story, where the commenter's now-husband's father pulled him aside to make a seemingly passive-aggressive comment about the commenter's green hair, only to clarify years later that he was just checking the commenter's hair actually was green because colorblindness ran in the family.
  • Distracted by the Sexy:
    • One guy doesn't notice his wife's new nail polish because the picture she sent him to show it also exposed her nipples.
    • This person ends up too distracted with her crush asking about Star Wars that she holds up the line for a pizza place. She quickly asks the cashier for a "peppermint pizza" twice.
  • Domestic Abuse: As the comments point out, the poster's now (thankfully) ex-boyfriend in this story is pretty much a textbook emotional abuser. First, he deliberately squeezes their injured toe, just to elicit sympathy from them over how baaaad he feels at having hurt them. It works at first, but when the poster points out that they're the one in pain, the boyfriend gets mad at them for "making this about you" and storms off for a drive, sending repeated texts about "dark thoughts" he is having, which causes them to apologize and back down. This pattern continued for several months, although fortunately the poster did eventually realize what was happening and break up with him.
  • Double Entendre:
  • Entitled to Have You:
  • Epic Fail: This man tries to hook up with a stranger, only to find that she's a lesbian. And his pick-up lines are terrible. And he's trying to cheat on his girlfriend. Who is nearby. And she later dumps him and dates the other girl.
  • Eskimos Aren't Real: This poster's husband thought Catholic priests were made up by Hollywood... like nuns.
  • Evil Former Friend: Discussed by this couple, where they start discussing the best way to murder each other should one of them go evil.
  • Exiled to the Couch: Two men end up discussing their ideal girls, which their girlfriends overhear (and they don't match the description). As punishment, the men are made to share the couch that night.
  • Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: While she was able to forgive him and stay in the marriage, this wife still rags her husband about an affair he had eight years prior.
  • For Science!: A man and his fiancee are in bed. He talks about an article that couples who sleep together naked have better sleep and communication, and suggests that they try it "for science". She refuses.
  • Fun with Acronyms: A couple come up with a story about a bear named Roy who falls off a cliff and dies. The story continues with Roy being saved by the "Flattened Animal Rescue Team".
  • Geeky Turn-On: A lot of stories involve couples getting together over pop culture references.
    • One woman's boyfriend says that he got into a fight, not physically, but over how many kernels were on an ear of corn.
      Girlfriend: How did this fight end?
      Boyfriend: He had his buddy buy an ear of corn and counted them all. He was rather dumb about it. I mean, he could have just googled it.
      Girlfriend: Pants. Off. Now.
    • A camp counselor introduces himself by asking "Who shot first?" The girl says that Han shot first, and the two of them start dating.
    • A couple end up kissing after an escalating argument involving Lego figures.
      Boyfriend: Well, she said stepping on a Lego Death Star would be the destruction of art, and I really couldn’t help it.
    • "...did you just enter the Konami Code on my boobs?" He admits to it, and they both cheer.
    • A submitter's husband imitates Starscream and Megatron in a successful attempt to get leftover ham.
    • A couple start laughing after one of them quotes Futurama' while kissing: Kif, I have made it with a woman. Inform the men.
    • A Dungeons and Dragons group is interrupted by a salesman knocking at the door. The host uses his standard technique for getting rid of them by speaking to the salesman in Klingon — but it turns out that the salesman also speaks it. Not only does the host end up buying what's being sold, he invites the salesman to join the group (which he accepts)... and eventually marries him.
  • Genre Savvy: The boyfriend in this story guesses who the Big Bad of a movie is within the first five minutes. His reasoning is that "this is a Lifetime movie, and he has a penis."
  • Green-Eyed Monster: This girl blows her top upon her boyfriend looking at another girl's chest, and refuses to hear or believe his (truthful) explanation that he was just reading her shirt (it was a parody Character Alignment chart). Naturally, 99% of the comments are some variant of "Dump her", since such explosive behavior can be a sign of an abusive relationship.
  • Happily Married: Quite a few of the stories are about couples who are happy together, if a little on the strange side.
  • Heartbreak and Ice Cream: After this woman finds out her boyfriend is in a serious relationship with another woman, one of her friends shows up with a carton of her favorite ice cream.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: A girl books an expensive wedding with her fiancé's money, since she doesn't have a job. A month before the wedding, she breaks up with him to get engaged to another man, still expecting to be able to maintain her bookings. Her now ex-fiancé calls around and gets as much of a refund as possible (to the tune of $75,000), forcing her to have a much smaller marriage at a courthouse. Ultimately, she gets divorced less than six months later.
  • Hurricane of Puns:
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • This guy tries to tell a woman who politely rejected his offer to buy her a drink that he's a "nice guy" and "deserves a chance". This as he's completely flying off the handle at her for said polite rejection.
    • This one guy is quick to accuse someone else of being a racist for ignoring him, but then calls him an offensive slur.
  • If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: This little girl tells her dad's potential boyfriend, "you break his heart, I slash your tires." That girl's going places.
  • I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!:
    • A girl forcibly places her husband's hand on her boobs: “The power of boobs compels you!” (A direct quote from Misfile.)
    • This wife gets some extra sleeping time by pressing up against her husband in bed.
  • The Immodest Orgasm: A submitter in this story (which has been proven to be fictional) is distracted by the nightly "sound of furious lovemaking" from his neighbors for over a month. When he asks the wife about it, it turns out that her husband works night shifts.
  • Impossibly Awesome Magic Trick: In this story, a woman at a bar is approached by a gentleman who offers to do a card trick. When she informs him that the card he has selected is, in fact, not her card, he walks away dejectedly. She turns back to her drink - only to find that her card is now her coaster and he's written his phone number on it. The stinger is what really sells it.
    I called him and we've now been married for three years. He still won't tell me how he did the trick!
  • I Need to Iron My Dog: A submitter runs into her crush, and the two of them start stammering to come up with something. After a while, she says that she has to pick up a kid she's babysitting, while her crush says "I’d better go iron my shoes."
  • Insane Troll Logic: A gay man and a lesbian, fired for having sex in the office, insist "it wasn’t cheating because they were doing it with someone of a different sex than their spouses."
  • Interrupted Intimacy: The submitter's dog interrupts the submitter and their boyfriend's getting intimate by staring at them.
    Submitter: "Do you think you could put him outside? He’s being weird."
    Boyfriend: “He’s fine. It’s not like he cares about what we’re doing.”
    <cue the dog laying right beside their heads and staring right at the boyfriend>
  • I Reject Your Reality: This girlfriend accuses the submitter of being at a club, saying that two friends saw them there. Later, when they see those friends, they both say they didn't see them, until the girlfriend pulls one of them aside and she changes her story.
  • Is It Something You Eat?: One boyfriend doesn't know the meaning of the word "ceramic", when told that he can't eat some ceramic beans. He asks if "ceramic" means "tasty".
  • It's All About Me: Now has its own page.
  • I've Heard of That — What Is It?: This woman doesn't know what a "muddy runner"note is, despite listing it as one of her interests on her dating profile. This and other information that is revealed to be Blatant Lies quickly sours the OP's interest and they end up leaving.
  • Joke and Receive: The submitter of this story jokes about her boyfriend cheating on her with her best friend, only for him to confess to it. She promptly dumps them both.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Now has its own page.
  • Lethal Chef: A couple discusses what they would do to kill each other.
    Husband: I’d probably dump the body in the woods. Bears got you.
    Wife: Nah, you’d just poison my dinner.
    Husband: Babe, if I wanted to poison you I’d let you eat your own cooking.
  • Love at First Sight: A barista and someone at a coffee shop (referred to as "cute guy" in the transcript) instantly fall in love with each other. They exchange phone numbers.
    Cute guy: You know, a guy sees your pretty face and he freezes and he almost drools? And it’s so obvious that he’s attracted to you big time?
  • Manly Gay: A 6'4", muscular trucker intimidates a guy who makes homophobic comments.
  • Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: This story focuses on a tall, tomboyish girl and her nerdy, shy boyfriend. The girl defends him against two jocks who mock him.
  • The Matchmaker: This guy and his girlfriend both get hit on a lot at work, so they arrange "dates" with the people whose numbers they've received, sending one of each of theirs to the same place at the same time. Neither gets the person they were hoping for, but there's this connection between two people who just happened to be stood up in the same manner, in the same place, at the same time.
  • Meet Cute: Too many examples to list.
  • Mistaken for Gay: This girl was rather surprised by it.
  • Mistaken for Prank Call: This not-so-savvy officer.
  • Mistaken for Prostitute: This young woman has a guy sit next to her in the park and start nervously making small talk. At first she's okay with this, deciding it's gutsy of him when he asks her to take a walk with him, but then he starts getting more forward and sleazy, suggesting they should go back to her place, and then bringing up his spanking fetish. Understandably, she decides the conversation is over and heads away, but he's baffled, after all, the ad said she was cool with kinks... Turns out, he had arranged online to meet a call girl in the park, and the description he'd been given happened to match that of the submitter, even down to the T-shirt she was wearing.
  • Momma's Boy: This guy is described as having "a mommy complex so deep that I’m pretty sure therapists could make a case study out of him." Sure enough, when his wife gets injured in a car accident, he doesn't show up at the hospital or drive her home… because he's too busy helping his mother look for the TV remote. When he arrives home, he finds his wife gone and a pile of divorce papers waiting for him.
  • Mondegreen Gag: Aya Surani?
  • Mugging the Monster: At an audition for a play, the submitter is openly bullied, insulted and assaulted by their friend's jealous girlfriend. Then, mere minutes later, the submitter reveals that they're actually the director of said play and promptly kicks the girlfriend out of the playhouse.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: “LET IT BE KNOWN ON THIS DAY, I HAVE FALLEN FOR THE RICE KRISPIE GODDESS! I’LL BE BACK FOR YOOOOUUUUUUU—” At which point his friends drag him out of the restaurant.

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