Allergic to Love

GUY NO WANT!

Garth: Wayne, what do you do when, every time you see a really hot girl, you feel like you're going to hurl?
Wayne: I say hurl. If you blow chunks and she comes back, she's yours. But if you spew and she bolts, it was never meant to be.

—Pearls of wisdom from Wayne's World

Exaggeration of the nervousness and discomfort one feels at approaching someone cute to the point that they become physically sick (major turnoff). If the character is lucky, they might find the one person who doesn't trigger the reaction. Compare Love Makes You Crazy, Does Not Like Men (or women), and Chaste Hero.

Oddly, this is not automatically a Comedy Trope. Or an anime trope, but it's used far more there.

Compare Cannot Talk to Women.

Examples of Allergic to Love include:

Anime and Manga

• Xellos from Slayers is allergic to, in addition to love, any and all positive emotions.
• Ah! My Goddess: Keiichi tries to ask Belldandy out to a museum, and gets so nervous that she immediately diagnoses him with a terrible illness. And acts accordingly.
• Alex Treveney from Nightschool: The Weirn Books. If she says that she likes or loves something, it will explode.
• Sunako from Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge. She completely freaks out, nosebleeds to the point of hemorrhage and passes out whenever she sees "bright creatures." In a slight subversion, this applies to females as well as males, but is usually centered on her Bishounen...housemates.
• Junta, the lead from DNA², vomited uncontrollably around any girl that aroused him, not just his love interest.
• Yukinari from Girls Bravo had literal allergies to girls, vaguely explained as being a victim of bullying.
  • It also turns out that the Big Bad is the Big Bad because she's allergic to boys.
• Likewise Taro from Hanaukyo Maid Tai, specifically casual physical contact. This was toned down in the show's remake, probably because he literally had no other problems interacting with girls.
• Sailor Moon's Ami has a near-allergic reaction to getting a love letter, among other much more extreme behaviors (Ami-chan's First Love Special). This completely contradicted her relationship with Urawa in the first season—which might have to do with Urawa being a character who never existed in the original manga, whereas the aforementioned special was adapted from one of the manga's side stories. Ami being a Covert Pervert doesn't help either.
• The lead of the manga series Girls Saurus and it's sequel Girls Saurus DX is a "healthy" young boy... until he receives a beating from an overweight high school girl, severe enough to send him to the hospital for a few weeks; afterward he develops gynophobia, and has an unwanted harem form around him. Hilarity Ensues.
• The Dirty Pair have played bodyguard to boys with allergies to women twice (once on the TV series, once in DP Flash). Both boys were also extremely rich. Hilarity Ensues, of course.
• Rito of To LOVE-Ru was sort of like this. He was less allergic to love/girls, and more shy of physical contact to the point he would run if he could. One of the major over-arcing elements of the plot is him getting what could be compared to immersion therapy throughout the manga.
• In the early episodes of Dragon Ball the tough guy Yamucha is severely gynophobic, and intends to use the dragonballs to wish away his affliction.
  • He doesn't get his wish, but he eventually gets cured when he realizes he just has to become familiar with a woman.
• In Mahou Sensei Negima, Nodoka starts out this way - she can't stand being anywhere near a man, seemingly becoming downright terrified just by the thought, and physically recoiling at the sight of a Boys Love manga. Since she goes to an all-girl school, she can usually avoid such contact, but her friends warn her that once she leaves the school, half the world is men... and fortunately, Negi is just what she needs to get over her fears.
  • In the original manga, she's just a typical Shrinking Violet.
• In the manga Zodiac P.I., the smart, cool, and aloof Hiromi breaks out in a rash whenever a girl, even his sister, touches him, owing to a love letter gone badly as a child. He gets over it.
• Hinata from Naruto has some extreme reactions when in the presence of the only guy she loves, Naruto.
  • It gets less severe over time until she finally confesses her love to him.
    • In reality she never really acts all that odd toward Naruto in the manga. The anime though..
• While Daisuke from D.N.Angel doesn't get ill when he's around his love interest, experiencing the feelings of love sets off an "genetic condition" that turns him into his alter ego, Phantom Thief Dark. This leads to Daisuke constantly running away from the girl he has a crush on.
• Naeka of Kamen no Maid Guy is like this initially, due to the fact that her Lethal Chef tendencies caused to her accidentally poison her first crush. She gets over it, with some help from Fubuki. The whole thing then backfires spectacularly when she finds out that her secret admirer is a girl.
• Inverted in Maria Holic. The protagonist is a lesbian but breaks out in hives whenever she's touched by a boy. Hilarity Ensues, being that the antagonist is a cross-dressing boy.
• Fuko in Gilgamesh sneezes when in proximity to her (current) crush.
• Yukina in Seraphim Call passes out whenever confronted by men (even over the vidphone). It is so bad that she lives in isolation, and wears a special suit that inflates as a cushion whenever she is passing out.
• Shogo from Apollo's Song might count, except his reaction is "violent revulsion and pathological hatred" instead of "fear".
• Ouran High School Host Club's Haruhi has this affliction in the manga for a brief period of time. She has all these 'symptoms' such as heart palpitations and feeling feverish around Tamaki after he had opened up to her more about his past and then kissed her on the head when he left. She thinks she has some sort of illness or that her heart is rejecting her. She got better a chapter or two later.

Literature

• In Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, the White Court vampires of House Raith feed on sexual desire, but a person touched by true love can burn them like sunlight burns your ordinary vampire. The relationship between Thomas and his favorite toy, Justine, has slowly progressed from "mutually beneficial experience" (she gives him nourishment, he keeps her mental illness in order) in Grave Peril to "true love" in Blood Rites. It can't end well.
  • However, it only applies when the last person somebody was intimate with loved and was loved by them. As of Ghost Story, Thomas and Justine appear to have found a workaround. She's adventurous and her name is Mara.

Live-Action TV

• The early episodes of Smallville subverted this trope, as Clark Kent got weak and klutzy whenever he approached Lana Lang not because of his crush (which only affects his judgement), but because of her kryptonite necklace.
• For an episode of Scrubs, J.D. had to deal with an element of this, when he couldn't get some of the ugly scenes from work out of his head and looking at any part of his would-be girlfriend ended up making him think of some scene involving that part of the body (throat cancer when he looked at her neck, etc). He was able to move past it with some "help" from Drs. Cox and Turk.
  • Okay, that just sounds wrong.
  • And really, Elliot was much more helpful...
  • Speaking of Elliot, she also has been known to throw up when she's nervous- one notable occasion occurring in front of her ex-boyfriend Sean, when his incredibly hot new girlfriend shows up out of the blue.
• An early episode of Northern Exposure had Chris struck dumb by meeting a beautiful woman. This prompted many of the citizens of the town to reflect that they felt sick when they met their partner; the one man that felt happy was dumped by his girlfriend 3 weeks later.
• Played with in Noah's Arc. At the start of one episode Ricky looks unusually pale, and Noah askes if hes sick. Ricky says he thinks hes "falling in love", implied to be thinking about Junito, and then passes out. He wakes up later in a hospital (come to find out, it was a Staph infection).

Music

• The Shins have a song called Know Your Onion which mentions this

"I left all my friends at the morning bus stop
Shaking their heads
'What kind of life you dream of?
You're allergic to love!'"

Video Games

• Not only is Laharl from Disgaea: Hour of Darkness allergic (as in gets literally hurt by: his stats get cut) women with sexy bodies, he is also allergic to optimistic sayings, especially "Eternal love".
  • And don't forget optimistic sayings said by women with sexy bodies. "A ray of hope" isn't overly much for Laharl when said this way.
• Apricot from Galaxy Angel Rune and Galaxy Angel II is a female example, whose androphobia is so strong that it manifests into Super Strength and she hurls any man that touches her several meters into the air—the exception being the game's lead, Kazuya. Oddly enough this affectation is also in the television series, despite the lack of fodder.
• King's Quest IV takes this to the logical extreme: the villain Lolotte is so evil that when Rosella shoots her with one of Cupid's arrows, the love is so poisonous to her that she dies.
  • Not that being shot with an arrow is healthy in any case...
    • It didn't seem to hurt the unicorn at all. (Either that or Rosella handing the unicorn over to Lolotte hurt it much, much worse...)
• In Super Robot Wars, this is the aftermath of Tytti Noorbuck after witnessing her would-be lover, Ricardo Silvera, protects her by Taking the Bullet directed to her from her Arch Nemesis. After that, she was scared to form any relationship with another man.
• A rare example that is as much dramatic as comedic: in Tales of the Abyss, party member Guy (pictured above as he appears in The Anime of the Game) suffers from severe gynophobia, specifically being touched by women. Its origins, rather than funny, prove to be quite horrific.
  • A whole room full of women, including his beloved elder sister, died to protect him right before of his eyes, and he got stuck under all the dead bodies for a while till someone came to rescue him. He blotted this out of his memory, and could only subconsciously remembered "Girls=scary," thus leading to his gynophobia.
• In Persona 3, one of the potential social links is a girl who can barely look straight to a boy.
• Lord Dearche of the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny, as hilariously shown in Sequence X, has an adverse reaction to the idea that anyone could like her.

Yuri: Thank you... Dearche, our kind King. I love you.
Dearche: E-Eeei! Will you stop that?! A chill is running through my skin! You! Have you forgotten that I was born a King of Darkness?!
Yuri: You're my important Dearche and everyone's King. I haven't forgotten and I'll keep on saying I love you no matter how many times.
Dearche: U-uwaaaAAA~!!! Shut up already!! Shut uuup!!! No, it doesn't matter if you don't! With my power as the King who rules over Darkness, I'll shut that loose mouth of yours to never say those again!

Web Original

• Charlie, the main character in this story is a fairly unique case of this trope. Whenever people start being mushy or making out near him (especially making out), he usually ends up with heartburn. He often uses this for comic effect (i.e. to weird people out)

Western Animation

• In early seasons of South Park, Stan vomited uncontrollably when his love interest Wendy Testaburger so much as talked to him.
  • This seems to have started all over again at the end of the episode The List. Though in Super Fun Time, he holds her hand through most of the episode with no ill effects. Then in Elementary School Musical, she kissed him without Stan puking on her.
• Daria, in her eponymous show, broke out into stress hives when her love interest was around. Only happened in one episode.
• In one ep of Fairly Oddparents, Trixie falls for Timmy after he loses his emotions. When he doesn't respond, she decides to date Chester to spite him, much to Chester's dismay; he actually breaks out in hives.
  • In general, Chester just seems to have not hit puberty yet---he also finds A.J.'s crush on "Timantha" disturbing. (Granted, it was, but still.)
  • Also, Mark Chang can't handle human forms of showing love. In fact, it causes his alien tech to short out. Unfortunately the default human form on his transformation belt is quite pleasing to the ladies, making this a rather large issue.
• Rico, of Penguins of Madagascar, has 'mushy love sickness'. Meaning any mushy display of affection (or anything mushy really) will cause him to become sick and vomit. This doesn't get in the way of his relationship with his doll however.
  • In the one episode it comes up, it actually saves his life, as it helps him get rid of a Time Bomb he had swallowed and was unable to barf out again.