You may be sick of the flowers and Hallmark cards of Valentine's Day already, but spare a thought for those whose careers make romance an all-but-impossible dream. I'm talking, of course, about superheroes, those brave souls who have to make the choice between getting their rocks off or defeating yet another alien invasion. Yes, they have secret identities, but as many of us already know, the choice to spend at least part of your day wearing outlandish tight-fighting costumes only complicates relationships even if you keep that part of your life secret. With that in mind, let's celebrate the three super-heroes who are the unluckiest in love.

Spider-Man: The original bad luck hero, Peter Parker knows what it's like to be single and unloved. Admittedly, that's only because the devil came and magic-ed away his marriage to hot supermodel-turned-actress Mary Jane Watson, but it still counts, right? Even before that happened, though, he wasn't having much success at the whole relationship thing. His first love of his life, Gwen Stacy? Thrown off the George Washington Bridge by the Green Goblin just to piss Spider-Man off. Even nowadays, the newly-single swinger still can't catch a break - his new potential girlfriend, Carlie Cooper, is an NYPD forensic expert who's working on a case that has Spider-Man as murder suspect number one.

Cyclops: Pity poor Scott "Slim" Summers. Being the stoic leader of the X-Men doesn't make you exceptionally easy to date, if his experience is anything to go by. If it's not your first girlfriend sacrificing herself for the good of the universe on the surface of the moon, it's your first wife being revealed to be a clone of said girlfriend created by a bad guy to mess with your head and, oh, by the way, your girlfriend isn't actually dead after all - that was another clone, albeit a cosmic one - and your wife is actually a Goblin Queen who wants to kill your baby son as well as a clone. Even after he sorted that mess out (the clone wife was quickly dispatched, and he married the not-dead girlfriend instead), things didn't get any easier. Failing to make his marriage work, he had a psychic affair with the X-Men's resident evil bitch telepath before his wife died again, only for real this time. Sure, now he seems happy enough with his new girlfriend (that would be the evil bitch telepath), but you know that it's only a matter of time before she betrays him and/or his first girlfriend/second wife is revealed not to have died this time, either.

Note: That first girlfriend/second wife, Jean Grey? Apparently so hot that even Professor X was in love with her, as this panel from the original '60s X-Men run shows:

The Flash: Police Scientist and Fastest Man Alive Barry Allen lived a life of speedy misery. Not only was his first wife, Iris, killed by his arch-nemesis Professor Zoom — probably in some kind of rage over the lameness of his name — but when he was preparing to marry a second wife, Zoom attempted the same trick again. This time around, things didn't go to plan; in preventing his fiancee's murder, Allen accidentally killed Zoom. And his appearance as the Flash and lack of appearance as Barry Allen led his fiancee to think that she'd been stood up at the altar, which drove her insane (Hey, some people take rejection really badly). There was light at the end of the tunnel, however, when Allen discovered that Iris hadn't been completely killed after all 00 Sensing a theme here? — but instead just spirited away to the 30th century, where technology had given her a new body. Only problem was, when Allen travelled to the future to be with her, he ended up being captured and tortured by a villain out to destroy all of existence. Trying to save the day one more time somewhat backfired, and Allen died in the attempt, leaving Iris to travel back to the 20th century and write a tell-all book about Allen before failing to prevent the death of another Flash, Bart Allen, years later. She was kind of a jinx, really.

The moral of these stories? You really don't want to be the partner of a superhero, because you'll probably be killed or have the devil rewrite your history at some point or another. But, on the plus side, if you do die? Chances are you'll come back to life before too long. So it's not all bad news, I suppose.