TV Tropes is a wiki-style website which organises thousands of tropes found in film, tv and books.

The site is written in a fun, sarcastic, casual manner, making it like a more light-hearted equivalent to reading reddit reviews of whatever media you’ve most recently consumed. I consider the two to be complimentary, but entirely different.

At the midpoint of All That Heaven Allows, Cary Scott is told by her two children that they will not visit her if she ruins their lives by leaving their house and marrying the arborist. As such, Cary is forced to choose between her children and her romance.

If she chooses her children, she loses love in her life by abandoning Ron. If she chooses Ron, she loses her children.

Either way, she loses the most a deeply important relationship in her life. Either way, she’s doomed.

TV Tropes calls this trope, where either choice results in the same, or similar, unfortunate consequence, Morton’s Fork. The site states:

The name comes from the tax-collecting practices of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor under King Henry VII of England. He reasoned that anyone who was living extravagantly was rich, and so could afford high taxes, whereas anyone who was living frugally (whether by choice or not) had saved a lot, and so could afford high taxes.

Morton’s Fork – TV Tropes

You can check out the full TV Tropes page for All That Heaven Allows here:

• Film / All That Heaven Allows

Below are some of my favourite tropes. Click to see examples from every genre of media.

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: A character is retconned right out of the story’s history, and everyone still left onscreen will simply carry on as if the character never existed. 
• Informed Attribute: A character is stated to be skilled in some area, but either doesn’t use the skill at all in the story or does so in an unimpressive way.
• A Day in the Limelight: A secondary or Ensemble character gets the primary focus for an episode in an atypical fashion.
• Break the Cutie: A sweet, lovable character is put through horrible experiences which breaks their spirit.
• Debut Queue: A series introduces a main cast by adding them one at a time in prominent roles.
• Arc Words: A word or phrase that appears throughout an Arc as a Motif.
• Arc Symbol: A picture or symbol appears multiple times and places over the course of a Story Arc. 
• Ascended Extra: A minor character who is given a greatly expanded role in the later part of the series
• Aborted Arc: When a Story Arc disappears off the face of the storyline without warning, never to be heard from again.
• Canon Character All Along: A character in an adaption that is thought to be a new character is revealed to be a new version of an existing character to the original canon.
• Poor Communication Kills: The conflict is due to the inability (or, sometimes, downright refusal) to communicate.
• Wham Line: Line of dialogue that radically alters its scene.

(Links and definitions: TVTropes.org)