Foreground/background is an interesting way of thinking about this. I'm not a particular X-Men expert either, but my sense is that the original 1960s+ comics contain some conventional, that is straight, love-story elements (Scott "Cyclops" and Jean Grey for instance) but that these are secondary to the main throughline of the storytelling: so the major Jean Grey storyline, Dark Phoenix, has nothing very much to do with her relationship with Scott.