Breaking up is hard to do

Yesterday, for the fourth book in a row, I gave up on a book because of the second act breakup.  A second act breakup takes place after your main romantic leads have fallen for each other and everything seems like it's going great and everything looks like it might turn out okay. 

But wait!  She's suddenly had a brain wave that they're too different after all and maybe this won't work out.  Or the mobsters to whom he owes money track him down and he has to break up with her for her own protection.  And...did you lie to me about that thing???  Unforgivable! 

Also he's keeping his secret wife in the attic.

It's in most stories, especially most romances, and it has completely valid reasons for being there. 

1. Stories need conflict.  If they get together too fast and have a happy, healthy relationship and that's the entire focus of the story, then that's boring.  And also like 20 pages long.  So if you have a romance story, something has to keep them apart.
2. This structure lines up well with the hero's journey.  There has to be a low point of the story from which the hero or heroine can bounce back.  This initial failure usually mirrors the climax in some way: they fail at first, but then get stronger or learn and then overcome it at the end.

Now, I've written second act breakups, and I'll probably write one again.  But they've really been getting on my nerves lately.  I think mostly because I'll be enjoying a book and then this will come completely out of the blue.  One of them will suddenly go, "Wait!  I'm not good enough for you!" and run off without talking to their partner, who could reassure them that that's bogus.  One of them will need to do an outside thing and go, "I could talk to my partner about this and get their help with it, but instead I think I'll lie about what I'm up to and then go it alone." 

Gah.  Nope.  I'm done with this book.

If the conflict of your story could be solved with a single conversation, something's wrong.  This would solve a lot of stories' conflicts, but not all of them.  A chat between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader (although enlightening) isn't going to keep Alderan from getting blown to bits.

So I've been thinking (since I've written this and started wondering if I'm as irritating as the stuff I've been reading lately) and I've come up with some ideas to break out of this structure.

• They don't get together enough to break up until the very end.
• They get together and have a happy, healthy relationship that grows over the course of the story, but the main conflict is outside of their relationship and they face it together instead of having it tear them apart.
• They have a big fight, but work through it and they're back together by the end of the chapter.  Bonus points if this happens every chapter and every time the fight is different.
• The break up is a ruse!  They'd planned it together to confuse their rival families. 
• There's a second act breakup, but it's because of spiders.