Romance Writing Problem: Self-Doubt

I mention the perfect/soulmate couple in an earlier post--how does a writer go about creating tension (a reason to keep the members of the perfect couple momentarily apart) when they are so perfect for each other? 

I suggest a variety of solutions to this writing problem in another post. 

Here's the solution I don't like: 

Self-doubt.

It isn't that self-doubt isn't real. And, to be fair, it isn't that it can't be handled effectively. The fear "my family or I or my circumstances aren't good enough" is at the back of Lizzie's defensiveness in Pride & Prejudice. 

Here's the thing about Austen's heroines: they get over themselves. 

The problem with self-doubt in some contemporary romances and in real life is that it can create a kind of stranglehold on a relationship. I have a great deal of sympathy for self-doubt since I was one of those kids who was born into the world as a worrier. I can question a decision a thousand times in a thousand different ways. 

The problem is the strain that self-doubt can place on a relationship. It is easy to spot the problem with a rich yuppie jerk wallowing in self-entitlement. It is less easy to spot the problems that breed from the unhappy lover who insists, You will give me the support that I was supposed to get when I was younger. A kind of blackmail situation can even ensue where one party's need to be shored up overwhelms all else. There's a difficult line here between being supportive and being held hostage, an issue that C.S. Lewis addresses in The Great Divorce. The self-doubting, self-aggrandizing husband is no longer allowed to hold his wife's emotions hostage to his needs and self-perception. 

The brutal demands of manga/yaoi can be surprisingly refreshing here. That is, it is a common trope in Japanese manga for a self-doubting character to enact a Lizzie: Okay, I really don't understand what the other person sees in me, but that's my problem, and I need to get over it, so I don't drag my partner down with me. 

It also isn't unusual for manga to surprise us. In His Favorite, Yoshida appears to be the self-doubter simply because he is one of those people who overthinks things. But it is actually Sato who worries that Yoshida will finally, ultimately give up on his vaguely sociopathic personality.

And of course, Yoshida doesn't. 

Granted, manga is operating within its own cultural mindset that brings with it a few problems of its own, like massive self-internalization of doubt and uncertainty. But it at least places the overall health of the relationship above the uncertainty of the individual.

In romances where the uncertainty of the individual takes center-stage, I always think, about the significant other, "Dude (or dudette or dude-they), how long do you think you can keep making this person feel better about not being good enough? Seriously? (And do you really have to dismantle pronoun-antecedent agreement and clear communication to do it?)"