Black moments...

I'm closing in another deadline. Don't these things seem to come with alarming regularity?
Right now, I'm also getting excited, because I'll soon be leaving for Sydney for my annual writing retreat. Combining a deadline and a retreat is kinda smart and kinda not, but anyway, it's happening.
My main hitch has been that my characters' romance is starting to go too smoothly. What we want in real life is always the kiss of death in a story, where we want page turning emotional tension. I've been wondering what I need to do, and you'd think after writing nearly forty books, I'd have a clue...
Then yesterday, one of my friends' emails  mentioned the black moment she was planning for her book.
Which is precisely when it hit me. Eek !!! I hadn't planned a black moment. How could I have forgotten a black moment?

In case you're wondering, this is that moment in all good romances where everything that seems to be working out OK suddenly falls apart. The lovers can't go forward. They can't commit. One of them (or both of them) has a problem that holds them back from winning the prize of true love.
In Michael Hague's terms, the character has been living in his "identity" which is a disguise or a suit of armour he dons, a facade he presents to the world to cover up. Usually he's covering up an old wound from the past and often he doesn't even realise that's what he's doing.
During the course of the story, however, he has glimpsed his "essence", and he has, for a time, lived in his essence -- That is, he's seen how his life could be if he was brave enough to step out from behind his identity.
I thought I knew what my character's wound was -- but I'd already dealt with it fairly early in the story. No wonder I had a problem.
Yesterday, getting near the end, but having no black moment, I suddenly realised what my guy's true wound was. Neither he nor I had understood this until then. But wow -- I could feel his pain and I could suddenly see how it would impact on him and the heroine.
Oh, I also worked out their happy ending. 
Phew.
Now I just have to write it.