On the love of misery.

I also misjudged Mark, another primary character in my novel. Initially, I thought him more noble, more heroic, perhaps he had been in love with Augustine in their past, perhaps the decision to marry Dempsy had been coerced. Perhaps he was faithful to Dempsy.

I've rather changed my mind about him. Not that I don't sympathize. He's only human (fictional, but human). I'm sure he must have had some feelings for Augustine when they were involved. Pehaps their relationship was an unspoken, even ambiguous, one. There's no doubt in my mind that Augustine was never the kind of girl to explicitly express her emotions. There's a chance that Mark never knew the depth of her true feelings. It may be that he was miserable, wanting so badly to have something beautiful and romantic and perfect. Augustine might have seemed a lost cause.

When he turned to Dempsy, the more demure, more vulnerable, more romantic figure, he was received with open arms, with sincere affection, with voluble confessions of love. In short, he was secure in his love and in his ego. But after years of marital bliss, day after day, it must have begun to seem rather prosaic to him. Augustine, always near at hand, seemed somehow more enticing again, more mysterious, more of an adventure than poor, devoted Dempsy. Again, misery sets in. He pines for some imagined lost love. He begins to find his beautiful, romantic, perfect marriage a little disappointing.

The important thing to remember is that he can't help himself. He's not a bad person. He's just needlessly ambivalent. Maybe his hopes and expectations for life were plundered from a series of existential novels that he picked up in college. Sartrean horror stories that reveal that the true nature of the intellectual must be unhappiness and indecision. Or am I over-thinking him?