My Characters are Teaching Me About Themselves?

I am working on a novella.  It's written, but I had put it aside for a while, drowing in Revisionland and wanting to get my contracted books off my to do list.  Anyway, the book is about two men, Devon and Lance.  Devon is a chapionship figure skater who has qualified for the Olympic trials.  Lance is his trainer.  There's way more to the characters than that, but just to give some background, this should suffice.

I've been struggling with Devon.  He's a little too serious.  He gives and gives, but believes its selfish of him if he allows himself to take every once in a while.  Like at the trials, he needs to allow those who love him to be his support, but can't get past his natural tendancy to shy away from accepting help.  Again, a summary not doing Devon justice, but enough to get the point across.

My real point here is, in disucssing Devon with others, I have discovered that he never really dealt with his mother's death and, as a result, suffers survivor's guilt.  He won't be able to let Lance truly be his lover and equal until he deals with that.  I'm beginning to realize that my concerns for my characters resemble the same types of concerns I have for my friends and family.  I mean, how did I just now figure out he has survivor's guilt and probably needs therapy? 

I find it both interesting and funny that my characters have grown and developed to the point where they teach me things about who they are as opposed to remaining the creations from my mind.  Seriously, when one of my critique partners said, "He sounds like he has survivor's guilt."  I was like, "Oh my God.  You're right.  He does.  How could I not have seen that?"

Then another friend said he needs to face his inner demons before he can truly love others.  Which I knew.  But we got into this back and forth and I felt like I was talking about Devon the same way I talk about my closest friends.

My take:  if our characters take on a life of their own, we did something right in our creation of them.