@Malintex_Terek:
Like? This sounds a lot like me, and I don't like the prospect of people finding me repulsive because I'm always in a tight spot. Though I wonder what you're calling a "crises"…perhaps my definition, which normally tends toward exaggeration, isn't as severe as yours. o_=
Malintex_Terek is currently under the effects of Bonk! Atomic Punch.
Part of friendship is helping each other through each other's problems. It comes with the territory!
In my case, I know a lot of people, or have friends who are friends of people, who take my friends and finagle them into making bad life-decisions because they're both stupid. I recognize these trainwrecks in the making pretty quickly by experience. It helps that I know these people well. Distancing myself isn't at all hard once I've hit my Bullshit Threshold.
Let's take "Jessica." Jessica is very bright, creative, and an extremely hard worker, but is scatterbrained and tries to do a hundred thousand things at once. She's unable to assess her limits. She's got an overwhelming need to prove herself to other people, and will shoot herself in the foot if it means she isn't doing things "conventionally." I've known her for 8 years.
! She's grown up in a non-traditional, abusive household. She'd die before she'd "do things the normal way," it's actually a crippling fear of hers. So she's adopted all sorts of quirks which aren't really her, and surrounded herself by people with said quirks who are just as flighty and unconventional as her. Lots of them, she's drawn to her online. The thing of it is, because she spends so much time trying to do things unconventionally, she's pinballing back and forth between her responsibilities and her hobbies, unable to compromise with either. While this is going on, she's rooming or living with people who are extremely unreliable (but friends with similar interests) and/or mentally unstable. "Jessica" ends up paying all the bills, doing all the work, living in situations where some seriously stupid shit is going down – and she overextends herself like clockwork every five months, burning out. Her response is not to scale back -- it's to pack her things, move to another location, and begin the cycle anew.
! Every time - pack up, move in with other friends, fresh start. This time will be different. But she refuses to acknowledge that because she doesn't have many stable, reliable friends -- only people who indulge her own flights of fancy, the same thing will happen wherever she goes. Sooooo she's dropped out of school four times. She's in living situations where all her roommates are bipolar and beating the crap out of each other and she's got to call the cops on them.
! Most of her friends are people she's met online - nothing wrong with that. The problem is she thinks knowing people online is the same as knowing people in person. So she thinks NOTHING of moving to live with them. They've "met" already.
! But "they'll change!" ...Her threshold for what is acceptable is so far removed from an ordinary person's -- and far be it from her to do anything normally! -- that she endures the WORST of people because she's cast her lot in with them.
! example: She's in a good place with low drama, working for good money, taking classes (she wants to be a teacher) – but in a household with a roommate and that roommate's abusive, bi-polar boyfriend. Those two start out fine... but slowly stop going to work. Stop taking their meds. They've been a problem for a month now and Jess's response is just to work HARDER, cover their share. Boyfriend's mother is paying the rest of his rent, while BF chills upstairs smoking weed and playing WoW all day.
! Boyfriend is now threatening to kill himself repeatedly to guilt trip his girlfriend. Boyfriend is punching holes in walls, coming at people with knives, causing his girlfriend to hole herself up in a bathroom until the other roommates come home to deal with him. Boyfriend has had to have the cops called on him twice. But... the lease on the apartment still needs to be paid and mom is now refusing to cover the people who put their son in jail. The response is not to get rid of him, it's to make it work--...I could go on, but you get the picture. This kind of scenario has played itself out on repeat for 8 years. And it is STUPID.
! But because the eminently stubborn "Jessica" refuses to acknowledge that the problems with her living situation follow her because she allows them to (she has an endless reservoir of friends with serious issues), she's in a never ending cycle. SHE can't break it off with friends she feels she has common interests with, because "who could understand her if she didn't have them around?" Inevitably she breaks down, sometimes tries to kill herself on pills, and ends up in the hospital -- and after she recovers and resolves to change, moves somewhere else, dropping out and quitting work to do so.
! And now she has a baby. Oh man, don't even get me started.
! This would be a particularly extreme example of a self-destructive person. After making a hardcore effort to help and give advice to this friend for many years, I had to cut her out of my life. She wasn't good for me, she wasn't good for her boyfriend (my friend), she wasn't good for anyone. Anybody who's has an extremely depressing friend knows just how emotionally draining it can be to be their rock. But my patience has limits.
! Snip snip. Excised from my life, like a tumor. But this is just one example of a person like her that used to be in my life. Negative, self-destructive people. The chronic liars (for no reason!), the people who cheat constantly on their significant others and are always in a bind because of it, the people who are EXTREMELY emotionally dependent on boyfriends hundreds of miles away, people who so "innocently" flirt it up every guy they meet, VERY well aware of the damage they're causing- just all sorts of fun fellows, happily ruining their lives and yours.
I think it's just… taking advantage of someone's good will past a certain point to constantly expect them to help you with the problems you make for yourself. I'm not saying DON'T GIVE a FUCK ABOUT ANYBODY, I'm just saying you've gotta know when to take personal responsibility for your dumbfuckery.
People who want to still be friends with "Jessica" and ride that emotional rollercoaster are free to. Want to stay in an empty long-distance relationship with a boyfriend that is cheating on you? Fine. I just don't want to hear about it. There is a big difference between a friend who needs a little helping hand and a friend that expects you to handle their dumb shit.
I don't need to be mired in their retardation, too.
Edit: Point of clarification as it relates to you. The unifying problem of all the (actual) people I've mentioned above is they all ask for advice, all complain about their situation, and are usually baffled that things "didn't work out" the way they wanted them to.
If a friend has a problem but they don't really want to do anything about it, that's one thing – if a friend asks for your help but doesn't follow a shred of your advice? That's a horse of a different color. Everyone is in a tight spot sooner or later. But do they bitch endlessly about the tight spot? Do they request help with the tight spot repeatedly, but really ignore you the whole way through?
These people who want someone to listen to them but don't want to listen back want someone who "understands the situation," "understands their problems," and "understands THEM." They don't want solutions; these people just want someone to bitch to so they can validate themselves, and they aren't worth the time.