Suffering

People are most comfortable with people similar to themselves. They want to do things the way they are accustomed to doing them and any changes can make them extremely uncomfortable.

I know someone who always used their job as an excuse not to do anything they didn't want to do.  It seemed like a noble and rational way to deal with their life. Then they retired and for a while they were stuck, but not long after that they took in an addict and once more they had an excuse for everything. The addict couldn't be trusted alone. The addict cost so much to feed. The addict needed to be taken to doctors, hospitals, and social services.  This person has a friend who is very similar and the two of them are happy as clams suffering together.

Everyone is a little dysfunctional, but the degree varies vastly. People on the low end have a difficult time understanding that they really can't help someone who chooses to create their own problems. Unhappy people fake laughing and joy and assume that no one can tell the difference. They do crazy things and pretend that it is because they are free spirits when no one is bound tighter by self made restrictions than they are. I think the only person they fool is themselves.

If these things make them happy then they have a right to live this way, but their dysfunction rolls over onto the people around them, making everyone's lives darker and more complicated. They suck in children and tarnish their lives, making them feel responsible and part of a situation they are neither ready for, nor deserve, creating more dysfunctional people. 

The rest of us are sometimes caught in a quandary. Do we enable them like they want and become part of the problem? Do we continue to offer help that they don't want? Do we simply learn to avoid them? 

If these people are family it is not an easy decision.