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While you can't friend someone out of actual mental illness you can manage the friendship.
So few people understand or are unwilling to accept what it means to be a friend. If one discards friendship then one has to question they they really ever knew what being a friend meant.
Being a friend is not about convenience, nor of reciprocal benefit. If one aspect of a friendship isn't meeting some need or desire, that can be managed, the friendship does not have to end unless there is a conscious decision on the part of one to harm in any way the other.
Friendship can have many levels of involvement and even to the point where friends might not have contact with each other for decades, then upon seeing one another, share what that friendship has become, constant, casual, sporadic or even long term absent.
If one disposes of a friendship and later discoverers that happened because of mental illness, what does that say about the one who didn't have the illness? Somehow a mental illness is something that doesn't deserve compassion, understanding and a measure of dedication but we fall over ourselves to wear ribbons for people we don't know because everyone gets to cheer about cancer patients and survivors?
If one manages the friendship even things like mental illness can't destroy it, only put it in a place where it remains until the time is can be a bigger part of life if that time ever comes. If that time never comes, then at least one remained true to friendship because either one is a friend or one is not.
While all of this is true...most people do not have a whole lot of knowledge about mental illnesses. This is something that has, historically, swept under the rug, locked in the closet or basement, and in general...hidden away from sight. It's embarrassing! There is social stigma attached! Mistakes! Errors! Defects! OMG! Welcome modern medicine....and the many pills which help HIDE, mental disorders. Those scrips help conceal the truth....if they'll take them.....
It would be silly for someone to feel guilty or ashamed, because they ended a friendship with someone whom they later found out was mentally ill. A more natural, humanistic response would more likely be, "OOOOOHHHHH...man! No wonder! That explains a whole lot, now.... It's too bad they couldn't have caught that sooner. What an awful time he's had!
Even knowing that someone has a mental illness, does not obligate them to befriend or remain friends with someone. Some people simply don't click, and just because someone is mentally ill, it doesn't mean that you HAVE to tolerate their behavior...JUST because they're ill. If you can't handle someone's behavior, you have the right to not put yourself into situations which require you to be in their presence.
If you can end a friendship with someone who is NOT mentally ill...you can end one with someone who IS mentally ill.
Someone gave me a rep comment asking for an update on the friend I cut off.
Out of the blue, she called me during the day in November. Her car was booted on the street near her work for unpaid parking tickets. She was a mess. I told her she had to find out how much money was owed (she hadn't even called to find out). She called back and said it was around a thousand dollars. I'm not a heartless person, but bailing her out financially never helped her learn how to manage money. I told her I could only afford $500, and she'd need to find the rest elsewhere. I offered to pick her up and drive her home.
The afternoon progressed she continued to call me frantically because nobody else would give her a penny. She insisted she couldn't live without a car, insisted there wasn't public transportation from her house to her job. I looked it up on our port authority website and told her how she could get back and forth to work until she got her car back. I can't remember the details, but she had a handful of days to come up with the money until they started charging her daily storage fees and after 30 days her car would be sold.
She continued to panic over the next few days and constantly called me about how she couldn't find the extra money. She never rode the bus once. Her neighbor went out of her way to drive her back and forth to work. (She never does anything to help herself.) She kept bugging me for money, and I kept saying this is the best I can do. Eventually I said, "Look on the bright side. You're lucky it's November. You can buy another car in January with your income tax refund." I was saying everything I could to NOT be the person who bails her out. She kept calling and calling and calling. I stood my ground insisting $500 was all I could do.
She reminded me that I promised to pay for her to get a cheaper place to live. I did promise that (almost 2 years prior) because getting a budget she could afford was the only way she would ever be able to survive financially, but two years went by and she still never moved. She asked me to give her the money I would have given her for a cheaper place to live so she could get her car. Her reasoning was having a car was more important. I refused. I told her I didn't agree having her car was more important because I only offered to help her move into a cheaper rental so she could stop having these financial crisis of shut off notices, eviction notices, and now car bootings. Getting into a cheaper place was more important than a car. If I gave her money for her car instead of cheaper housing, it would be like flushing money down the toilet. That was the last time I talked to her.
On a happy note, my cutting off another friend helped her turn her life around. I had a neighbor who admitted to me that she was an addict. I had helped her here and there with her bills a few times, but I cut her off financially when I learned she was an addict. I was very honest with her. I didn't post about her in this thread because she was respectful and didn't bother me. She hit rock bottom. Her car was repossessed. Her house went into foreclosure. She disappeared. Last night, she stopped by to visit. It was a pleasant surprise. I hadn't seen her in a year. She has been clean for 9 months and she is rebuilding her life.
Setting boundaries are the best thing I did for myself. My life has been very peaceful. I've learned who my real friends are too.
I know I'm bumping an old thread, but I am struggling with this myself with a rather long term friend. I Googled "Why am I a magnet for people with mental problems?" And this was the first thread that popped up in the search
Here are a couple of good articles, just thought I'd pass them along, and thanks to everyone here for sharing their stories, I found all your posts to be very helpful.
I am dealing with just these issues with a young relative at present - thankfully, my relative lives about 1,000 miles away and no longer has a car. I received over twenty emails from my relative a couple of days ago, filled with paranoid statements and claims and accusations regarding various forms of abuse by other relatives (members of the immediate family), children who shared elementary classes, sports teams, and church groups long ago, an ex-spouse, former in-laws, a stepfather, and others. Most of these claims had a strong sexual element, sometimes quite graphically described, which has never been part of our conversation or communication previously. My relative also expressed fears for their child, currently living with the other parent, that the child might also experience abuse of various kinds.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the child has been or is being abused by the other parent or any of the grandparents or other family members. The child did experience some abusive discipline (mental, verbal, emotional) while in my relative's care, however, which was a factor in the removal of the child.
My relative thinks an online acquaintance may be spying via a cell phone. My relative has sent many, many copies of old photos of one of their parents (to whom I am not related), along with descriptions of that parent's childhood and associated claimed traumas, as well as many pictures from my relative's own childhood. None of the twenty plus messages have included any word of interest or concern about me, other than "good night", or "good morning". All these photos illustrate what appear to be normal childhood and family activities.
A suggestion from me that childhood conflict with one of the siblings might be attributed to mutual immaturity, and that both siblings are now adults and that siblings could be blessings was received very poorly, with claims that I was engaging in sweeping judgments and that if I continued to do this, all communication would be finished. Additional claims of terrible behavior and abuse by this particular sibling followed.
The sibling's most egregious effort "to control" and "manipulate" was described as the sibling's offer to temporarily watch my relative's young child when the relative was in the hospital for an accidental injury (which really did result from an accident, but it made the relative feel even more out of control, and exacerbated their instability).
My relative has lost custody of their young child (who is presently with the other parent) and has made no effort to obtain the counseling legally required to restore supervised visitation. This relative has been evicted from several apartments - yet another eviction is now in process. The car was taken due to lack of payments. This relative spent yesterday afternoon walking around their present apartment complex, taking pictures of various vehicles and of the apartment manager, who emerged to ask that the picture-taking cease. I was sent copies of these pictures, most of which show a particular pickup truck - but not the license plate. I asked for an explanation, but have received none.
My relative may be tapering off this rather manic episode, as I have had no emails today and last evening's messages seemed somewhat more self-aware and lucid. I have urged my relative to consider meeting with a "counselor" (the term "therapist" would be rejected outright), as a good counselor would be respectful, gentle, would listen and ask appropriate questions to make sure that all was clearly understood, and then offer input about what my relative might choose to do. So far, no reply, though my relative has rejected similar suggestions from other family members.
The relative is extremely bright, highly articulate, quite devout (though the many passages about forgiveness and not judging others seem to have been overlooked). But it is clear to me and to other family members who are close that hospitalization and evaluation and resulting treatment with meds and therapy would be in my relative's best interest - how to achieve that is another matter.
There were a couple of violent "fantasies" about what they'd like to do to their parent with whom they spent time yesterday (the parent has been notified), yet my relative claims that they know better than to do anything violent. My relative stated that being in this parent's presence created feelings of great anger, impatience, and irritation, though their parent had little to say ("like a small child" was the perception, though I expect the parent was trying to avoid known triggers). Perhaps these hints of violence might be sufficient for a 72 hour intake and evaluation - I just don't know. My relative has also stated that emails can make them feel irritated, angry, and so on, even when the relative recognizes that this was not the intention of the sender.
What I DO know is that I am becoming very worn down, after just a few days of this kind of intensity and worry. Getting to sleep at 3:00 a.m. and rising five hours later isn't exactly what I'd choose. So - boundaries are very much needed and are in place now, after a long phone call with one of my relative's even more concerned parents yesterday. I also learned that my relative engaged in similar mass-messaging to another member of our family fairly recently, until told to stop because that relative's voicemail box and phone were getting jammed by the incessant messaging. Now I seem to be the designated recipient.
I love my relative, am extremely concerned about them, and as I am one of the few people who is still more or less trusted, I feel that I have some responsibility to attempt to guide them towards what is real, by supporting them when they are lucid and making sense, and by just acknowledging the pain and distress rather than the claims of abuse, being spied upon, and so on.
It's hard in some ways when there is the distance - but I am so thankful for that same geographic distance, and I am glad that my relative no longer has a car or can afford to fly.
If anyone is still here after reading this long post, suggestions and reactions are welcome. I've had some previous experience with dealing with mental illness in others who have been close to me in one way or another, but their issues were BPD and depression - this seems more like paranoid schizophrenia with a manic episode tossed in along with perhaps some PTSD, from what I can tell, but I am not a doctor or therapist and have little educational background in this area - just reading and some experience.
So I am not so much interested in diagnosis (except that having an accurate diagnosis would enable me to learn more about my relative's illness) as I am in how to urge my relative to seek help, and in how to support my relative's immediate family as they deal with this crisis. I lost a family member to suicide many years ago, and I don't want that to repeat - there are some parallels present, which scares me.
So - thanks in advance for any words of wisdom, support, or suggestions. Prayers from believers of all kinds are also most welcome...
My sister-in-law is like this. She goes off at different family members, talking about other family members, stating that no one cares about her, but she won't get help. It had been suggested for years that she see someone but she refused to do it.
Eventually most of the family cut her off, including her parents, and told her she wasn't welcome until she sought help. We blocked her on Facebook, blocked her number on our phones, and refused to engage. It wasn't long before she was arrested for stalking and terroristic threats, and they forced her to spend a week in a treatment center. She saw a psychologist while she was there who prescribed some meds, and referred her to another specialist. She went, and has been doing pretty good for about a year now.
My sister-in-law is like this. She goes off at different family members, talking about other family members, stating that no one cares about her, but she won't get help. It had been suggested for years that she see someone but she refused to do it.
Eventually most of the family cut her off, including her parents, and told her she wasn't welcome until she sought help. We blocked her on Facebook, blocked her number on our phones, and refused to engage. It wasn't long before she was arrested for stalking and terroristic threats, and they forced her to spend a week in a treatment center. She saw a psychologist while she was there who prescribed some meds, and referred her to another specialist. She went, and has been doing pretty good for about a year now.
{{{hugs}}}
Thanks - so glad your SIL is doing better.
In my family's case, one of the parents is something of an enabler, I gather, and has had some issues (nothing as severe) themselves. There's also a now-deceased grandparent who had mental-emotional issues, but who was functional, though not always much fun to be around. The young relative never knew this grandparent, but I, who am a generation older, remember this grandparent (who was related to me by marriage) well. So there may well be a hereditary factor - I strongly suspect this is the case, given that one of the relative's siblings has also behaved rather rigidly and is very estranged (by choice) from one of the parents, never offering a reason..
Just wish my relative would agree to get checked out physically and go for therapy, along with taking whatever meds might be helpful in damping down the paranoia. Sad to see this happen, and exhausting, as well.
So far, only one email today, just "Good Afternoon!'. That I can live with.
Update: my relative has been hospitalized since midweek, after an encounter during packing for the intended move led to a 911 call. I hope my relative now will receive the help which is very clearly needed.
That's good news. I certainly hope she accepts the help and begins the road to recovery
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Welcome modern medicine....and the many pills which help HIDE, mental disorders. Those scrips help conceal the truth....if they'll take them.....
. It's too bad they couldn't have caught that sooner. What an awful time he's had! 
