(1) How right you both are, Sugar and Panda! That's exactly what I've only come to realize at a later age myself. I lost a tremendous lot of time, energy, effort, and everything else because of stupid relationships. I thought I was seeing quite miserable people.
(2) I wanted to save them and sacrified myself for them. Then they got better off than I. I then became worse off. Only after that did I realize that they had been far better off than I had been in the first place. I shouldn't have tried to save them.
(3) It's I who needed help. Not they. I should have helped myself. All the money, attention, energy, effort and everything else I invested on those people, I should have invested on me myself. I wasted my whole life.