Charity Never Faileth

I just returned from a very frustrating weekend away. I went out of town to help someone who had requested assistance and ended up feeling totally taken advantage of. The assistance was monetarily costly and basically ineffective. The people being assisted were disrespectful of our time and resources. I generally try to give people the benefit of the doubt regarding their motives when I feel hard done by, but in this situation it almost feels like a con, like the things that I'd like to chalk up to absentmindedness were, in fact, deliberate attempts to put me in the position of being long-term financially responsible for something they couldn't afford. I hate feeling like this. I don't like to think someone I love could be capable of such calculation. But either way, whether it was deliberate manipulation or egregious disorganization, the end result for me is the same. I'm out a chunk of change, I've lost respect for someone important to me, and I am that much more cynical about helping those in "need". I'm sure in a week or two I'll have talked myself into a more softhearted state of being, but right now I'm pretty pissed.