Only you can choose who you let into your life. There are so many studies that talk about how you are influenced most by the six or so people you spend the most time with. Whether this is your family, your co-workers, your running buddies, friends, or neighbors, this shapes who and how you are.

You choose who those influencers are.

And you choose who you keep letting back in. You choose who you give second, third, and 17th chances to.

Early in my career I struggled separating my personal relationships from my professional advice. I’d spend all day in my office counseling people through the ends of their marriages. And that’s hard – when you have a shared life, you’re going to continue to have some kind of relationship at least for some period of time. It’s emotionally draining to navigate that. Different people have different capacity for drawing those boundaries. Some clients would walk into my office ready to close that door and never look back. Some clients would drag it out for more than a year only to still be disappointed that the other side really went through with it.

I’d see those kinds of relationship issues in my office all day and then talk to friends who wanted to rant about their relationship problems, like so many friends do with one another. As is so often the case with relationships when we’re young, most of my friends had drama-filled will-they-won’t-they kinds of relationships. They were so frustrated that their significant other would do this horrible thing or disappoint them so terribly or just not be who they wanted this person to be. But they’d keep coming back.

At some point, your friends stop listening in suspense to your tale of woe regarding your relationships. If you are letting someone treat you poorly, that is your choice. I have a hard time being particularly sympathetic when you continue to put yourself in a position of suffering.

If someone tells you who they are – believe them. If someone that is supposed to love and support you is treating you like garbage, you are the one that has the power to change that. You have the ability to take away their power over you. You have the ability to keep them from breaking your heart again. But you have to use your power. You can’t just wish them into being a better partner. You can’t hope that they’ll just grow out of it. You have to create the change. You have to take away that person’s ability to impact your well-being. You have to change the dynamic.

Take away their ability to break your heart. You’ll stop breaking your own heart in the process.