To a certain degree, there are people we think we have a choice about having in our lives, and those we don’t.
Mother, siblings, and children are people we think we have limited choice about. Sure, we can decide to cut the relationship with them entirely, but most of us humans probably won’t. We’ll learn to live with how they are lovingly or forever complain.

Then, there are our boyfriends, husbands, bosses, and friends, whom we can question throughout life, whether we still want them around us.
Those on which we ask, ‘Do they still fit who we are?’ And if they don’t, do we want to try to think about them differently.
Maybe there are relationships for which we don’t want to spend energy and thought work into feeling better about them.

You write: “‘if you don’t like the feeling you’re getting from your current ‘made up’ relationship, then you have the option to change to a new made up in your mind relationship.”

I see this question of how to make a choice been repeated in many versions throughout this month particularly, as we work on relationships.
Since you are happily married and never been divorced, we can’t borrow from your experience on that. Interestingly, it also seems that you are surrounded by long-time years in the making friends (Erika). So it might suggests that you made certain choices in your life early on with spouse and friends and you decided to keep them around and only see the greatness in them.

Would you share a situation in your life, maybe a relationship you ended or anything else, in which you decided not to think differently about it and stay, but rather leave?