Friends?
A few times in my life I have had to pack bags of assorted crap with unpleasant sentimental value which I cleared out of my home - and send them to charities or give them away in order to get rid of them and have peace of mind.
These days I only choose friends who don't need anything from me - people who have no reason to want me around other than for my company, people who I cannot see any ulterior motives in, other than friendship and mutual interest and even compassion. It is sad that I have to penalize new friends - and even lovers - for the conduct of the ones who went before, who unwittingly made me a much wiser person. And I must add that having a dodgy memory can be a blessing in disguise. At least the things that formed me as a person, particularly the unpleasant ones, are no longer as clear as they once were, their edges less sharp and dulled by the passage of time.
In a more complicated sense, the similarities between interpersonal dependencies called "friendships" and the relations between political parties and the electorate are not as dissimilar as you may at first think.