Why growing apart from friends doesn’t mean you failed

The older I get, the more I realize that with time, friendships can change just as much as romantic relationships can. When I was in my teens, I felt like my best friends would be by my side forever. I assumed that no amount of time apart or significant life changes would come between us. But I knew so little about the realities of life then.

I remember one particularly tearful goodbye with one of my childhood best friends right before we both left for college. We had been best friends since the fourth grade. When we hugged goodbye, she mentioned that everything would be different now. I don’t think that I believed her words at that point.

I hated change. I loved my best friends and the town where I grew up. And I naively thought that I would always have both my favorite people and my hometown.

But then my friends and I moved away for college.

We started to become different people. Life naturally took us in our own directions, and for some of us, that meant no longer being able to connect in the ways that we used to. I couldn’t just walk down the street and show up at my best friend’s house anymore — we had to put actual effort into seeing each other.

Growing up sometimes means growing apart from your friends.

But feeling distant from old friends doesn’t mean that you failed a friendship. Who we are when we meet someone does not dictate who we will be for the rest of our lives. Some people can grow alongside us, but others will forge their own paths, and we’ll start to notice the distance in our friendships. This distance doesn’t have to mean dissonance, however.

You can grow apart from someone and still respect the choices that you both made that brought you to that point. Forcing a friendship is just as harmful as forcing a relationship; you should never keep someone in your life just because you’ve always had them around. If you can’t connect with them anymore, then it’s OK. No one stays the same for their entire life, so we shouldn’t consider growing apart from our friends a “failure.”

If your interests and goals have taken you in a different direction from your friend, it’s completely fine.

Growing apart doesn’t mean that you forget about the past. Your friend can still be a meaningful part of your life even if you’ve now grown apart. You can be thankful for the memories you’ve shared with them and excited for the separate futures that you’re both building.

Growing apart from a friend doesn’t mean that you’re a bad friend. It’s a sign of growth — it shows that you’re learning to make peace with change.