Outgrowing people doesn’t make you better than them. It just makes you different sizes now.

Growing apart gets mistaken for a ranking, and it is not one. You changed direction, or pace, or what you care about, and the overlap that used to hold things together got smaller. That is a description of fit, not of worth, and treating it as a verdict on them is both unkind and untrue.

You can let a friendship become occasional without making it a falling out. Be warm when you see them and stop forcing the old frequency. If someone else is drifting from you, try to extend the same reading rather than assuming you were judged.