Outgrowing people isn’t betrayal. Some friendships were built for a season, like a winter jacket.

Friendships often form around circumstances rather than around deep compatibility, and when the circumstance ends the friendship loosens. Same class, same team, same street. Drifting apart is usually nobody’s fault, though it tends to get treated as one person’s failure of loyalty. What it reflects is that the thing holding you together stopped being there.

Let the quiet ones go quietly rather than forcing a conversation or a grievance. Keep the door unlocked, since people do come back. Put your effort into whoever is actually in your life right now.