Friendships are supposed to last forever, or at least that’s often the story we tell ourselves. We celebrate the friends who have known each other since kindergarten, college roommates who are still taking trips together 30 years later, and groups of women who have somehow managed to move through every stage of adulthood side by side.

But that isn’t everyone’s story.

Sometimes friendships change because something went wrong. But just as often, friendships change because life changed. You changed. They changed. Your circumstances changed. And the relationship that once fit easily into your life suddenly doesn’t fit in quite the same way. If you’re wondering whether it’s okay to outgrow friends, the answer is yes. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that either of you did anything wrong.

Why do we outgrow friendships?

We tend to build friendships around the lives we are living at the time. College friends share classes, roommates, late nights and the uncertainty of figuring out adulthood. Coworkers may become close because they spend eight hours a day together. Parents meet other parents at preschool, soccer games and school events. Neighbors become friends because their lives happen within a few houses of each other.

Then life changes.

You graduate from college and move across the country while some of your friends stay close to campus. You have a baby while your closest friends remain single or child-free. Or perhaps you’re the one who remains single while everyone around you marries and starts families. You move to a new city. You get divorced. Your children leave home. You retire. You lose a spouse. You relocate to be closer to adult children and suddenly find yourself in a community where everyone else seems to already have their people.

Friendship changes aren’t limited to one age or stage of life. They can happen at 25, 45 or 80. They can also happen because of personal growth. Maybe you’ve gotten healthier, established boundaries, changed your beliefs, stopped drinking, left a difficult relationship, changed careers or simply become more comfortable with who you are. Sometimes the relationships built around an earlier version of you don’t transition easily with the person you’re becoming.

Is it normal to lose friends as you grow?

Very.

There is an assumption that a friendship ending—or simply becoming less close—means something must have gone wrong. That isn’t always true. Some friendships are deeply important for a particular season of life and then naturally change as circumstances change. That doesn’t diminish what the friendship was.

A college friend may have known you during one of the most formative periods of your life, even if you now talk only a few times a year. A friend you made when your children were young may have helped you survive some exhausting years even though your lives have now gone in very different directions.

A relationship can have mattered enormously and still change. Sometimes accepting that is easier than trying desperately to keep every friendship functioning exactly as it always has.

Does outgrowing a friend mean the friendship was unhealthy?

Not at all.

I think we sometimes use the language of “toxic relationships” too quickly. Certainly there are friendships that are unhealthy, controlling or harmful, and those relationships may require strong boundaries or even ending contact. But sometimes nobody is toxic. You simply don’t connect in the same way anymore. Your interests have changed. Your schedules are different. Your priorities no longer overlap as much. Conversations that once felt easy now feel strained. Or you realize that most of what originally connected you belonged to a life you no longer live.

You don’t have to make someone a villain in order to acknowledge that a friendship has changed.

Why can personal growth feel so lonely?

One of the hardest parts of personal growth is that there can be a gap between leaving one version of your life and fully building the next one. You may know that you don’t want to return to the person you were, but you haven’t yet found the people who fit who you are becoming. That space can feel incredibly lonely. You can also experience two seemingly opposite emotions at the same time. You can be proud of how much you’ve grown and still grieve what you’ve lost. You can miss old friends without wanting your old life back. You can know a change was right for you and still wish it hadn’t cost you certain relationships.

Growth and grief can exist together.

The Friendship Minivan

I’ve always thought about friendship as something of a minivan. There are a few people sitting up front with you. They know your story. They know what’s really happening in your life. They’re the friends you call when something wonderful—or terrible—happens. Then there are people in the middle seats. You enjoy them, you spend time together, and they’re important to you, but they may not know every intimate detail of your life. And farther toward the back are acquaintances, neighbors, coworkers and people you enjoy seeing but aren’t particularly close to.

The important thing is that people change seats throughout our lives. Someone who sat beside you for years may gradually move toward the back. Someone you barely knew may unexpectedly become one of your closest friends. Some people get out of the minivan altogether. New people get in. The goal isn’t necessarily to keep the same people in the same seats forever. It’s to pay attention to whether the relationships in your life fit the life you’re actually living.

What do you do when you’ve outgrown your friends?

First, resist the urge to assume that every changing friendship needs a dramatic ending. Sometimes the healthiest thing is simply allowing a relationship to become different. A friend can move from the front seat to the middle or back without being removed from your life altogether. It can also help to ask yourself what you’re actually missing. Are you lonely? Do you need deeper friendships? More social activity? People who share your current interests? Someone who understands a particular stage of life you’re experiencing?

Once you know what’s missing, you can become more intentional about creating it.

And that takes time.

One of the most uncomfortable parts of changing is having empty seats for a while. We often want to fill them quickly because loneliness feels awful. But an empty seat doesn’t necessarily mean something has gone wrong. Sometimes it simply means you are between communities—no longer fully belonging to the old one and still building the new one.

How do you make new friends as an adult?

The answer is much less magical than most of us would like: you repeatedly put yourself in places where connection has the opportunity to happen. That might mean joining a class, volunteering, participating in a faith community, getting involved in a hobby, joining a cycling or walking group, attending community events, taking part in a professional organization or going to a local senior center.

But showing up once usually isn’t enough.

Adult friendship often grows through repeated proximity. You see someone again. Then again. You have a longer conversation. One of you eventually says, “Would you like to get coffee?” And yes, sometimes you have to be the person who asks. That can feel surprisingly vulnerable, particularly if friendship came easily to you earlier in life. But rebuilding community doesn’t mean you’ve somehow failed socially. It may simply mean your life changed and your relationships need time to catch up.

You may simply be between who you were and where you belong now

There are seasons when you look around and realize your relationships don’t quite match the person you’ve become. That can happen after college. After marriage. After becoming a parent. After divorce. After a move. After retirement. After loss. Or simply after years of growing into yourself. The temptation is to interpret that loneliness as evidence that something has gone wrong.

Maybe it hasn’t.

Maybe you’re simply in the space between the community that fit your old life and the community that will fit the one you’re creating now. Give yourself permission to let some people change seats. Give yourself permission to miss what you had. And give yourself time to find the people who belong in the next part of your story.

If you’re in a season of change and trying to figure out what you want your relationships, priorities and life to look like next, that’s exactly the kind of work I do in coaching. For September, I’m offering a 90-minute Clarity Session for $175. You can contact me here and simply mention the Clarity Session.

I wrote more personally about this in my Substack, especially the strange in-between season when you’ve changed but haven’t yet found the people who fit who you’re becoming.