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Outgrowing friendships is all about growing up or growing apart or a little of both. Friendships tend to evolve in our most immediate and most frequented environments. Change the environments and somehow friendships change.

Growing up is a time of new thoughts, new interests, new attitudes and often, sadly, a rollover of new friends. As children outgrow toys at different stages of growth, so teenagers and adults outgrow friends. When maturity ripens at a different pace in a friendship scenario, patience and understanding slip away. Sometimes, frustration and even annoyance may surface. The old friendship "comfort zone" becomes an elusive memory. Time becomes not a healer but a divider.

Distance can inflict cruel blows on a friendship. Distance only makes the heart grow fonder if there is an assurity that person is returning to you. Even the closest friendship, once separated permanently by distance, struggles to survive. The immediate context of the day to day rollercoaster is lost. Communication is often limited to "What is happening now with you?" Trying to "tune in" to remote environments is difficult, so distance friendships are put under stress. And not everyone enjoys or makes time for long distance phone calls. Time zones need to be factored into busy lifestyles. Emails and letters also rarely capture and sustain friendship moments.

Another cruel reality is the student friend moving to a new school, the office worker friend embarking on a new career or the party animal friend turned eager student. In all cases, the circle of friends in the immediate environment become the closest friends. They are the most accessible. They feel and observe the journey of the friend. They can empathise more readily with a friend's crises than the more remote friend, denied immediate visual and sensory understanding beyond mere words. Ex party animals cannot relate consistently to old friendship pathways. Life has new priorities. The gulf in this friendship deepens. There is no argument. This is an example of both growing up and growing away. Different journeys in different worlds breed different attitudes, values and therefore different people.

Perhaps, one of the most difficult realities to accept is when one person marries while the other is single. Family commitments versus single interests. Even if these friends live near one another, it is often the single person who needs to accept that the married friend leads a new lifestyle and may not be able to share the drink

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