Have you ever outgrown a friend or had a friend outgrow you?

hi! I think they both happened to me, because I have outgrown many of my friends, but there are also some others from them, who have outgrown me :) I have many successes in my life and today, when I chat with my friends the most of them are saying that they are really not satisfied with their way of living because they haven't achieved much and haven't reached their goals, and i till now have reached the most of mine and am pretty happy to say it to you and all the people around me! hope everyone here will reach their goals and outgrow many others

Yes this is happening now or should I say been happening for a while with a friend. We are in our thirties now and he is the same as he was in high school. We all (our group of friends) are married or in process of, have our own homes and children etc. and he has been stunted some how. He still lives at home with his Mommy taking care of him, goes out to the bar most nights and takes no responsibility at all. He doesn't understand that we no longer want to hang out in bars and finds our group Bar B ques (usually quite large now with 20 - 30 people easy) and get togethers to be for as he puts it "old folks", but we are those folks and we all have a great time. We always invite him even if he rarely shows up and he has stopped asking us out as he knows we will not go to the bars every time or bring our kids there with us during the day, (he hangs out in a Legion hall most weekends that allows kids though we are not comfortable going to drink with kids in tow). It is hard because at one time him and my husband where quite close but time has changed us and left him behind.

It is happening to me right now. I had a close friend who invited me to his place while I was on holiday recently. However both of us are hard headed and thus we had our differences. None of us bowed his head and from being close friends seeking each other's companionship we are drifting slowly apart. It is happening gradually, but it seems he does not have any more time to keep our friendship. Besides the odd email or the odd short polite message on msn.

It's a normal part of life. Usually I'm the one trying to keep up the friendship, but you can only work on a one sided friendship for so long, then I give up and go away...

Sad to say, but I guess this has happened to me many times. What I have found is that there are common grounds that bring people together (school, work, hobby, whatever), but once the common ground is removed, that's the real test to see if the friendship holds up. For instance, I had a friend in junior high - we were best friends then and did a lot of crazy things. We went on to separate high schools - but still kept in touch and got together when we could. By college we totally had separate friends and interests . . . I ended up being in her wedding later, but it's like we had zero in common by then and we just didn't have much to talk about when we hung out. So til this day, we keep in touch, but certainly we're not as close as we used to be. I think we're ok with it though . . . we're both too busy with our own lives and are fine with just keeping in touch when we can. But it's the work friendships that mostly fizz. All the get togethers and such were based on bagging on office politics . . . but once we all moved onto separate jobs, there wasn't much to talk about. Only the friendships that had more substance than just office gossip lasted.

I think it is just the way life be. The older we are, the less "real" friends we have. But we have some really close friends that will never split away. Just like me, I have a good friend who I knew when I was 4 years old. We know almost everything about each other, from a child till now. Friendship like this will maintain, because even you two have less in common, you have same memeories.

Yes. Both. I've outgrown (for the most part) my best friend from childhood. She talks to me on facebook sometimes and we went out to lunch once when I came home. It was very awkward. She wasn't there once when I really needed her, and then I stopped needing her. I also had people outgrow me. We changed, grew, switched hobbies, what have you. I think this is normal in every relationship. Any person who tells you this has never happened to them is either lying or hasn't grown at all.

I have had this to happen & i think it's sad when it does. I have people that i was close to at one time that just disappeared out of my life for no reason that i know of. We didn't have a fight or anything they just quit calling or coming by or whatever.

Unfortunately, I've lost contact with most of my school year friends. I have 2 that I keep in touch with. One of them, we just started playing poker every wednesday night at this local bar. The other, we go out to lunch & to starbucks may be 2 - 3 times a month & just catch up. Rest of the friends I have are the ones I've made from my jobs.

hello! i did experience outgrowing some friends. sometimes when you loose contact or just dont have the same common interest anymore... things just drift apart- just like you said. like the ones i had in grade school... the weird thing is how to approach them or how to deal with them when you meet them again on the streets or wherever. i noticed that sometimes those friends that i had, smile in an awkward kind of way. or some just ignores me. i guess they too don't know what to say. maybe if i give them a smile and a hello that is really meant or if i'm the one to approach first then it wouldn't be that uncomfortable right? ^^ good day!

I have grown apart from my best friend in many different ways. Mainly because we went our sepearte ways in school and eventually we just drifted away from each other. We were such great friends when we started out, but our friendship just began to drift away slowly. We went our seperate ways because we had other things like school which kept us busy and away from each other. I am still in contact with him, but I feel our bond will never be the same.