There’s a peculiar guilt that comes with distancing yourself from someone who never wronged you. We’re taught that good relationships should be maintained, that losing touch means something failed. But sometimes the most honest thing you can do is acknowledge that a person belongs to a different chapter of your life, and that’s okay.
I’m not talking about toxic relationships or dramatic falling-outs. Those endings, however painful, come with clear reasons. I’m talking about the friend from college who shaped who you became, the coworker who made those difficult years bearable, the neighbor whose kitchen was your second home. People who mattered, who still matter in memory, but who no longer fit into the person you’re becoming.
Growth Isn’t Always Shared
We change in ways we don’t always notice. The job that consumed your twenties gives way to different priorities in your thirties. The city that felt like possibility starts feeling like a cage, or vice versa. The conversations that once animated you begin to feel repetitive. This isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s just the reality that people grow in different directions, developing new interests, values, and rhythms of life that don’t always align.
Trying to maintain a relationship across that kind of divergence often means performing a version of yourself that no longer exists. You find yourself editing stories to match old assumptions about who you are, or sitting through conversations that no longer resonate because you’re afraid of seeming like you’ve changed too much.
The Burden of Maintenance
Some relationships require more energy than they return, not because anyone is taking advantage, but simply because the foundation has shifted. The effort to coordinate schedules across different time zones and life stages, the emotional labor of catching up on years of context, the subtle negotiation of how much you’ve both changed—it can become exhausting in a way that feels almost shameful to admit.There’s nothing wrong with deciding that energy is better spent elsewhere: on relationships that feel natural in your current life, on new connections that reflect who you’re becoming, or simply on having more space for yourself.
Memory Can Be Enough
Here’s what took me years to understand: you can honor what someone meant to you without keeping them in your present. The gratitude you feel for who they were to you, the way they influenced your path, the warmth of those memories—none of that requires ongoing contact to remain real and meaningful.Sometimes the relationship you had exists most purely in the past, before life got complicated, before you both changed in ways that created distance. Trying to force it into the present can actually diminish what it was.
The Freedom in Acceptance
Letting someone recede into your past isn’t a betrayal. It’s an acceptance that you’re both entitled to move forward in whatever direction feels right, without the obligation to bring everyone along. It’s trusting that the value of what you shared doesn’t depend on it lasting forever.
Not every ending needs to be dramatic. Not every goodbye needs to be said. Some relationships simply complete themselves quietly, and there’s a grace in recognizing when that’s happened rather than forcing an artificial continuation.The people who helped shape us don’t stop mattering when they stop being part of our daily lives. But we do ourselves and them a disservice by pretending time and change haven’t done their work. Sometimes the most loving thing is to let the relationship rest where it was happiest—in the past that made you who you are today.