Why do we hold on to friendships we have already outgrown?

“Every friendship goes through seasons. The error is in pretending it does not." — Montaigne

Ever hang out with an old friend and realize that it’s all gone?

Yes, the conversation is polite, and the affection is real but thin.

Every so often, you make plans you both know will not happen, and you part with warmth and a sense of loss that you will not examine until you are on your way home.

Letting go of a friendship that has run its course is one of the stranger griefs, partly because there is no event to point to, as there is no betrayal or blow-up but a slow divergence.

Two lives moving in different directions, until the distance between them is greater than the history that joins them.

We hold on for various reasons. Guilt, mostly. The fear that releasing someone is a statement about their worth rather than an honest reading of the situation.

Sometimes it is the sunk cost of years, as leaving feels like saying all of it meant nothing, when what you actually mean is that it meant something then, and you have both changed.

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson is right about old friends.

That ease is rare and worth protecting, but not every long friendship has that quality.

Some are maintained out of loyalty to a version of yourself that no longer exists. You were both different people when this began, and those two people got on beautifully.

I didn’t write this to give you clean advice.

Friendships do not have contracts, and there is no dignified way to resign from one, but there is a difference between letting something rest quietly and dragging it forward out of obligation.

I guess you will know when it is time.