I think friendships come and go as our needs and interests come and go. It is not that I am useless to someone, but we don't have that same interest anymore or I or they don't have the same needs. If I am helping someone, I may enjoy that ability to help and enjoy the person and we may be friends but I can't really be surprised when they don't need my help anymore if we don't have a lot still in common? If someone is helping me and I don't need their help anymore, I can't see why we would still get together? I don't feel it is a lot different from being friends with someone in high school and they move away?

I still have a couple high school friends; we get together if they are in town or if I go to their town or there's a high school class reunion, etc. send cards occasionally, emails. . . ask after parents, spouses, children but they might as well be cousins? Think about your cousins if you have any. You might have spent a lot of time together as children (I did with mine) but have almost no contact now that you are grown? Relationship where one is not always together do that, that is most often the reason long-distance love relationships don't work.

Sometimes things change abruptly but people die, move, change jobs, get jobs/get laid off, have crises that change things and none of those necessarily happen slowly?

Even kids grow up and wander their own way after 18 years; I've been out of high school almost 45. I've only known my husband 25+. School friendships were usually only for 2-3 years, if you think about it, but we enjoyed what we had when we had it is why they seem so great. I've had friends suddenly end relationships after 20 years, I've had a friend I've hung out with for about 8-10 now and another I had for 2-3 years whom I met on here who lives near me but we don't have any contact anymore.

People come and go in one's life and will continue to do so? Some we like more, some less, some like us more, some less. I try not to get tangled in my imagined, storybook ideas of what a relationship or person should be like or how I would like them to be and just try to enjoy them as they are; offer help here, accept help there, enjoy this person and be sad when they leave, suffer this person appearing to need me more than I do them, etc.