Andrew and I were inseparable in high school. Our friendship ran on competition - first it was car audio (who had the loudest system), then automotive performance (who had the fastest car). That rivalry turned into something bigger for me. It sparked a passion that eventually led me into the automotive aftermarket business. Andrew helped shape my entire entrepreneurial path without even knowing it.

Then we went to different colleges.

I ended up at the University of Minnesota’s Morris campus while he stayed in the Twin Cities at the main campus. I’d come back on weekends, but I spent most of that time with my girlfriend. Andrew joined a fraternity and built a new group of friends who lived with him in the frat house.

The drift was happening on both sides. I was focused on my relationship. He was building a new life with people who were actually there.

After a year I transferred back to the Twin Cities. I couldn’t stand the small-town vibe of Morris. But by then, a single year apart was enough for the damage to set in.

We did reconnect a few times. My 21st birthday at his frat house was wild. But it was clear we’d gone different directions. I wasn’t into the party scene. He had new friendships that were exciting and right in front of him. Same city again, but we weren’t running in the same circles anymore.

There was no falling out. We didn’t fight about anything. We just drifted.

I got pulled into running my business. He got pulled into his life. One day I was on LinkedIn and saw he’d moved to Illinois with Verizon Wireless - the same company where we’d both worked in high school.

That’s how I found out.

Most friendships end this way. Not with some blowup, just with logistics. Your lives stop overlapping. Different cities, different schedules, different priorities. The everyday proximity that held things together just isn’t there anymore.

I hear about people whose friendships survived college and job changes and moving across the country. I wonder sometimes why ours didn’t. Most of my friendships now have pretty short timelines, which probably says something about this phase of life I’m in.

Sometimes drift is natural. Lives genuinely go in different directions, and that’s okay. But sometimes we let friendships slip that we actually wanted to keep, and “our lives just don’t overlap anymore” becomes a convenient excuse to avoid doing the harder work.

I’m not sure which category Andrew falls into. Maybe both.

What I do know is that overlapping lives isn’t something that just happens to you. It’s something you can choose to engineer, or choose to let fade. The question is whether the friendship is worth the effort when nothing about your daily life naturally keeps you connected.

In regards to Andrew and me, we let our lives stop overlapping, and that was all it took.