does everyone do this :(. feel abandoned by (best) friend

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*semi-rant warning*

i want to talk about my friend. he's my oldest and best friend. ive known him since kindergarten. we live very close to each other. weve graduated college now and have jobs. we went to different countries for college but every year we returned to our hometown and hang out together.

after college, of course, came job and career. he's very serious about his career. he wants to climb the corporate ladder, all that stuff. i got my own job too, thanks to my uncle (thank god for him because i was struggling to find a job). in a way, i like my job better than his because it's more family oriented and there's almost no office politics. since we got jobs, we hang out less. that's cool. this is not the problem i want to talk about. we still hang out a lot.

the problem came after he found a girlfriend. yay! i'm happy for him. she's really cool, met her a couple of times. the problem is, after that, we very rarely hang out anymore. it's been over 1 year now and the amount of times we hang out together in the weekend in the past year is.......no more than 6 times. that's 6 out of 52 weekends in 1 year. i think it's not just his girlfriend though, it's his job as well. everytime i want to watch a movie, he either has watched it with his girlfriend, or he wants to watch it with her. if not with her, his answer is "i just watched it with my office-mates after work yesterday".

it's very hard to get a hold of him. if he's not with his girlfriend, he's with the people in his jobs. what annoys me the most is he even goes out with his ex-college friends more often than me. his girlfriend and his college friends seem to connect well. and he very rarely ask me to go along. i mean, i can ask him if i can go along but do i have to do that everytime he goes out with his friends? that sounds pathetic and i hate doing it. i've met his friends a few times. some are cool, some are douchebags. but it's a rare occasion because they always make plans without including me and i dont feel like begging them to take me along.

so the only time i can get a hold of him is if ALL of the following conditions apply:
- his girlfriend is out of town
- his company is not holding an event
- he hasnt made plans with his college friends or they happen to remember i exist and include me in their plans.
- we met by accident in the malls (usually im by mysel and he's with his friends) and THEN they ask me if i want to come along.

last time i met him? when our other friend had his wedding and we're both invited. that's on january 4, 2008.

i know i can go out with other friends but he's my oldest friend....since kindergarten....we play together in my house during primary school. arent the best friends you can have in the world are those that you meet during your childhood? or am i the only one who feel that way?

i seem to have an opposite fortune in terms of keeping or making friends. for whatever reason, i lost contacts with my college friends (i dont know what happened here. we had a reunion 2 or 3 times....then nothing. last time i met them was, again, when one of us had her wedding and we were all invited). the new 'friends' i made since graduating are just not as great as my old friends. i can hang out with them on weekends but it feels...fake with them. never felt the kind of friendship that i had with my old friends.

do other people lose their childhood friends over college, jobs, and romance?

Yes it happens all the time, and to just about everybody. Certain things with time cause less connection. It's really a normal thing. It seems that the two of you aren't really friends anymore. Not because you hate each other, but because of the time line and what happens in life.

I felt abandoned by a friend once to, but it was an entirely different reason. She was attacked, and I didn't emotionaly support her at the right moments. Me and her were very close. We have to all move on when friends are no longer friends. It happens, and isn't always personal.

i can relate but we are still in school together.