Because sometimes you have a bunch of mutual friends in the group and it’s easier to maintain contact than to make a big deal of things that you don’t have empirical evidence of against someone with.
That’s respectable and not the wrong way to handle it by any means, but after a certain age, and if you have a particularly intrusive career, it can be really hard to make new friends and have it get past loose acquaintances. I’m definitely experiencing that myself, but thankfully I’m still close to my old friends, just much farther away, geographically. (Also not OP btw.)
Not the OP, but I can help answer this:
Because sometimes you have a bunch of mutual friends in the group and it’s easier to maintain contact than to make a big deal of things that you don’t have empirical evidence of against someone with.
I would rather break contact with all of those friends and start over, personally.
That’s respectable and not the wrong way to handle it by any means, but after a certain age, and if you have a particularly intrusive career, it can be really hard to make new friends and have it get past loose acquaintances. I’m definitely experiencing that myself, but thankfully I’m still close to my old friends, just much farther away, geographically. (Also not OP btw.)