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.)
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.)