the ever shrinking circle

my father used to call me a social butterfly and it used to really offend me, but i am not sure why. i guess i was. i had a ton of friends and socialized a lot. i had a lot of fun throughout high school and the few years after. my circle of friends suddenly shrunk when i got married. we moved away and i entered into the new social world of military wife. they were nice women, but due to the transient nature, no one got really close. once msof was out of the military and we moved back home, the circle expanded a bit, but not too much. there werent too many that could tolerate msof and only a few that i knew loved me enough to deal with him on any sort of regular basis. after i invited msof to leave our home and our marriage, the circle, once again began to expand. and continued to do so until i had a huge circle of relatively close friends. good friends i could count on. we socialized. we traveled. it was a good time. then they started dropping out. for the most part, it was normal life stuff. moving away or just interests changing. no ugliness or animosity. a few got married and a few made more dramatic departures. like the facebook friend's sister i mentioned in my previous post. it started out kind of like a scene from "mean girls", but since i am pretty much beyond those type of antics, she stepped up her game. the accusations and lying began. it was some crazy stuff. she drug her parents into it. attempted to bring other friends in. major drama, the likes of which i had not seen since my freshman year when tgws's sister accused me of using her to get to him. it was horrible. it really was a sucker punch that sent me reeling. i recovered pretty quickly, but it really made me take stock of who was the most important to me and why. now my circle of friends is tiny, but i dont mind at all. i know i can count on them and they will never pull the crap i dealt with previously. getting the facebook friend request from that ex friend just got me thinking if the shrinking circle of friends is a normal part of growing up and getting older or if its just my reaction to a series of icky events.