"Oh, that's not going to work for me. You guys have fun! Maybe next weekend we can get together and do X"
Pretty much this.
It's a fine line. You know, I'm just not as spendy as my friends. So, over the years, we've drifted apart.
I mean, we are still friends - but the kind of things like going out, or going skiing, or hanging out on the weekends - various groups of friends have found *other* friends to do this stuff with. Other more spendy people.
The people we used to camp a lot with, now they go skiing every year with another family. We don't really ski.
I've got two sets of friends/ neighbors who both joined this health club with a great pool and a great kid's pool. So they go together all the time. It's $250 a month "cheap!!" (YMCA is only $103 a month, and, you know - neither of the moms works in the summer so they go every day. I work.)
I've got other friends who are so busy with kids sports that if they do something, they want to go out to eat. And well, that's expensive and eating out with a 4yo sucks.
So honestly, some of the distance has come from:
- many of my friends all have girls, I have boys.
- many of my friends work PT or not at all, so they have time to hang out from 3 to 6 pm or in the summers
- many of my friends like to go out to eat, or vacation in nice places, or ski
- many of my friends didn't have a 6 year gap between kids, so their kids are all way more independent than my little one
That's not to say that I never see them - I do! But not as often as before. Instead of weekly, it's every 2 months for some. Instead of 3-4 times a year, it's annually for others.
It's okay to maintain less frequent get togethers, but it takes more work.