Last week, I had the same conversation twice in one day. The first was with my friend Jacq* about a mutual friend of ours, Cindy. Cindy, now that her life is complete (ie husband and child), no longer needs us, and we have been dumped.

The second conversation was with Tia about her friend Callie. Callie is easily distracted by a new man or whatever else is going on in her life, and Tia decided that she'd had enough of being filler, so she dumped Callie. It was a bit trickier situation, as they do occasionally work together, but Tia handled it with her usual grace. What really struck me was when Tia said that she felt sadder about Pluto losing its status as a planet than about losing her friendship with Callie.

I've been reclassifying friends for about a year now (let's just say... if you're reading this, you're not one of them). I haven't dumped anyone, but I've had to start thinking about them differently because the relationship we once had has changed into something that no longer is very meaningful. Until this conversation with Tia, I've been thinking of it as a continuum -- that is, a line with true friends on one extreme and true enemies on the other, and most people falling somewhere in between, depending on how close they are to one or the other. I've been mentally moving a few people further away from the true friend point.

But I like the planet analogy better.

Has Pluto changed, really? No. Its still out there doing its thing. What has changed is how we think about it, the amount of attention we give it. Do we hate Pluto or wish it harm? Of course not. It has simply been downgraded from true planet to dwarf planet. Much like a few people in my life have been down graded from friend to someone I used to be friends with, to acquaintance.

I felt a little weird when I started talking to Tia about this months ago. But she, being a true friend, knew exactly what I meant. We have ways in our culture to mourn death and dump lovers. There are social rules (and rules of law) for how we are to behave when we get dumped. But we lack a way to move on from friendships. Things are awkward, get messy. Unless the friend does something truly heinous, we try to spare feelings, to back away slowly, to leave them with their dignity intact. And we feel guilty for doing so. This is our friend, after all. The best we can hope for is to mutually drift apart.

But I want to move on. Not to be cold, but these dwarf planets are taking up too much time and effort. Time I will never get back, spent on something that does not nourish me. Effort that I'd rather spend on the people I love, who show that they also love me and want me to be part of their little galaxy. Who think of me as Mars, perhaps. Certainly not as Uranus.

*To protect the privacy of the real people I was talking to and about, names have been changed to the names of other people's pets.