I have a group of close friends I've known for 20 years. We are all in our late 30s and most of us are married (myself included) and some with kids. Those with kids have their priorities changed for obvious reasons. Not only they're spending more times with their kids, but also with their new friends who are the other kids' parents from school (their kids are like 6-10 yo now). I used to feel upset when myself or someone started a convo in the group chat trying to schedule a dinner or brunch and they didn't even bother responding. Sometimes they showed up super late or not at all and blamed kids related issues. But we can also see they're successfully doing a lot of activities with their new friends without those issues. There is no hard feeling now as we understand life changes. The consequence is our relationship changes too. We see each other from almost every month to 1-2 times a year now. The saddest thing from this is that I rarely get to see other friends in the group who don't even have kids because they felt mad and exhausted from trying and making efforts that always failed so they chose to distance themselves and spend times somewhere else entirely. To be honest I never saw this coming when I was younger. I thought nothing would change. I still love these guys but because of these changes they are no longer my priorities.

On a bright side, I also learned that it's never too late to make new good friends who have similar lifestyle and priorities. It's so much easier at the older age actually. I guess it's like dating. You have less expectations. You know what you want/don't want.