From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdrift apart phrasal verbRELATIONSHIPif people drift apart, their relationship gradually ends Over the years my college friends and I have drifted apart. → drift→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
drift apart• Over the years my schoolfriends and I have drifted apart.• Teddy and Maria never really argued -- they just drifted apart.• We grew up, went off to different places, drifted apart.• Jabbing with the point he kept off Alexei's attack until the reaction of their mid-air collision made them drift apart again.• The movements did not so much drift apart as come to represent opposed interests.• Amelia was still engaged to Sam Chapman, but in fact she had been drifting apart from him for some time.• The drift apart had been gradual.• Where languages grow most unlike one another as they drift apart is in the shapes of their words.• If there is any twosome in a family likely to drift apart, it is a pair of brothers.• Later in life, Lewis and his father drifted apart, never to be reconciled. 