Staying friends with people while net worth / income diverges

[RikkiDee]

I hope the title is clear enough.

Basically I pose this question to the 30+ crowd who have grown up with friends before jobs, careers and income were ever issues.

Do people eventually stray from each other as incomes/net worth get progressively further and further away from each other?

Example of mine. I'm 26 right now and I've grown up with the same group of friends since basically grade school. Now that we are mostly all done school and somewhat settling into our careers and such, its becoming obvious that some are going to be rich, and some are not. My friends can be pretty competitive, especially the ones on the lower end of the spectrum and I can already detect some resentment / jealousy from them to the higher incomes.

I'm about in the middle so I can easily relate to both groups, but I could see a gradual dispersion in the future. I mean, the rich people want to do balla things and hang out with other rich people, it only makes sense. The poor ones feel stupid, left out, etc and get mad.

I then looked to my parents life for similarities. We aren't rich, we aren't poor. My parents don't have any rich friends, and they don't have any poor friends. This may be just a coincidence.

Is this just how life ends up? Are people really petty enough to let income / net worth affect who they spend their time with?