My (F34) friend Jessica (F43) and I met 6 years ago at work, and we continue working together off and on. She's a fundamentally good person and I've considered her one of my good local friends, but I've recently had qualms about remaining as close as we've been. I'm not able to link to that post here, but you can search my post history for "Should I (F34) end a friendship of 6 years?" if interested.
I've appreciated and valued a lot of things about our friendship. However, after our recent fight, combined with my concerns about her judgement/routine negativity, I no longer feel that she's someone I want to be super close with. Basically, I want to be more casual friends.
She'd be extremely hurt if I said it to her like this and I'm fairly sure it'd be the end of any kind of friendship. I could instead try slowly responding and reaching out less, and just check in with her at work. I could also save our social hangs for group events. However, she's very tuned into things like this and I imagine she'd notice less engagement and ask me about it.
I've been hurt in the past by good friends suddenly falling off the face of the earth after close friendships, so I want to be sensitive to not doing that to Jessica. Do I owe my friend a direct conversation, or is phasing out the kinder thing to do?
TLDR: How do I most gracefully and graciously downgrade my friendship with Jessica?