I will always vote for the truth.
I sit on both sides of this fence. I had a close friend (she was a bride's maid at my wedding) who just up and told me to get lost. We saw her after the wedding and then when we moved back to the area I was pregnant and we got together for lunch with her. That was the last time we ever saw her. I received a letter with really vague reasons why we couldn't be friends any more. Stuff like, our values have changed. WHAT? HOW? Never an answer. The only thing that I could figure out is that she was single and didn't feel like she had anything in common with a couple with a baby. It hurt so much more not really knowing why she walked out of our lives. It took me years before I truly got over it and it stopped hurting. The thing of it that really made me angry wasn't that she hurt me but that she hurt my husband as well. Thanks to Facebook we reconnected later in our lives (she was married with a kid although her daughter is half the age of mine) and she explained that she was just too immature at the time that she walked out. We really haven't reestablished a friendship.
The other side is that DH doesn't speak to his family at all. It was a choice that he made, I never would have asked him to walk away from his family. I do have to say that our lives are a lot easier without them. His father is a selfish, bigoted, sexist man who I don't really think it would have been safe for my daughter to be around. I know the brother isn't safe to be around and the sister is psychotic! His mom can be problematic however she has really tried to grow and she was a good grandma to my kids when they were little. I make sure to check in on her and go to lunch every so often.