sferg410 shame this site seems to once again be a forum with aggressive admins!
No "admins" have interacted with you so far.
As far as I can tell, you want something that doesn't work the same way it used to?
Google's apps are an option to store your contacts because they have apps that do that sort of thing and do so well well on Android and play well with other apps, especially their own. A lack of other apps that do this well to your satisfaction is not really a GrapheneOS thing. Sure there is a contacts app and the phone app has contacts in it, but until recently, those apps have been mostly untouched by GrapheneOS developers.
For the most part, the default AOSP apps work fine, but can be rough around the edges. Obviously, Google spends more time on their proprietary apps. Recently, GrapheneOS developers have been making changes to modernize or replace said apps, but these things take time. I don't know what's on the todo list, but since we do get questions about importing and exporting contacts, they may add a feature to make the process smoother. (Again, I don't know if that'll happen, I'm just saying it's possible, so please don't interpret what I've said as a guarantee such a feature will be added in the future.)
All that said, I do believe there's a way to export and import contacts, but I've never done either so I could be remembering wrong. People ask about this pretty regularly. I'm sure you can find suggestions in other threads.