I joke a lot about women listening to their female friends for advice, aka The Board Of Bitches, which is usually atrocious counsel when it comes to men or even themselves. Although guys don't suffer from the same level of lowkey backstabbing when it is not a collective circle jerk of delusion feeding, there are some limits to the men's friend groups coming from a different place.

Your group of friends could be great at calling your shit, especially if they are emotionally astute. Yet, they will often miss key points, because they will usually project their experiences or viewpoints, not realising that everything is not equal.

Having a friend who is not only successful but also can attribute his success is a goldmine of insights. However, oftentimes they don't know why they are successful and think things are easier than they are.

"Just do XYZ."

"Just be XYZ"

Essentially, successful guys talk like chicks because life is on easy mode for them. Some are genuine in their wish for you to get better, while others find a disguised pleasure in seeing you struggle as you listen to their deliberately vague advice. They draw validation from being better than you in that specific field and want to keep that advantage to themselves—no legit friends. Yet many guys don't know they are entertaining these scoundrels in their friend's group.

On the one hand, you have a true friend who does not know any better; on the other, you have a fake friend who enjoys seeing you struggling while he shines.

I knew a Chad friend who had some of the most horrible texting I had ever seen, and would get away with it. If I had asked him for suggestions on it, I would have gone straight to the chopping blocks. I tried, and that resulted in me being ghosted or laughed at.

To the undiscerning guy, he would apply blindly what his successful friend suggests to him, seeing his success, not realising it is less about the message than the messenger in his case.

Unfortunately, when you are not Chad, the message will be equally as important, if not more important than the messenger. This is why everything is not equal. And guys are also victims of the projections they accuse girls of.

So it is about deconstructing the dynamic of positive outcomes by detaching the messenger to see the validity of the message.

When it comes to relationships, the worst advice you can get is from your friends who are in relationships or marriage, because most of them have been longhoused and settled with the idea of their girlfriend managing them.

So when a client comes in, I usually have to clean up the mess from them listening and acting on the well-intentioned yet very misguided advice from their exploited friends, bringing them to the plantation and suffering the consequences they created for themselves.

Legit Friends carry a level of trust because, on the surface, they appear to have no monetary incentive, yet it does not mean that their advice is more valid. Most of them are there despite their agency rather than thanks to it. Exposing that would be too world-shattering to them; therefore, entertaining a parallel reality they want you to buy into can be a matter of survival instinct with their ego protection. This is an under-discussed matter because the average man is most loyal to his ideology and his ego.

This is not to say all advice from friends is not valid, but you have to think beyond just what the source is, and whether they hold the expertise from results AND from attributing them correctly, before delving blindly into the suggestions. In rare cases, they know better and give you good advice based on a good spirit, but often they give you unknowingly bad advice based on a good spirit, and sometimes they will give you vague or misleading advice to see you fail further.

If the matter is crucial, it is worth seeing a professional you trust, rather than wasting your time on your bro suggestion. Another factor I have noticed is that clients are more accountable when money is on the table, and develop their own agency rather than try to copy and paste what their friends did, with mixed results, because they learn to appreciate themselves more and act congruently.

Choose the people you listen to carefully.

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