There is always lots of talk on TRP about identifying the toxic women in a man’s life and eliminating them, and there should be. But have you considered that the people who you see as your friends? Your so-called friends can be a source of beta treatment that you can do without. The lessons of TRP and how to face treatment by friends is just as valid and useful as with issues that come up with women, if not even more so. Your social group and how you are seen in it can be very important to how women see you as well anyway. My advice is that if you arent afforded a measure of respect which is forthcoming and reciprocal, consider ditching them and find new ones, or spend some time alone on your own pursuits or tell your friends how you want to be treated and let them figure it out.

I have learned a couple aphorisms along the way, like, ‘keep your friends close, your enemies closer’, and ‘trust your enemies more than your friends’, and there are reasons for the existence of such truths. The question is, have you applied these lessons to your own life for your betterment?

Here are some signs that your friends aren’t good for you.

  • Do they drink and smoke and party to the point of being stupid?
  • Do they call you or do you always call them?
  • Do they come to where you are, or do you go to their turf?
  • When you meet up with them, do they spend all their time talking to other people?
  • Is their advice good for you?
  • Do you really share any common pursuits (intellectual, cultural, social, work)?
  • Is your personal connection with them legitimate and timely for this moment in your life, or do you know them for other reasons?
  • Are they working, and otherwise doing something productive with their lives, or are they unemployed bums?
  • Do you ever feel condescended to?
  • Do they use you to serve their means and ends?
  • Does your friend’s woman and her friends respect you, or are they assholes towards you?
  • Do you really benefit from knowing these people?

If your friends are trash, ditch them. When they come looking for you, set the rules of engagement, even something simple like that you arent drinking tonight.

You need to make your friends work in your favor, because you need to make life work in your favor. The game of life is unfair and stacked against all of us to begin with, and that is why it is necessary to make efforts in our own favor and not just expect that we will all just naturally succeed with women, friends, or jobs, or whatever it is we want in life. Make no effort and you will have no rewards.

I think a fact of life I have come to accept now is that one must be of two minds. You must be willing to break off relationships with all the toxic people in your life whoever they may be, friends, girlfriends and wives, clients, employers, authority figures. At the same time, you have to keep your heart open to meeting new people, doing new things, taking some risks and engage new people and opportunities.

I would add to the prior statement to beware of anyone too friendly to you. Everybody wants something. Check out the WikiPedia pages for Narcissists and Sociopaths. These kinds of people can be charming and alluring, wanting your attention, and then they manipulate and abuse to maintain power. Everybody has a little bit of these traits, but I speak of people whose lack of constraint becomes apparent.

As a final word, beware of other people’s advice, especially that of friends. You may want friends in your life to have some amount of counsel, but the advice you give yourself may be far better in the long run. If you are in the position of giving advice to a friend, make a point of telling them how advice coming from you may never be as good as what that friend knows in his heart he must do.

TRP need not be just about your relationships with women, it is about all of your relationships with the world.

I am just a guy that is a long time lurker on trp, and I have started to really work on my life, because it is never too late to recover from the bad choices in friends I have made, whatever they may have been.