1) Successful people are too busy to “hang out” every day. Even if they have time, they will not hang out with the same group all the time to talk about “life”. Only losers have the time to sit with the same group of people in a cafe or a bar all day to chat about everyday things.
2) You don’t need as many friends as you think. You do not need to constantly be around 4-5 different people and you do not need 25 people you whatsapp on the regular (no one has time for this unless they’re a loser). In real life you need a few trustworthy friends that you meet once in a while.
3) As you move up in the world, you have more and more soft touch friendships where you meet the person ~1x every few months. And that’s only if they live in your city. If they live in a different city, you meet them when you visit their city or they visit yours. The meeting lasts about 2-4 hours and then you both go back to doing your own stuff. You both have too much going on in your lives for anything more than this.
4) As you become more successful, you will only make new friends with people if it’s mutually beneficial for you both to be friends. Successful people do not have time for friends that are useless and can provide nothing of value other than their company. Only losers have deadweight friends because winners just delete deadweight contacts.
5) You have more fake friends than you think. This is true regardless of whether you are rich, middle class, or poor. But it is 10x truer if you are rich. As Chanakya says “He who has money has many friends, many relations and he is also deemed a great man and a scholar”. You only find out how many friends you have when you are in need. Your house burned down and you need a place to crash and rebuild for 3 months. How many people let you sleep in their house?
6) Broke people make bad friends. This is simply because they have more crises in their life than non-broke people. They are always in need for a favor be it money for rent, or medical treatment, or something else. They will try to guilt trip you into loans that they will never repay. I’m not saying they are bad people, but you learn pretty fast that you cannot be friends with broke people if you do not wish to be exploited. They can offer you nothing, but you can offer them a lot.
7) The difference between a friend and a flatterer is that a friend will correct you when you’re doing something wrong. Plutarch talked about this 2000 years ago. A friend will speak against you if he thinks you are making a mistake or you hold a wrong opinion. For example, if you dislike an objectively good person, or taking a drink from your hand if he thinks you are drinking too much, or telling you that you’re gaining weight. On the other hand, a flatterer will just amplify your opinion eg. oh you hate person X? I’ve always hated person X…
8) If you grow up watching sitcoms like FRIENDS, you have been programmed into thinking that success means having a large group of friends that you hang out with every day. This does not exist in the real world except in the lives of losers who have time to waste. No one who has stuff going on in his life has time for talking about general life updates every day. NO ONE.
9) Most adult friendships are hobby companionships. Most non-business adult friendships can be described as hobby companionships. For example, the people you play tennis with, or play chess with, or people you lift weights with. It’s simply the nature of adult life. If you’re interested in chess and you play chess with a guy regularly, and he suddenly decides that he wants to quit chess and start fishing instead, the “friendship” is mostly over because the time you spend together will decrease significantly (unless you’re also into fishing). Not all friendships are like this, but most are.
10) Your spouse will be your closest friend. This assumes you pick a good spouse. Who is the person you spend most of your time with? Yep, your spouse. If you look at the videos of old men talking about their life, the biggest loss they talk about is losing their spouse. This is why it’s really important to pick a spouse you can connect with. I have a lot of intelligent friends married to airhead women and it significantly reduces their quality of life. Who you marry is one of the most important decisions you will ever make in your life.
11) Men and women can be friends. Unlike what you normally hear from the red pill folk, men and women can be friends. You will see good male-female friendships all the time in the real world. The important thing is that both people cannot be single. If a single man and woman spend a lot of time together as friends, they fall in love – such is how nature made human beings.
12) Never get into “give only” parasite friendships. As you get older, you realize that friendships are a give and take. But often you will have friends that give nothing but always take. You find that you’re always paying the dinner bill, always giving them tips, they always want your help, need your advice and time, etc. but can give you nothing in return. This could be either because they are malicious and don’t want to give anything, or because they are so below you that you have no use of anything they can offer you. In either case, this friendship needs to end because it brings you no benefit.
13) Many of your friends will betray you. This is a sad reality of life. It could be over money, clout, women, or anything else. You can’t trust broke people, you can’t trust simps, and you can’t trust men who really like attention (massive red flag for most things). Some mentally weak people have a hard time accepting the fact that broke people cannot be trusted (“it’s not their fault”), but let me ask you – if you lose your wallet at a crowded 1 star hotel or a crowded 5 star hotel, which place do you have a higher chance of getting it back? If you had to give your wallet to someone for 10 minutes, would you rather give it to a homeless guy or a guy in a suit? Money = baseline trust.
14) You lose friends as you get older. Various reasons. Car accidents, health reasons, suicide, drug overdoses, etc. You can know someone for 20 years and then never see them again. A big reminder to live your life while you are alive. You can die at any time so ask yourself what you’d like to do in your life and go do it.
15) You switch friends as you become successful. As your get better in life, your circle changes. It’s a cycle upwards. You learn soon enough that if you go up in life and your friends stay the same, then your friends start hating and resenting you. Not all of them but most of them. Jealousy is a strong emotion and people hate seeing someone who was previously on their level or around it massively cross them. Most will try to pull you down like crabs in a bucket.
16) You build true friendships by doing hard things and facing challenges together. This is why military friendships last a lifetime. You do hard things together. Also why couples become really close after they fight through major challenges together like a sick child or big financial problems.
17) Female friendships are thinner than ice. The difference between male friends and female friends is that men take a while to accept a new member to their group but once you enter it, you’re in. On the other hand, women will act like “sisters” within 5 seconds of meeting each other and have a fight just as fast.
18) A friendship based on business is superior to a business based on friendship. I’ve had a tax and law firm for over 10 years and I see this all the time. Getting into a business with someone solely because they’re your friend is a recipe for disaster. Be friends with who you want but work only with the skilled, punctual, and competent.
19) Avoid people who are killjoys. It’s good to have friends who are a little skeptical of you and can show you where you might be wrong, but the last thing you want is to be around people who have a highly cynical view of life and are killjoys. It’s a personality type that you don’t want rubbing off on you. You don’t want too much negativity in your life – it’s a bad thing to have, especially from people you regularly converse with. It just destroys happiness and motivation.
20) Careful of people without old friendships. People who don’t have any friendships going back 10-20 years have something wrong with them. Cernovich used to call this the 10 year rule but it could even be a 5 year rule for the younger guys. Basically, it’s a very strong indicator that these people have something wrong with them and people don’t want to stick around them for long.
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