An interesting topic came up the other day.  Something that happens to a lot of guys when they start to get better with women is issues with their friends.  They find that they can't go out with their friends because their friends sabotage their success. 

It's a real issue because no guy wants to give up his buds, but it's very disheartening when you're good friends who aren't as good with women do little things that constantly , belittle you, discredit you or blatantly cock-block you.

Down in Australia they have something called the tall poppy syndrome.  Basically, whenever a poppy plant gets too big, you have to cut it down.  They usually refer to this when everyone decides someone gets a big head that they need to chop him down a little bit.

You have to remember, to be good with women is extremely threatening to other men.  Why do you think the community is so fucking dramatic and volatile?  You are dealing with men's biggest insecurities in life. 

With your friends, it's even worse because they are largely unaware of what they are doing and why they're doing.  Guys just react and can be painfully unaware of what effect it has on you.

I have quite a few friends that have seen me go from pretty good with women, to having serious choice with women and they largely try to discredit the changes I have made in my life.

Think about it though.

Their reality is that they aren't happy with their love life.  They also don't have control over it.  Society teaches us the idea of "fate" and "meeting the one," which means meeting women happens by chance — so you're NOT supposed to have control over it.  This how the entire world rationalizes their unhappiness with their love lives.

The smart people realize that anything in this world worth anything requires some effort.  What if you did meet the one, but you had no clue what you were doing and lost that opportunity to find the relationship with the women you could grow old with?

Guys do have a lot more control than they think and that's why PickUp101 is here, but telling a guy he can have control usually scares the crap out of him.  When you tell a guy, "Uh — actually you can make a change and get control over your love life," it's completely threatening to them.

First it means that a major premise in their life has been wrong.  To them love equals fate and their love life has caused them unhappiness.  So, it being able to have control means they have been unhappy for so long for no reason.

Second, it means that they have been totally unaware of this and are NOT an expert in this area — which is threatening to their own masculinity.  I have friends that still try to "throw me under the bus" or discredit anything regarding pickup.  They can see the dramatic changes in my life, but still find ways to discredit where I'm at in my life.

• First off, I pity them.  The same way that I sympathize with homeless folks for letting their lives fall apart, I feel bad for my friends who do this because they are coming from a very scared place of insecurity.  I don't see it as an attack on me — I see it as them attempting to discredit me so that they don't have to face what's wrong with their life.  The flipside is the fact that they do that validates what I have accomplished.
  
  
• Second, I handle them like I handle girls.  I am cooler and ANYTHING that they could say will not phase me.  Even the most embarrassing moments or facts of life can be overcome as long as you're confident enough to joke about the situation.

The best example I can give are the Jackass guys.  Those guys do stuff incredibly stupid, gay, and embarrassing for the entire world to see.  They get away with it because they can laugh at themselves.  I mean - Steve-O chugging a beer bong with his butt?!  Bam with a dick farm on his ass?!  If you tried to make fun of them for that it would never work, because they can laugh at themselves about it.  They're not embarrassed by it and totally congruent with it.  Therefore you can't use it to devalue them, because the fact that they are okay with it actually empowers them.