Should Men Listen to Their Friends’ Dating Advice?

Every man regularly encounters dating questions he needs answered, but few men know where to turn to have their queries settled. Faced with making a difficult decision on their own, discovering an available dating expert or seeking easy counsel, most men will default to the latter and ask their friends every dating and relationship question they run into.

Unfortunately, your friends are probably the last people you should turn to when the road to love gets rocky.

Take a minute to visualize your friends. Construct a clear picture of the people you spend the most time with, the people you are most likely to turn to when you run into some sort of dating or relationship problem.

Don’t simply think about what they look like. Think about how they talk, sound, think, and approach their lives and relationships. Got this picture clear in your mind? Good.

Now do the same thing with yourself. Take a good, hard, objective look at yourself. Create a clear picture of who you are, how you think, and how you instinctively handle your relationships.

Now ask yourself a simple question — how different are you really from your friends? When you ask your friends for dating advice, will you receive a radically different perspective than your own? Or will you essentially ask your questions within an echo chamber?

“To live the life you want, you often need to escape

the echo chamber of your current friend group.”

Many dating gurus argue your friends want to hold you back. They tell you to ignore the advice and the opinions of your friends because your friends will consciously give you advice that keeps you stuck in the same place.

These gurus argue your friends don’t want you to change because they feel comfortable with who you are right now. According to this line of thinking, your friends won’t assist your growth because they like the fact that they can predict and control your behavior, and they fear losing both of these abilities if you grow as a person.

While I’m sure this opinion rings true some of the time, a simpler and less cynical perspective offers a more likely reason why you shouldn’t ask your friends for dating advice.

Your friends want to help you out but they can’t. Your friends are probably a whole lot like you, which means your friends suffer under the same dating problems as you. That also means your friends don’t have the answers you need.

Your friends aren’t sinister and malicious. They’re just lost in the same manner as you.

To receive the sort of dating advice you need to take your relationship life to the next level, you must leave your inner circle and solicit answers from someone who has already overcome the problems you’re struggling with.

You can escape your inner circle by reading the work of dating experts, reaching out to acquaintances that experience more dating success than you, or by simply making new friends whose lives resemble the life you desire.

It may sound a little cold but to live the life you want, you often need to escape the echo chamber of your current friend group and find another social circle better aligned with the life you desire.