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my friends and i all play professionally and we play each other harder than anyone else at the table... we get better than way. Softplaying is never good for the game

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I've seen replies like this to the same question before. But doesn't this just mean that you are then softplaying against everybody else? Somewhere you have to be misplaying ..

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I think that there is a great challenge involved in disassociating friendship from poker. It extremely difficult, if not impossible, to completely forget all the comaraderie there has been between you. The fact that you know a particular player so well on and off the table requires a special sort of adjustment to your play. I think that we all have the capability to play better against our friends than we really want to. I know some of my friends so well that they might as well tell me what they have. You can experience the same effect when playing in the same cardroom for an extended period of time.

I've played with the idea of trying as hard as possible to not sit with my friends at the local cardrooms. On one hand, it's one less seat for me to worry about. On the other, it's one less seat for a goldfish.