My theory on friendship is: you are friends with those whom you perceive to be cooler than you. Why would you want to hang out with losers? Thus the adulation makes you humble, rather than proud. That is, after all, why we bow to applause. The praise of someone cooler than you actually means something.
It's one of those "legendary" situations: the immovable object's immovability does not subtract from the fact that the unstoppable force is unstoppable. Your friends are not suddenly losers because they elect to hang out with you, a loser. It's just really rather sweet of them. You do all you can to live up to their expectations whenever they're around you, so what they perceive to be the normal "you" is someone actually cooler than the real you. Even if you feel like you can be yourself around your friends, to them your own loser habits are just a sign that you're fearless of what others think, and thus still cool.
Since it works both ways, with both in a relationship thinking the other better than they, people's estimations of others are generally way higher than reality, even in completely honest relationships. Freaky, huh?
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