[ronik]

It is important to be objective about your own career and not be emotional about your friendship with them. If they are good at heart, they will understand you eventually. If not, you are wasting your time anyway. You want to be loyal to folks, but this is a situation where you have to be loyal to yourself as well.

This is part of the learning curve we all go through and it seems you have learnt some important lessons already. I have a lot of senior friends that I didn't get along so well with professionally (because of our different styles of working) but on the personal level we still meet for lunch although we don't even work at the same company any longer.

It's ok... if I were you I'd go find another job and then just tell these guys that an excellent opportunity has come by. Perhaps give them a 4 week notice instead of the regular 2 weeks so they can find someone. I don't think you owe them much more than that.