Your friend suffers from a very common AFC malady; he's what I call "pre-whipped". One unfortunate result of the constant feminization conditioning over the course of an AFC's life is that they tend to retain idealizations of what their "dream girl" should be and how she will be treated before they even encounter a girl that marginally fits the description. Think of it in terms of preemptively "pedestaling" a girl that an AFC has yet to meet.
This is one of the more insidious AFC mental schemas. It predisposes a guy to think that a woman will expect to be, and rightfully should be, in control of the frame from the outset of any LTR. Of course it's ultimately self-defeating, but the idea behind "pre-whipping" convention is to make the AFC expect to be whipped by any prospective GF he engages with before they meet.
Now, granted this may not exactly be where your friend is now, but he most certainly has idealization about "his kinda girl" and is displaying signs of being pre-whipped. He's already prepared to abdicate authority to this type of woman. I can think of at least 4 AFCs I've known who's wives domineer them and scold them worse than their children privately. However, since a woman's husband is a reflection on her character by association, these women were always ready to defend their husbands (often with open hostility) at the sign of the slightest insult.
You see, AFCism has two phases - the single AFC, and then the AFC in an LTR. Both share common characteristics and mental states, but each is facilitated differently. The single AFC prepares himself to be the LTR AFC.