Man in dire need of hair advice!?

A couple months ago i decided i wanted to try to grow my hair out. I had never done this before, going with a buzz cut up to maybe 2 inches on the top at most in my 20 years on this planet. I have very thick dark blonde curls, along the lines of hair type 3a I think. If i stretch the curl out it's around 7-8 inches right now. If I shampoo my hair it gets really dry and frizzy and just gets all over the place, so I wash it using conditioner once a week which keeps clean as well as somewhat hydrated, but it's still quite dry and frizzy so I use some hairgel to battle the frizzyness. My hair dries rather quickly after showering, especially outside, along the lines of 20-30 minutes. Recently I've expecienced an increase in hair breaking in the shower or when i run my hands through it during the day. Usually 1-3 hairs come out everytime I run my hands through. It gets me kind of worried because when I put it in a ponytail (don't be scared, I don't go in public like this!) I can see many short hairs that stick out, which i think is because of the breakage. I would like to know some products I could use to maybe battle the breakage, frizzyness and overall dryness of my hair so I could stop using hairgels to mask this. Since I'm a man I don't know anything about hairproducts at all, so I was wondering if someone might help me with this! Thanks in advance. Lars