When Friendship Hurts: How to Deal with Friends Who Betray, Abandon, or Wound You

by Jan Yager

Book Overview

Taking its place alongside relationship classics The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dr. Jan Yager's When Friendship Hurts, in print since being published twenty-two years ago, is now available in a second edition containing new original research.

Friendship expert, coach, and sociologist Dr. Jan Yager's prescriptive book on toxic friendships,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743211456
• ISBN13: 9780743211451
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Bad Friends do Exist!

I read this book as follow up to reading FRIENDSHIFTS by the same author, Jan Yager. I was really looking to evaluater some experiences I had with friends and if what was done was mean or just friends being friends. I wanted to know how can we get past this OR can I just get this person out of my life after being so close for so long. WHEN FRIENDSHIP HURTS made me realize that I had already tried to save this friendship and nothing was going to save it in the near future. This bad friendship was serving nothing positive in my life. I decided to end the friendship even with the sadness that may come...most of which I have already felt during the betrayal. This book gives you specifics about ending a friendship and the proper etiquette of doing it. It also details out different categories that friends fall in. Reading this helps you to understand where your friends are coming from and when to cut them some slack. The best take away besides learning how to end my bad friendship was that there are positive friends in my life and room for more positive ones if I choose! You do not need to be stuck with a bad friend just because you have known them for so many years or been through triumphs and struggles with them or live in the same city...

enthusiastic reader

All of us can learn something from this insightful book because we've all had a friend hurt or betray us even in just a minor way. I found the chapter that outlines 21 types of potentially negative friends especially helpful. The chapter on if a friendship can be saved and how to save it also helps to make sense of complicated, emotionally charged broken friendships. The author treats the issues with sensitivity and expertise.

A book to read again and dialogue over

Until reading Jan Yager's book, When Friendship Hurts, I felt alone comprehending the concepts of underlying emotions I encounter in every day life and I knew few people who understood. Now I know I'm not alone. Thank you so much Dr. Yager for your lasting contribution. For communicating that leads to connecting or that explains succinctly what prevents positive connections from happening, Dr. Jan Yager's book is very insightful. As a professional French and English translator and interpreter for more than 20 years, having interacted with nearly 10,000 users, I have witnessed first hand, in both my professional and my personal life, the devastating effects of certain subconscious feelings few people talk about openly. Yet, those feelings lead to road rage, marriage break-ups, terrible hurts, shattering falsely reputations, damaging personal and professional relationships, to name a few. While friendship is good for the soul, not all friendships have the potential to make us better persons for it, unless we know what lesson to learn from it. To do that, we first have to know what friendship is, and what it is not. Jan Yager explains that beautifully in her checklist of positive and destructive friendships. She defines emotions and behaviors like abuse, anger, blood-sucking, cheating, competition, fault-finding, jealousy, envy, one-upping, rejection, undermining, all the gamut of feelings leading to certain behaviors, that revolve around the issues of trust and acceptance, and undermine our getting met some of the basic needs we all have in common as human beings. The questions Dr. Yager poses are probing, the answers revealing. The problems are there, plain to see in every day life; the wounds are there, plain to feel in every day life, but here is a book that proposes solutions for problems and healing for wounded emotions. This is a book for every individual who is serious about getting to know and being true to one's self. It is a book that shows both sides of a coin, how we hurt others and how others hurt us, but most importantly, how we can stop it. It explains how misleading our mutual perceptions of each other may be, and how becoming aware of the rhythms of our emotions, we can rise above destructive feelings and create a better, much better experience for ourselves. This is my opinion of her book, in a nutshell. I hope Jan Yager's book When Friendship Hurts becomes a best seller. -Diane Goullard Parlante, author of Beyond Words ~ Getting to the Heart of Communication in One or More Languages for the 21st Century (http://www.FrenchAndEnglish.com)

Not all friends are friends for life!

We've all been there. Our faithful and beloved friend has in some way betrayed us. It's hurtful and painful and we react in different ways in different situations. "When Friendship Hurts" is the second and latest book in Dr. Jan Yagers friendship series and a follow up book on Friendshifts®. We make many friends in a lifetime, but only a few are friends for life. "When Friendship Hurts" gives you insight in selecting friends that are good for you - to select the wolves from sheeps. I especially like chapter 2: `Detecting harmful people before they are friends'. In this chapter you'll find 21 different types of potentially negative friends. By reading through each type I can easily recognize which types my bad friends from the past are. It can also help you to predict whether a friendship will turn out good or not before bonding.More insights are such as: why are friends hurting friends? Are there different rules at work? Can we break the pattern and find good friends.In these days, Jan Yager is finalizing her third book on friendships. The area she studies here is friendship at work. I'm looking very much forward to her coming books.

Excellent Book

"When Friendship Hurts" is an excellent and comprehensive analysis of friendship. Sometimes, we are so wrapped in our everyday affairs that we do not really pay attention to the quality of our relationships/friendships. The book begins on a good foot, with a chapter on who, one can define as a friend. For a person who could often experience negative friendships, a reinforcement of this definition from another source, is helpful. Additionally, it aids in the continual re-evaluation of the quality of one's friendships. The best part of the book is that it is very non-judgemental. While Dr.Yager stresses the importance of salvaging a friendship that is on the wane, she leaves it to the concerned, to judge for themselves, whether one should work on a friendship or allow it to fade away. Breaking a friendship, she says, must be done gently to avoid repercussions. She also gives the reader a psychological insight into what could motivate a person to react in a manner, destructive to the friendship and to the self-esteem of the friend. Broken friendships cause shame and guilt. An understanding that someone's behavior towards you, may have nothing to do with you (your achievements, your behavior) is necessary to diminish the guilt and the shame. She also gives suggestions about how one could improve oneself to improve friendships. The book has a therapeutic effect on the reader and is a must-read for anyone who values friendship. This book has helped me put my former and current friendships into their proper perspective.