Customer Reviews

Toxic Friends: The Antidote for Women Stuck in Complicated Friendships

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While this book does a thorough job of describing many types of dysfunctional friendships, I was hard pressed to figure out the prescribed "antidote" other than to find an authentic friendship. Well, good luck with that. I was hoping for some tips on extricating oneself from a toxic friendship and ways to find the ones worth keeping and treasuring. The book did not deliver on these expectations.

Susan Shapiro Barash's book "Toxic Friends: The Antidote for Women Stuck in Complicated Friendships" looks at the bonds and the bondage of female friendships. She divides friends into three categories: Those we tolerate, those we ditch and those we keep.
Friends we tolerate or romanticize are "The Leader" - it's all on her terms, "The Doormat" - she has little identity of her own, "The Sacrificer" - she needs to be needed and "The Misery Lover - she wants to feel your pain.
Friends we ditch, also called "trial by fire" are "The User" - the self-serving friend, "The Intimate Frenemies" - she idolizes and despises you and "The Trophy Friend" - you represent an advantage socially or at work.
Friends we keep or have potential are "The Mirroring Friend" - you have a circumstantial bond, "The Sharer" - a best friend in the making, "The Authentic Friend" - the real deal. She is empathetic, faithful and knows her bounds.
Barash not only helps us better understand the power of "sisterhood" and how to nurture it but also sheds light on those who do not have our best interest at heart.
Unfortunately, Barash's fascinating book does not go far enough. When a relationship turns toxic it's important to ask, "What's my part in this?" "Why did I choose this person?" and "Why am I hanging on to the friendship even when I know it's destructive?" It takes two to tango in a toxic relationship.
Many of us choose friends and mates based on unfinished business with our parents. Toxic relationships give us an opportunity to identify and resolve unfinished issues. Once I saw my pattern of picking emotionally unavailable female friends I realized I was seeking the validation and approval I'd not received from my mother.
We naturally attract authentic friends when we become one.

THIS BOOK BELONGS IN EVERY MODERN DAY WOMAN'S BOOKCASE. No matter what age you may be, a teenager muddling through some of the toughest years of your life, a 20 or 30 something trying to make choices that could effect the rest of your life, or a mature woman who's enjoying the fruits of having lived a long and successful life, we all go through through each of these stages surrounded by and depending on our friends. But as all of us know, not all of these friendships are easy.

The categories of types of friendships that are outlined in Susan Shapiro Barash's TOXIC FRIENDS: THE ANTIDOTE FOR WOMENT STUCK IN COMPLICATED FRIENDSHIPS have certainly helped to answer some of my questions about my most important friendships: how they work, why sometimes there's conflict, and if they're really worthy of the importance I ascribe to them.

Most importantly, this book helped me to identify the kind of friend I am. It has helped me to see where I could have been more supportive to someone I love, when I was being used for my kindness and generosity, and when I might have been better off saying goodbye to a hurtful friend

I truly believe that this book can uncover truths about ourselves, our friends, the the relationships between them that we really need to know but might not ever have ever seen.

A BIBLE FOR EVERY MODERN DAY FRIEND!!!!!

Toxic Friends is an essential handbook for today's female friendships. This necessary guide assists you in knowing who your real friends are and those who are your so-called friends, the ones causing you difficulties and problems. Shapiro-Barash writes that all women, young and old, desperately want these relationships to work out. Unfortunately some of them don't. This book pinpoints who you can trust and keep forever and those you must cut loose.

I thought the author spent a lot of time on the "leader" friend. This really was a surprise to me b/c I thought these type of group friendships with a leader stopped after high school. What well adjusted adult woman would not want an equal friendship with another woman? I would not want to be dominated by any "leader". I just didn't feel her advice would be directed well to mature well adjusted adults. I understand there are complexities in relationships b/c of life experience but I'm not so sure I buy into her personality types for friendships. I didn't find this book to be all that helpful.

Ever felt like you had a friend who made you uncomfortable but you didn't know why? and you didn't know how to approach her about it? Read Susan Barash's new book "Toxic Friends". Easy to read and easy to follow. Makes "toxic" relationships understandable. Gail

It saddens me to think innocent trees gave their lives for this book. Toxic Friends isn't an antidote for women; it's a waste of good words! She uses movies, People magazine, and Wikipedia as sources .... next book, please

In this noteworthy study drawing upon popular culture and extensive personal interviews with 200 women of various backgrounds and ages as well as with experts in the fields of psychology and counseling, Barash (Professor, Critical Thinking/Gender Studies, Marymount Manhattan College, 1992- ; M.A., Writing, New York University; B.A., Writing, Sarah Lawrence College; bestselling author of Tripping the Prom Queen; author of eleven books including this one; [...]), a nationally-recognized gender expert, explores the ten types of female friends--the Leader, the Doormat, the Sacrificer, the Misery Lover, the User, the Frenemy, the Trophy Friend, the Mirroring Friend, the Sharer, and the Authentic Friend. She helps women recognize and understand them as well as develop means for assessing them and moving forward with problematic female relationships. Barash accomplishes the aforementioned tasks, by dividing her book into three parts based upon a continuum of types: female friends that are tolerable, intolerable, and worth keeping. According to the author, most women may be able to tolerate Leaders, Doormats, Sacrificers, and Misery Lovers, while they may decide to ditch Users, Frenemies, and Trophy Friends. Women may keep Mirroring Friends, Sharers, and Authentic Friends. Covering each type of woman friend in a separate chapter, while noting how the types may overlap, Barash sets forth the characteristics of each, first hand accounts of the natures of the type of friend, examples drawn from newspapers, books, and movies, current research, the pros and cons of staying in the type of friendship, and more. Including the questionnaire she administered to her interviewees as well as its percentage results by answer, the author further references her work with a bibliography. Nicely- presented and sufficiently- well documented, even though it lacks footnotes, an index, and some "characters" are composites, this in-depth exploration of female friendships and useful self-help guide will interest women readers, students, scholars, and others. Accessible, easy- to- read, with a reader's guide at the end of the book, and scholarly, it belongs in large, public and undergraduate, academic library book collections.