Toxic Friends True Friends: How Your Friendships Can Make or Break Your Health, Happiness, Family, and Career

by Florence Isaacs

The author of Just a Note to The Perfect Words for Every Occasion delves into the nature of true friendship, discussing how to determine a true friend, forge lasting relationships, and navigate the tricky issues surrounding marriage, relationships, and parenthood. Reprint.

Genres: Self Help, Relationships

252 pages, Paperback

First published February 17, 1999

Reviews

[Dianetrimble · Rating 1 out of 5]

I guess this book is okay if you're an older woman and concerned with what people think of you, or old-fashioned ways of behaving.

I thought that it was kind of glib in terms of talking about friendships. There wasn't a very deep discussion of what a toxic friend really was and when the author managed to get around to discussing this subject matter, it would usually be in the form of a glorified list.

I felt like I could have stopped reading the book after the first chapter. I didn't really get very much out of the rest.

There were some moments of clarity in the way of common sense advice. But I felt like many issues discussed in this book were not relevant to what the audience would expect to read.

[Maggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an absolutely bizarre book but in the most mundane way possible. I felt like I had been transported to a 90s conservative-leaning middle-aged women's book club where they were all sharing catty horror stories about friends but that also reflected on them more than the supposed friend with a healthy dose of heteronormativity and gender conformity. Yet at the same time, it was weirdly enjoyable for that reason. It was like I couldn't look away.

Would I recommend this? No. Did I finish it by my own choice? Yeah. Above all, though, the title was wildly misleading since "toxic friendship" was really only about 5% of this 200+ page book (much of which focused on marriage and divorce).

[Shelby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Glad to see this book received poor reviews on here. I've recently come into liking self-books--I'm someone that is a bit too stubborn and a bit too scared for therapy (the sort of, "I'm not quite ready to talk about everything" mindset). I'm not discounting therapy, but saying I'm not quite ready yet...

But that doesn't mean I can't try to improve myself.

I read the "Toxic Parents" book that inspired the title of this one (as I read in an interview with the author somewhere), and it was brilliant. Helped me learn coping, different responses (rather than reactions), etc. It turned me from, "Self-help books are ridiculous and for the weak" to "Hey, maybe this will help."

So I turned to this book, because if there's one issue I've had in my life, it's the anger, angst, and overall misery from attracting highly toxic people into my life.

This book helped... 2%. The quiz in Chapter 1 isn't bad. That's it.

Everything else is highly anecdotal tales from a journalist (rather than a psychologist or scientist) who literally groups chapters into categories of friends: friends as moms, friends from work, friends from marriage, etc.

She tells stories... about herself. About these cases.

She offers no solid advice. She doesn't give revelations of, "If you do this, you can stop attracting these people" or "here's how you can handle the burnout from dealing with these people." She just says, "Aw, a friend of mine stopped calling me. I realized it was just as well, because she always called me to rant and never let me." How therapeutic.

Not to mention, she writes poorly enough for me to question her journalistic abilities.

[Sandy]

okay; general self help....