Unfuck Your Friendships: Using Science to Make and Maintain the Most Important Relationships of Your Life

by Faith G. Harper

Friendship deserves more credit in a society obsessed with romantic and sexual relationships. In reality, friendship is the key to our mental and physical health, happiness, and social cohesion. Dr. Faith Harper, therapist and bestselling author of Unfuck Your Intimacy and Unfuck Your Boundaries tackles this vital type of relationship, offering insight into how to choose and make friends, sustaining and strengthening your friendships, friend group dynamics, friend breakups, setting excellent friendship boundaries, handling changing friendships, and managing all the different kinds of relationships we encounter in our lives.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction, Relationships, Mental Health

191 pages, Paperback

Published March 21, 2016

About the author

Faith G. Harper, PhD, LPC-S, ACS, ACN is a bad-ass, funny lady with a PhD. She’s a licensed professional counselor, board supervisor, certified sexologist, and applied clinical nutritionist with a private practice and consulting business in San Antonio, TX. She has been an adjunct professor and a TEDx presenter, and proudly identifies as a woman of color and uppity intersectional feminist. She is the author of the book Unf*ck Your Brain and many other popular zines and books on subjects such as anxiety, depression, and grief. She is available as a public speaker and for corporate and clinical trainings.

Reviews

[Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

A short book exploring what makes friendships work, how social/cultural attitudes towards friendships can work against us, and what can be done to find and maintain satisfying and meaningful connections with others.

Interestingly, throughout the book Harper points out the uniqueness of friendships as a type of relationship and the way friendship is often viewed as something meant to be more perfect and longer-lasting - yet requiring less work - than romantic relationships in Western culture. Harper presents psychological and sociological research on interpersonal connection to support her claims, referencing several other books in the field. Harper touches on the grief felt at the end or conclusion of a friendship, but I would have personally loved to see more reading suggestions in this area.

Overall, a quick read giving a good overview of the topic, but I found it to be lacking in depth. A Q&A-style section at the end of the book answers more niche questions about friendship. However, the conversational tone wasn't for me, personally.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and helpful. Also liked that it was so short.

[Alex Puffer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this to get a vibe on the author while I wait for Unfuck Your Dating, and while I can't say this was written for me or where my life is right now, it seems to focus too much on being fun and cool and lacks substance. There are some references more helpful books, which I did appreciate (like Nonviolent Communication, for one).

If someone who is unfamiliar with the concept of boundaries, or NVC picked it up, it would steer them to decent resources. So that's a plus!

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I rate this a meh. Maybe if she didn't try to shoehorn her American Liberalism & swear words & try-hard "cool" lingo into everything it'd be more readable and easier to follow what her actual points are.

Lots of unnecessary swipes at Twitter and stupid asides that add nothing. Nobody thinks "non binary people" need "conversation therapy", for example.

[Gwennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this book to anyone (like me) who has ever felt alone and not known why, or been confused about making friends or maintaining friendships.

It's also a really cute book, and reads very conversationally!

[Owen C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well flow on content. Unveil what makes friendship work or not. Never thought about using Science to make friends but this book offers some good insights.

[M.K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of interesting things to think about and mull over.
Worth reading if you struggle with making or keeping meaningful friendships.