Friendshifts: The Power of Friendship and How It Shapes Our Lives 2nd edition

By: Jan Yager

• ISBN 1-889262-29-3 $22.95 trade paperback retail list price
• ISBN 1-889262-39-0 $31.95 hardcover retail list price

Sociologist Dr. Jan Yager shows the impact our friends have on how long we live and how successful we are during our lifetime in her comprehensive book Friendshifts®: The Power Of Friendship and How It Shapes Our Lives. This book is the culmination of more than 15 years of study and scores of original interviews and numerous surveys by Dr. Yager whofound that while healthy friendships can help your self-esteem, reduce stress, and improve the quality of your life, harmful friends put you in jeopardy. Friendshifts® is the word coined by Dr. Yager to reflect the way friendships, and even what you are looking for in a friend, sometimes shifts as we move from one stage in life to another, from childhood to being single, to marriage, having children, retirement, or widowhood.

Detailed Information

Contents

     Introduction to 2nd edition

Part I: That's What Friends are FOR
1.   The Power of Friendship
2.   What is a Friend?
3.   Perspectives on Friendship
4.   From Acquaintance to Friend
5.   Friendship Patterns

PART II: Friendshifts, or How Friendships Change Throughout Life
6.   Childhood and the Single Years
7.   Marriage and Friendship

Part III: How to be a Better Friend
8.   How to Maintain and Improve a Friendship
9.   How to Prevent a Friendship from Ending
10.  How to Handle Friendships that End

Part IV: Work and Friendship
11.  How Friendship Enhances Your Career
12.  Male and Female Work Friendships

Part V: Life and Friendship
13.  The Friendship Factor in Everyday Life
14.  Summing Up
     Resources including web site addresses

     References

 

     Index

 

     Published or Reader Reviews

"A rewarding, sensible self-help manual for making, keeping and improving friendships, sociologist Yager's how-to takes its title from a word she coined, which refers to the way friendships change as we move through life's stages. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with adults, children, teenagers, workers and executives, she examines the challenges to friendship posed by marriage, divorce, parenthood, job changes and geographic relocation."

— Publishers Weekly

"A fascinating book:" Anne Fisher, writing in her "Ask Annie" column in Fortune magazine

"To find out more about making friends, keeping friends and fixing-or breaking- friendships, read "Friendshifts" by Jan Yager. It's one of the few books on the subject and a particularly good one."

— Marguerite Kelly, The Washington Post

"Sociologist Jan Yager has a lot to say on a much neglected topic."

— New York Daily News (Linda Sheridan)

Yager ably demonstrates how friends can improve the quality of our lives, enhance our self-esteem, provide encouragement, and compensate for family defects. Well recommended for public libraries.

— Library Journal

"A wake up call to our society, reminding us that the secret to personal success can often be found in the caring and support of our friends. Yes, we need friends, and we also need more books like this."

— James M. Shuart, former President, Hofstra University

"Engaging and informative. A lovely blend of vivid case material against a backdrop of scientific information."

— Dan Perlman, Ph.D., University of British Columbia

"This is a highly accessible and very interesting book on one of the most important aspects of all our lives. Jan Yager skillfully blends practical advice with the latest research findings to provide authoritative yet readable coverage of the ways friendships enrich us all and of how to keep them working well."

— Steve Duck, Ph.D., past president, International Network on Personal Relationships

"In an age of superficialities and self-centeredness, Jan Yager's book is an in-depth unveiling of friendship's significance and potential in our lives. Friendshifts® is an informative and intelligent road map for that important journey of discovery."

— John G. Murphy, Ph.D., Exec. Dir., Friends of Karen Inc.

"Jan Yager has put her finger squarely on something as magical and ephemeral as friendship, without which our lives and work would be completely sterile."

— Nella Barkley, President, Crystal-Barkley Corporation

"Jan Yager takes us into the complicated, curious, and magical world of friendship. There is empirical evidence that we need friends to remain healthy, to be professionally productive, and to be psychologically whole. This is the book that finally is a reference book for your life on how to get, keep, and enhance good friendships."

— Laurence J. Stybel, Ed.D., President, Stybel Peabody Lincolnshire

"In these days of greater distance among people, many yearn for closer relationships. Too often, they don't know where to begin to assuage their loneliness. Simply and straightforwardly, Jan Yager shows them how."

— Harry Levinson, Ph.D., The Levinson Institute

Book Excerpt

Chapter One, "The Power of Friendship" from FRIENDSHIFTS by Dr. Jan Yager

Note: This is a reprinted version of Chapter 1 from Friendshifts®: The Power of Friendship and How It Shapes Our Lives by Dr. Jan Yager. It is made available for educational purposes only. It may not be reproduced or distributed without written permission from the publisher, Hannacroix Creek Books, Inc. (e-mail: hannacroix@aol.com). Friendshifts,® 2nd edition (trade paperback and hardcover, 287 pages with cartoons, bibliography, resources, references, and index,), is available through your local library or for sale through local or on-line bookstores.

I'm made up of the people I know and the friends I keep. I'd be nothing without them. --20-year-old Penn State male freshman

One Sunday afternoon about a year ago, I called my close friend Joyce just to say hello, but she was not home. A few hours later, Joyce returned my call. She started our conversation by sharing with me that she had a job interview the next day. It seemed she was up against 90 others. She was feeling depressed, anxious, and scared. Then she gave me the highest compliment a friend could give to another friend: "Just hearing your voice makes me feel better."

Without even trying, I had helped lower Joyce's stress level. It is just that ability of friends to reduce the stress related to life's tougher events that has led researchers to confirm that friends extend our lives as well as improve the quality of our lives.

Joyce and I find comfort in talking to each other because of our ongoing close friendship as well as our shared history, which began the summer of 1969, when we first met in geology class at Temple University in Philadelphia. From the very start of our relationship, Joyce always laughed at my jokes, bringing out a whimsical side in me that too few others see behind my intense, driven, and studious facade. I shared in Joyce's grief when her mother died too young; I witnessed Joyce's joyful wedding, as she did mine. I was at the surprise shower many years later for her newborn daughter, a blessed event that much sweeter since this pregnancy had not ended in a miscarriage at five months as so many others had.

FRIENDSHIFTS®

Although we lived in the same city for just three years-- I moved back to New York, then to Connecticut-Joyce and I have kept up our close friendship. Friendshifts® is a word I have coined for the way our friendships change as we go from one stage in our life to another, or even relocate from one school, job, neighborhood, or community to another. It is a variation on the old adage "Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver, but the other's gold." Whether the need to form new friends is caused by a change in interests, a move to another city, a promotion to another level or into another profession, or the death of old friends or even of a spouse, shifting to new friendships that serve current needs makes it possible to feel connected even if old friends are seen less frequently, if at all.

The variety of roles that we must play throughout our life--as student, worker, spouse, or parent--changes, as does the place that friendship holds in our life. But we still need friends, ranging from casual to close or best friends, and of both sexes. Friendship plays a continual role, although at different stages it will be less or more important to our emotional stability, depending upon the other primary attachments in our life.

When I gave the eulogy for my 83-year-old dearly beloved grandmother, I was saddened to look out at the small cluster of family members in the funeral parlor chapel. I did not see even one of the friends my widowed grandmother had cared about for most of her life, since they had already died or moved far away. But my grandmother also failed to develop new friends, and consequently she was lonelier in her last years than she had to be. She needed to understand the concept of friendshifts so her later years could have been fuller; her family was too busy with their own lives, unable to give her the daily intimacy she so desperately needed.

EVERYONE NEEDS A FRIEND

Even if you are lucky enough to be raised in a very responsive and loving family, it is inevitable that you will someday leave home. But friends-old friends whom you have cultivated over the years or newer ones whom you develop in your new communities-will always be available to you for affirmation and companionship.

Friends can be a source of self-esteem, affection, and good times. In times of despair, friends offer hope: a class of youngsters in California in 1993 shaved their heads so their friend and classmate, who was undergoing treatments for cancer, would not feel self-conscious about his bald appearance. His dozen friends kept their heads shaved until they learned their friend's cancer was in remission.

Friendship. It's something many people take for granted. They are unaware how powerful and positive friendship can be, or they would take it more seriously. The right friends can help you feel worthwhile. The right friends can even help get you elected president. School, work, parenting, and even old age are better and more fun when shared with friends.

I asked 46 college students at St. John's University what factors must be present in a close friendship. Almost all agreed that trust and honesty (44 and 43, respectively) were paramount, followed by faithfulness, loyalty, and being a good listener (35, 32, and 3 1), and, finally, having ideas in common and love (28 and 24). Just one wrote that attractiveness counted; only two felt age was a factor; only 10 considered intelligence, and only 8 deemed being a good talker of any significance.

What a glorious relationship friendship proves to be, where trust, honesty, faithfulness, loyalty, being a good listener, having ideas in common, and love are what count. These are all traits or feelings you can acquire. Age, attractiveness, and intelligence, largely a question of birth and luck, are considered unimportant for a close friendship.

Similarly, you are born to a family; you can choose your friends.

You would probably agree that friendship is crucial for schoolage children or for singles who are between romantic relationships. However, friends count for even the happiest couples: friendship affirms and validates in a more distinctive way than even the most positive romantic or blood tie. It is now known that friendship is vital throughout life.

"You quickly find out who your good friends are when you are down or when you need them most," writes a 36-year-old married vice president of sales who lives in Cincinnati. "A good friend won't desert you when you are down," this mother of two preteen daughters continues. "Nor will she turn away in jealousy when you succeed."

Another theme of this book is that friendship, like love, requires an investment of time and effort. Even children need guidance in how to develop and maintain friends. Until they are old enough to make arrangements on their own, they need their parents or caretakers to set up play dates for them with their friends. Playing with the kid next door is fine, but it is not enough. They need to cultivate friendships based on likes and dislikes, not just proximity and convenience. They need to be taught how to keep a friendship going even if a friend moves away, or if they have a disagreement.

If you do have a mate or romantic partner, it is ideal to be best friends with your mate as well as lovers. However, even when you attain that ideal, you need platonic friends where shared income, living arrangements, or the roles of spouse or parent are less likely to complicate the relationship.

Furthermore, even if you are fortunate enough to have the most sympathetic opposite-sex relationships--spouse or friends---certain gender-specific experiences, such as the onset of menses, the physical act of childbearing, becoming a father, or menopause, can only be shared vicariously. Same-sex friends add a commonality of experience that enriches your life.

Friendship can determine where you live and how you live. A survey by the Roper Organization reported by Diane Crispell in The Wall Street Journal discovered that Americans chose friends as saying the most about them (39%)---way ahead of their homes (26%), their jobs (12%), or their clothes (12%).

Consider these additional facts about friendship:

Children with friends do better in school.

Medical researchers found that those with friends are more likely to survive a heart attack or major surgery and less likely to get respiratory infections or cancer.

Friends offer a continuous relationship to singles, according them the high status once given only to family.

A nine-year study of thousands of Californians by Berkman and Syme discovered that those with friends live longer.

WHY FRIENDSHIP HAS BECOME SO POWERFUL

There are reasons friendship is more important than ever before, and will continue to grow in significance:

1.The trend toward smaller nuclear families is continuing. I know personally five women and men in their 30s or 40s who have seven to eleven siblings; it is rare for anyone of my generation or Younger to have more than five children of their own. Only children, or two, at the most three, is more the norm.

For the only child, friendship offers an opportunity for intimate peer interaction unavailable in the home. "I would die without my friends," says only child and mother Carol Ann Finkelstein, whose parents died within a year of each other in the late 1970s, when Carol was not even 30. "I couldn't function without my friends, even now that I'm married," she adds.

2. Retirees as well as other nuclear family members are increasingly relocating due to work, educational, or romantic choices. Because of the relocation to another town, state, or country of working and retirement-age relatives, parents, grandparents, and siblings, family members may not be around in adult years for frequent contact. Although you cannot replace members of your family when someone moves, you can always form new friendships.

3. The number of working mothers of school-age children continues to rise. Friendship offers these children an alternative intimate relationship--at school or after-school play-to the maternal one.

4. Friendship offers the elderly opportunities for close relationships. As life expectancy increases, so does the likelihood of living a decade or more cut off from the day-to-day interaction offered by a job, or the intimacy provided by a wife or husband who may predecease his or her mate. Friendship may mean feeling wanted and useful in your older years instead of alone and isolated.

5. Friendship offers intimacy to singles. For unattached and unmarried, divorced, or widowed singles, friendship will impact on your mental health until you start a family of your own, or if you remain or become single for much or all of your adult years.

6. Even the best marriages may benefit from the emotional and intellectual stimulation of friendship. For the married man or woman, friends may offer "another self' to those who need to relate intimately to others outside the all-consuming and sometimes one dimensional roles of parent, spouse, or worker.

7. Friends provide each other some of the career continuity once offered by lifetime employers. As companies downsize and few people have the guarantee of lifetime employment, friends offer continuity to a career or even the inside scoop on available jobs.

FRIENDSHIP TRAINING BEGINS AT HOME

You probably already know that how you relate to others is based on the early patterns you learned in dealing with your mother, father, and siblings. Knowing that fact, and recognizing those patterns, is a crucial first step in changing your current friendship patterns, if you are displeased with them. It will also help you to be a more compassionate and understanding friend if your friends disappoint you. They may be unwittingly reenacting a pattern from their childhood that has nothing to do with you. For example, a friend who becomes very competitive with you may be doing it because she was always being compared to her two older brothers. You could reject your friend because of her competitiveness, but you would then both lose.

Since the only person you can be assured of changing is yourself, start there. Why does her competitiveness strike such a negative chord in you? Is it really your friend's behavior that is the problem, or your inability to effectively deal with it and with her? Welcome this opportunity to work this conflict out with her and with yourself, or you will find yourself facing the same unresolved conflict over competitiveness with another friend.

FRIENDSHIP OFFERS HELP

TO TROUBLED FAMILIES

Their father hit Kurt and his younger sister several times a week, beginning when Kurt was four. As Kurt explains in the CBS TV special, Break the Silence: Kids Against Child Abuse, "The abuse finally stopped when my sister told some of her friends what had been happening. Her friends told a grown-up who they could trust, who called the child abuse hot line." Kurt and his sister were reunited with their parents after three years in foster care after their father stopped the drinking that precipitated the physical abuse. Both their parents learned how to discipline their children without hitting and causing black eyes or bloody noses.

Whether or not you were born into a nurturing family, your friends could offer what you need. That is one of the themes of this book: that friends are an underused source of help for troubled families, especially neglected or abused children, adolescents, and young adults. Friends can offset the low self-esteem and loneliness caused by abusive or dysfunctional families before, or in addition to, intervention by therapists or family services. As then-president George Bush pleaded with America's youth in September 1989, if they had a friend with a drug problem, "I'm asking you not to look the other way."

MY BACKGROUND

AND HOW I RESEARCHED THIS BOOK

I have always been fascinated by human nature, but my formal training began in 1970, when I attended Hahnemann Medical College for a graduate internship in psychiatric art therapy. Over the next decade, I taught college courses, completed a masters degree in criminal justice, and wrote several nonfiction books, including Victims (Scribner's, 1978), The Help Book (Scribner's, 1979), and Single in America (Atheneum, 1980).

My serious interest in friendship began when I was a graduate student and I dated a man who had a very powerful and supportive friendship network with his best friends from high school. Although I have always had girlfriends, it was usually just me and that one other friend. I would usually have numerous unrelated "friendship pairs"; I longed to have a similar female network of "buddies" with whom I too would feel genuinely connected. My only sister's imminent relocation with her husband to Washington, D.C.-for several years, after a decade of living in distant cities, they had been living in an apartment just a block from my Manhattan residence also caused me to take stock of my friendships. My sister and I had developed an especially open and intimate kinship during those years she lived close by; what girlfriends would be there for me now that my sister would again be far away?

In 1980, as I began to study friendship as the topic for my doctoral dissertation for my Ph.D. in sociology (City University of New York, 1983), I was initially fascinated to discover differences between male and female friendships. I also wanted to explore why friendships end; I soon realized that to learn why friendships ended, I had to understand friendship beginnings and maintenance.

My dissertation was an in-depth empirical study of the friendship patterns of 27 young, single women living alone on one randomly selected block on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. A nine-month analysis and interpretation of those in-depth interviews dispelled several clichés about female friendships, namely that they often involved rivalry over men, were mostly pairs or one-on-one friendships, and were based mainly on sharing confidences.

By contrast, my research discovered that of the closest friendships of the women I interviewed, less than half (41 %) were between two women or friendship pairs. The rest were part of a three-way friendship (22%) or a network of four or more friends (37%). The majority of friendships were based on sharing activities and emotional support (85%), with only 7% basing their friendship on sharing confidences. Despite the prevailing myths, only two friendships of the women I interviewed had actually ended because of rivalry over a man. (Some of the findings from my dissertation were discussed by Letty Cottin Pogrebin in Among Friends, Eva Margolies in The Best of Friends, The Worst of Enemies, and Linda Wolfe in "Friendship in the City," published in New York magazine.)

Over the years, I have followed up my dissertation with more than 250 extensive in-person or telephone interviews on friendship with a wide range of married, divorced, and widowed men and women as well as children, teens, workers, and executives. I researched and published a scholarly bibliography with 693 entries, Friendship: A Selected, Annotated Bibliography (Garland, 1985), a popular booklet on friendship, and magazine articles for Modern Bride, McCall's, and American Baby. I also surveyed over 500 students, married men and women, and never-married, divorced, or widowed singles from throughout the United States as well as from Canada, Japan, Switzerland, India, and the United Kingdom, including a survey from 1990 to 1992 of 257 randomly-selected members of the Society for Human Resource Management about work and friendship; since 1994, I have been conducting an in-depth study of more than two dozen adult survivors of childhood and adolescent sexual abuse and how those early experiences impacted on their friendship patterns.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN FROM THIS BOOK

No one is born shy or gregarious. There is no such thing as a friendship "gene." Friendship is a skill you can learn; this book will help you enhance your friendships as you learn-

• Sympathetic and empathetic ways to bring your friends closer

• Why some men have twice as many friends at work as do women and why women might want that to change

• The art of self-disclosure-what to reveal, when, and to whom

• How to be for others the kind of friend that you want others to be for you

• How to increase the likelihood of befriending those who share your values (a better predictor of long-lasting friendships than doing things together or being nearby).

I have certainly benefited from all I have learned about friendship. My life is fuller and more rewarding than it has ever been because I put into practice every day the friendship principles I share with you in this book.

Marriage is relatively easy to define, but what does it mean to be someone's friend? As a relationship, friendship itself has been shifting in the last few decades; today there is an eagerness and quickness to call almost anybody a friend. The next chapter explores definitions of friendship that should help give you a better grasp of what you mean when you call someone your friend.

 

 

 

About the Author

Jan Yager

Jan Yager, Ph.D. (the former J.L./Janet Barkas) is a writer, sociologist, consultant, professional speaker, artist, and publishing entrepreneur whose areas of expertise include relationships and business issues including time management and work relationships. Jan's first book published by Hannacroix Creek Books, Inc., Friendshifts®, based on fifteen years of original friendship research, led to interviews on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, The View , National Public Radio, and other programs. Other books include When Friendship Hurts (published by Simon & Schuster, Inc.) as well as two career books by Facts on File, Inc. A prolific writer of fiction as well as nonfiction whose books have been translated into 14 languages, she is co-author of two suspense thrillers, Untimely Death and Just Your Everyday People. For more information, go to: www.drjanyager.com.

Click here to find more books by Jan Yager

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Foreign, Subsidiary, & Film Inquiries

Friendshifts® is currently available in Korean, Arabic, and French (La Force De L'Amitie, published by Payot).

If you are interested in considering this title for translation, or English reprint rights in Australia or the United Kingdom, send your request to the foreign rights department at Hannacroix Creek Books, Inc.: hannacroix@aol.com. Our company maintains an active network of highly-regarded foreign agents in most major territories; in territories where we are not represented by a foreign co-agent, we deal directly with the foreign publishers.

For reprint consideration of Friendshifts®, including mass market paperback rights, or for book clubs, contact the subsidiary rights department at Hannacroix Creek Books, Inc. (hannacroix@aol.com, Fax: 203-968-0193) and your inquiry will be considered. 

Direct your film rights inquiries for Friendshifts® to our Film Rights Department (e-mail: hannacroix@aol.com, Phone: 203-321-8674, Fax: 203-968-0193) for this title. 

Author Jan Yager, Ph.D. is also the co-author of the following mystery novels and the accompanying original spec screenplays that have friendship as an underlying theme:
Untimely Death by Fred and Jan Yager
Just Your Everyday People by Fred and Jan Yager

Articles

"TIPS FOR MAKING FRIENDS AFTER FIFTY"

By Jan Yager, Ph.D. Author of Friendshifts®: The Power of Friendship and How It Shapes Our Lives, When Friendship Hurts, and 125 Ways to Meet the Love of Your Life

Copyright © 2005 by Jan Yager, Ph.D. All rights reserved. You may download one copy of this tip sheet for your own personal use. However, this original tip sheet may not be edited or altered in anyway nor may it be reprinted or resent without permission of the copyright holder, Dr. Jan Yager.

 

1. Fifty means something difference to everyone. Some may have young children in elementary school. Some are divorced and single. Don't make assumptions about your friends just based on a chronological number.
2. Nostalgia friendships are important to cherish and nurture just for the history that you share. But that may not be enough. Without discarding or ending those friendships, if you've drifted apart from the good old days, look to strengthening your bonds with other friends, or starting new ones.
3. After fifty, even if you did not have to deal with it before, helping your friends deal with death, particularly of their elderly parents, is a rite of passage that can really become somewhat easier because of the help of friends. Friends will also start to get ill and die as the years go by as well. Creating rituals and support systems for helping each other through these inevitable life passages is as important as the fun times that friendships can bring.
4. Just because you feel as if you don't have as much time as you used to when you were young doesn't mean that starting a new friendship, which usually takes time, is going to happen quickly. The process is the same, whether you're fifteen or fifty, but you have other concerns, such as family, work, or hobbies, so you don't have to pressure your potential new friend, causing the friendship to end prematurely because of your neediness.
5. Just as each person may be at a very different place romantically at age fifty and in terms of their family situation, work-wise fifty can be quite different. Some may already be thinking about retirement, some are going back to school to start a new career, and some may be at the height of their careers. Find those who you are comfortable being around based on shared values and situations rather than just chronological age.
6. Make the time for friendship. Don't put it off till you have time because you've just got to accept the reality that you're always going to be busy with multiple demands on your time.

Links of Interest

www.friendship.com.au
Australian Bronwyn Polson created her Friendship Page in 1996, which gets thousands of visitors each day. At the site are classic and contemporary friendship quotes as well as poetry.

as well as poetry.

www.bowlingalone.com
Site related to Robert D. Putnam's book Bowling Alone, which emphasized the importance of increased social connections in America.

www.classmates.com
Site for finding old classmates as well as former co-workers. Registration is free but there are more options available for communicating with other registrants if you become part of their gold fee-based subscription service.

www.redhatsociety.com
A concept of friendship and sisterhood started by Sue Ellen Cooper and her friends who wanted to put fun back in the middle-aged, post-fifty years. It's snowballed into an association with tens of thousands of chapters, mostly in the United States, with local events and an annual convention. The defining symbol of the red hat society is the red hat that members wear as well as purple clothes.

International Association for Relationship Research
http://www.iarr.org
An interdisciplinary association of psychologists, communication researchers, and sociologists who study relationships such as friendship, dating, marriage, and family. An international conference is held bi-annually.

Dr. Jan Yager sites
http://www.whenfriendshiphurts.com
Official web site of When Friendship Hurts by Jan Yager, Ph.D. (Simon & Schuster, I nc., Fireside Books, 2002), with translation into many foreign languages. At the site is a free excerpt from the book and other related information as well as additional links of interest.

http://www.janyager.com
http://www.janyager.com/friendship
Websites developed and maintained by friendship expert Dr. Jan Yager including free excerpts from her book, Friendshifts: The Power of Friendship and How It Shapes Our Lives (Hannacroix Creek Boosk, Inc., 2nd edition, 1999) as well as information on National New Friends, Old Friends Day, founded in 1997 and celebrate in May anually. For more information, go to: http://www.janyager.com/friendship/nationalnew-oldfriends

2009 National New Friends, Old Friends Week

Sunday, May 17, 2009 through Saturday, May 23, 2009

Disclaimer: The accuracy of any link cannot be assured since addresses, even the existence of a URL, or its ownership and emphasis, may change, nor does inclusion or exclusion of a link on this list represent an endorsement or a criticism of a particular site.

 

Media Kit

For an interview with Dr. Yager, contact our publicity department: Hannacroix@aol.com or Dr. Yager directly: yagerinquiries2@aol.com

Members of the media, here is a media kit including sample interview questions.

Dynamic book shows how our lives are shaped by the friendships we form

As featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, The View, and National Public Radio, Friendshifts® is the culmination of more than 20 years of study and scores of original interviews and numerous surveys by Dr. Yager who found that while healthy friendships can help your self-esteem, reduce stress, and improve the quality of your life, harmful friends put you in jeopardy.

 

In the second edition of her comprehensive book Friendshifts®: The Power Of Friendship and How It Shapes Our Lives (Hannacroix Creek Books, Inc., 2nd edition, 1999; 1st edition, 1997), sociologist Dr. Jan Yager shows the impact our friends have on how long we live and how successful we are during our lifetime.

 

Friendshifts® is the word coined by Dr. Yager to reflect the way friendships shift as we go from one stage in life to another, from childhood to being single, to marriage, having children, retirement, or widowhood. Publishers Weekly called Friendshifts® "a rewarding, sensible self-help manual," Library Journal praised and recommended it as well, and Anne Fisher in Fortune wrote, "a fascinating book."

 

"No matter what stage in life you're in," noted Dr. Yager, "you still need friends. The key is to recognize the kind of friendships you have, because while the right friends can get you elected President, the wrong friends can ruin your life, get you fired, or get you killed, as in the tragic deaths of best friend teens who make suicide pacts."

 

In Friendshifts®, Dr. Yager shows how to recognize and deal with harmful friendships. She also offers guidance on being a better friend as she discusses why casual friends at work are usually better than close or best friends. This comprehensive book covers friendship patterns, how and why friendships begin and are maintained, coping with various kinds of endings, work and friendship, to divorce and friendship, friendship principles that also help with family, and lots more.

 

Friendshifts® has French (Payot), Korean (Philmac), and Arabic (Jarir) editions. It was previously published by Taiwan (Seed Publishing), Chinese (Xinhua), and into Spanish (Ediciones B/Vergara).

 

"A provocative exploration of the most vital of connections, Jan Yager's book is a guidepost to the art of giving and receiving friendship," according to Victoria Secunda, author of When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends.

 

Picking up where Dale Carnegie's best-seller How to Win Friends and Influence People left off, Friendshifts® offers friendship skills and principles that will benefit all of the key intimate relationships in your life, such as how to get along with your spouse, your boss, your children, and your siblings, as well as your work-related associations. Explained Dr. Yager: "As Harold Burson, Chairman of public relations company Burson-Marsteller, said to me: 'People get promoted as much with the approval of the people they work with as the people who are their bosses."

 

A key finding in Friendshifts® refers to Dr. Yager's original research over the last two years with several dozen survivors of childhood and adolescent sexual abuse. "Over and over again," Dr. Yager said, "I became aware that friendship is an untapped source of help for dysfunctional families-in childhood and even adult years-and in that way, friendship might compensate for what was and is missing at home. As a 58-year-old woman who had been sexually abused by her father when she was child told me: 'I learned [from friends] what went on at home wasn't the way things should be.'"

 

Another interesting finding, based on Dr. Yager's survey of 257 human resource managers, is that the men have twice as many friends in all categories (best, close, or casual) than women in comparable jobs. "That finding surprised me, so I explored why this might be and why women might want to do something about it to enhance their careers and work and personal satisfaction," said Dr. Yager.

Dr. Jan Yager, the former J.L. Barkas, has a Ph.D. in sociology, is frequently interviewed by the media, and has taught at several colleges and universities including the University of Connecticut, Stamford campus, Penn State, and Temple University. A speaker and trainer, Dr. Yager's articles have appeared in Parade, The New York Times, Woman's Day, and Redbook. When Friendship Hurts: How to Deal With Friends Who Betray, Abandon, or Wound You, Dr. Yager's second book on friendship, is published by Simon & Schuster, Inc./Fireside Books, July 2002 ($13.00 retail list price, ISBN 0-6432-1145-6). Review copy requests to: Shida Carr (212) 698-4384 e-mail: shida.carr@simonandschuster.com Fax (212) 698-7695

FRIENDSHIFTS®: THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP AND HOW IT SHAPES OUR LIVES by Dr. Jan Yager

1. What are the three kinds of friendships (casual, close, best)?
2. Why do we all need each type of friend?
3. What type of friendship is preferred at work and in business?
4. Are opposite sex friendships (purely platonic) really possible?
5. What about when workplace friendship turns to romance?
6. Do men or women make better friends?
7. How long does it take, on average, from when you meet till you become tried-and-true friends?
8. What is the best predictor of longevity in a close friendship (and it's NOT shared interests)?
9. Can you be friends with your spouse or romantic partner?
10. How do you recognize, and deal with, harmful friendships?
11. Should you intervene if you don't like your child's friend?
12. Are there health benefits of a close or best friendship?
13. Are you finding Americans have more, or less, time for their friends than, say, a decade ago?
14. Are there certain ages, or circumstances, when friendship is more important in our lives?
15. Are there any differences in the way men, and women, are going about friendship in the last decade?

Dr. Jan Yager

Sociologist, Friendship expert, and Speaker Author of FRIENDSHIFTS®

Dr. Jan Yager is a sociologist, author, speaker, and consultant on relationships specializing in friendship patterns including friendship at work. A former assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at New York Institute of Technology, Dr. Yager has taught at Penn State, Temple University, St. John's University, the University of Connecticut, Stamford campus, and The New School.

She has a Ph.D. in sociology from City University of New York (1983), an MA in criminal justice (Goddard College, 1977), and a BA in Fine Arts from Hofstra University where she was Art Student of the Year. Dr. Yager had a National Science Foundation pre-doctoral fellowship in Medical Sociology through Mt. Sinai Medical School and City University of New York (1979-80).

 

Dr. Yager's second book on friendship, When Friendship Hurts: How to Deal With Friends Who Abandon, Betray, or Wound You, will be published by Simon and Schuster (Fireside Books) in July 2002.

 

Her  third book on friendship, focusing on friendship at work, Who’s That Sitting At My Desk?, was published in 2004. In 1997, she founded National New Friends, Old Friends Week, an annual event that has been celebrated each May.

 

The prolific author of 25 highly-acclaimed books published by Scribner's (The Help Book, Victims, and The Vegetable Passion: A History of the Vegetarian State of Mind), Prentice Hall (Creative Time Management), Doubleday (Making Your Office Work For You), Atheneum, (Single in America), Facts On File, Wiley (Business Protocol, 2nd edition Hannacroix Creek Books), and other houses.

 

A member of the National Speakers Association (NSA), Jan Yager delivers keynote addresses on friendship, conducts friendship workshops, and also coaches on friendship. Dr. Yager has also been a consultant on friendship for Visa, Disney, Sony, Norelco, Smugglers Notch Lodge, Helenecurtis.com, Foote, Cone, Belding, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, and J. Walter Thompson.

Her web site addresses are:

www.DrJanYager.com
www.JanYager.com/friendship
www.whenfriendshiphurts.com

 

Reading Group Discussion Points

 1. Dr. Yager coined the word friendshifts®. What does friendshifts® mean?

 2. Discuss the three kinds of friendships that Dr. Yager defines: casual, close, and best. What are the difference among these kinds of friendships? How many types of friendships do you need, and why?

 3.What are some of the reasons that Dr. Yager listed for friendship becoming so powerful? Has friendship become more or less important in your life recently? Why? Why not?

4. Dr. Yager describes foul-weather and fair-weather pseudo-friends. What are they? Have you ever experienced pseudo-friends?

 5. According to Friendshifts®, how long does it take, from when you meet someone, to becoming tried and true friends?

 6.What is the quality to seek out in a new potential friend as the best predictor for a friendship standing the test of time?

 7.Dr. Yager states that friendships that last either have less conflict than those that end or involved friends who know how to effectively handle conflict. What are some of the techniques of handling conflict that you learned in the book that you will apply to your own friendships? Have you ever had a friendship end because of conflict? Do you now know ways to handle that conflict that might of saved that friendship?

 8.What about friendship at work? What type of friendship (best, close, or casual) does Dr. Yager say adds the most to work or business situations with the potential for the least complications? But why is friendship important in business or work situations?

 9.What are the benefits of friendship during childhood? The single years? To married couples? After retirement? To widows or widowers?

 10.Are male and female friendships the same? If different, what are some of the possible social reasons for the differences? Are male and female friendships changing or staying the same? What might account for any of these changes?

11. What are a few of the many ways that Dr. Yager suggests for making and keeping friends that you learned about in Friendshifts®?

 12.Cicero wrote, in "On Friendship," "What could be finer than to have someone to whom you may speak as freely as to yourself?" How that apply to friendship?

 

About the Author

Dr. Jan Yager, the former J.L. Barkas, has extensively researched friendship for more than a decade beginning with her dissertation on friendship patterns for her Ph.D. in sociology from The City University of New York (1983). Dr. Yager, a respected and popular speaker, consultant, and workshop leader, is the author of numerous highly-acclaimed nonfiction books including the award-winning Business Protocol (Wiley), Single in America (Atheneum), Victims (Scribner's), and The Help Book (Scribner's), as well as British, Japanese, Dutch, Russian, and Spanish translations of several books. Dr. Yager's articles have appeared in Parade, McCall's, Redbook, Harper's, The New York Times, Family Circle, Glamour, and other publications. She lives in Connecticut with her husband Fred and two children.

Selected Recommended Readings

Adams, Rebecca G. and Rosemary Blieszner, editors. Older Adult Friendship: Structure and Process. CA: Sage, 1989.

Apter, Terri; Josselson, Ruthellen; and Baron, Jaimie. Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships. NY: Crown, 1998.

Barkas, J.L. See Jan Yager.

Baron, Gerald R. Friendship Marketing: Growing your business by cultivating strategic relationships. Grants Pass, OR: The Oasis Press, 1997.

Berry, Carmen Renee and T. Traeder. Girlfriends. Berkeley, CA: Wildcat Canyon Press, 1995.

Bigelow, Brian J.; Geoffrey Tesson, John H. Lewko. Learning the Rules: The Anatomy of Children's Relationships. Guilford Press, 1996.

Blieszner, Rosemary and Rebecca Adams. Adult Friendship. CA: Sage, 1992.

Bloom, Allan. Love & Friendship. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Enright, D.J. & D. Rawlinson, eds. The Oxford Book of Friendship. NY: Oxford U. Press, 1992.

Fehr, Beverley Anne. Friendship Processes. CA: Sage, 1996.

Frankel, Fred. Good Friends Are Hard to Find. Los Angeles: Perspective Publishing, 1996.

Gabor, Don. How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1983.

Griffin, E.M. Making Friends (& Making Them Count). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987.

Hibbard, Ann. Treasured Friends: Finding and Keeping True Friendships. Baker Book House, 1997.

Lerner, Harriet. The Dance of Connection. NY: HarperCollins, 2001.

McGinnis, Alan Loy. Friendship Factor: How to Get Closer to the People You Care For. Augsburg Fortress Publications, 1979.

Pogrebin, Letty Cottin. Among Friends. NY: McGraw Hill, 1985.

Rawlins, William K. Friendship Matters: Communication, Dialectics, and the Life Course. NY: Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 1992.

Rubin, Lillian B. Just Friends: The Role of Friendship in Our Lives. NY: Harper, 1985.

Rubin, Zick. Children's Friendships. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Taylor, Shelley E. The Tending Instinct. NY: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2002.

Welty, Eudora and Ronald A. Sharp, eds. The Norton Book of Friendship. NY: Norton, 1991.

Werking, Kathy. We're Just Good Friends: Women and Men in Nonromantic Relationships. NY: Guilford Press, 1997.

Wohlmuth, Sharon J. and Carol Saline. Best Friends. NY: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1998.

Yager, Jan. Friendship: A Selected, Annotated Bibliography. (Published under the maiden name of J.L. Barkas). NY: Garland, 1985.

When Friendship Hurts: How to Deal With Friends Who Betray, Abandon, or Wound You. NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc., Fireside Books, 2002.

Who's That Sitting at My Desk?  Stamford, CT: Hannacroix Creek Books, Inc., 2004.