Through thick and thin and everything along the way, it's through friendships that we understand our lives. In this book, authors Suzanne Degges-White and Christine Borzumato-Gainey not only explore the roles friendships play for girls and women over the course of a life, but offer a guide to finding new friends and enhancing current relationships. Using interviews with hundreds of women, spanning the ages of 4 to 94, Friends Forever provides readers with a contemporary perspective on female friendship. These personal stories, informed by the latest research on friendship, offer a rich and colorful picture that combines a life stage chronology of friendship with a guide for becoming the friend you would like to have while building strong friendships along the way. Readers will learn how to design and sustain their ideal friendscape, the dynamic and often misunderstood realm in which such bonds flourish. The authors thoughtfully examine the biological and cultural drive towards social connections among women and provide self-reflection and self-exploration opportunities that encourage readers to better understand their own roles in relationships and the roles that others in their social landscapes play.

"Women building and maintaining lasting friendships is a 'strategy for survival,' the authors posit, anchoring their argument in the basics of biology. Namely the fact that women’s brains are more 'friendship-ready' with superior in-utero development of what neuroscientists dub 'the social brain,' which controls communication, nurturing, and understanding of social nuances. Girls enter the world better able to observe and remember emotional details and comprehend nonverbal communication since female biology clearly developed 'to encourage and support strong alliances' as a safety net. Throughout the 'friendship chronology' from early childhood’s first friends through midlife’s reconnection with ourselves and others’ companionship and the communities formed by older adults, new friendships are always in the offing, thanks to the female biological tendency toward 'an unfailing authenticity, candid self-awareness, and the ability to focus on the needs and interests of others over ourselves.' Degges-White and Borzumato-Gainey’s authorial collaboration has produced a resource as valuable, perhaps, as a friend." - Booklist

"Gleaning from their own experiences with friends, families, and responsibilities, and supported by hundreds of interviews, Degges-White and Borzumato-Gainey attempt to make sense of female relationships, from why we need them to how to make them. Highlighting the murky differences between female and male friendships, this work is clearly written by women for women. The book tracks and analyzes female friendships from early childhood to late life, tackling milestones like coupling, marriage, and childbirth. Parallel features of female friendships arise at every age, from the obvious (forming friendships based on common interest) to more crucial elements of trust, honesty, and reciprocity. Relatable tales and easy-to-implement recommendations will equip female readers with the confidence to form new, lasting friendships and the language with which to discuss their current ones. In the end, making friends for women of any age, at any stage in life, will seem less daunting and more inviting than ever." - Publishers Weekly

"This readable, research-based study is both an academic resource and a self-help book for women wanting to deepen friendships or broaden their friendship circles. The authors, who are both counselors and scholars, review the concept of friendship from various viewpoints: individual psychology, social psychology, and individual well-being and personal development. The book's 20 chapters (organized into five sections) examine friendship across the life span, from early childhood to old age, and across life conditions (single, married, divorced, parenting, career, and so on). Not included in the developmental discussion are issues of race and religion across friends; such analysis would have made the book richer than it already is. The first section reviews human social connection, offering some historical background and commenting on social media in friendships; the second considers friendship from a developmental perspective. The last three sections offer self-help materials: how to analyze oneself as a friend, understand one's friendship landscape, and build and sustain friendships over time. Including chapter references, this book is useful in both academic and personal settings—including by psychotherapists as bibliotherapy." - CHOICE

"“Degges-White and Borzumato-Gainey have interviewed hundreds of women from toddlers to the elderly and have compiled their stories to benefit our relationships” “Learn how to find new friends and enhance the relationships with your current ones” “There is a cultural and biological drive in women that steer us toward deep friendships and this book delves into those depths”" - Fort Wayne's Glo