Fighting for Our Friendships: The Ultimate Handbook to Navigating Conflict in Female Friendships

Why are women’s friendships so deep yet so fragile? Friendship coach and educator Danielle Bayard Jackson unpacks the latest research about women’s cooperation and communication, while sharing practical strategies to preserve and strengthen these relationships.
Fighting for Our Friendships is one part textbook, one part handbook. Readers will not only learn what the latest research has to say about the mechanics of women’s friendships, but they’ll walk away with real-life solutions for the most common conflicts that arise in their platonic relationships.

Using a combination of psychology, science, narrative, and a few of the author’s signature scripts and out-of-the-box exercises, readers will learn:

• The three ＂affinities＂ that bring women together (and tear them apart)
• Scripts to navigate nine of the most challenging ＂friend types＂ (and how to know which one you are)
• The covert strategies women use to hurt each other (and how to avoid them)
• How to have a hard conversation with a friend (without losing the friendship)
• Surprising ways that women’s people-pleasing delays platonic intimacy (and how to stop it)
• How to know if a friendship is worth saving (and what to do to recover)
• How to make (and deepen!) connections with other women

In a time when we are often encouraged to opt out of friendships at any sign of friction, Danielle Bayard Jackson is showing us how to opt in.

Danielle Bayard Jackson is a former high school teacher turned friendship coach who speaks nationally on the subject of female friendship. Her work and insight has been featured in such outlets as NBC News, Psychology Today, HuffPost and Shondaland. Danielle has spoken for the NFL, served as a keynote for international sororities, and has appeared on some of Apple Podcasts top-ranking shows. Before she began coaching women across the country, Danielle worked as a high school teacher for six years. She also spent two years as an academic department chair in the eighth largest county in the United States. She now uses her education background to deliver practical, research-based strategies for women who are looking for ways to create and maintain better platonic relationships. Her ability to speak to women in various life stages has contributed to the growing popularity of her business, Friend Forwardand podcast of the same name. She lives in Florida with her husband and two young children.