Tag: advice
Can a friendship overcome a terrible betrayal?
Whether a friendship can survive after a betrayal depends on whether the friend who was betrayed is able to forgive.
Rx for Loneliness: Get out of the house!
This week, on the NBC Universal website, Life Goes Strong, I wrote a post about the increasing sense of loneliness and alienation that many women begin to feel at midlife. I think the single most important thing you can do to best reverse these feelings is this: Make it your business to get out of [...]
No friends: Don’t tell me to join a group
Some people are joiners and others aren’t. There are other ways to meet new people—but you need to discover how and it may take more time and effort. QUESTION Hi Irene, I am a forty-something woman, no kids. I used to have friends, a life, and a career. Then we moved to a rural area for [...]
From the Friendship Forums – On Learning from Past Mistakes
I’ve had years of unsuccessful female relationships. I’m 46 years old now and have no true friends anymore. I’ve really looked at myself and my former friends to learn from past mistakes. My personal opinion is that many, not all, of the mistakes my friends and I made are more typical of women than men. [...]
Top ten friendship posts in 2011: The Friendship Doctor reflects on friendship and blogging
Tis the season for wrap-ups and top ten lists. Friendship expert Dr. Irene S. Levine discusses her blog, its visitors, and their friendship concerns. Since January, I’ve posted 202 times on this blog — that’s about four times a week — usually early in the morning or late at night. That’s a lot of time to spend in [...]
Mean girls at Montessori Preschool
Mother worries about her 5-year-old’s mean friends QUESTION Hi, My daughter will be five years old. She is happy, well-mannered, loving, and pretty. She has attended a Montessori school since she was 16 months old and made two friends. The three girls were always together, or talking about each other. By the end [...]
POLL – Friendship Advice: Whom do you trust?
Giving friendship advice is challenging. Even with experience and training, I only hear one side of a story, limited by what someone chooses to tell me or not tell me, which is filtered by that person’s experience of the problem. The litmus test of the value of friendship advice—or any advice for that matter—is [...]
Keeping peace with the daughter-in-law from hell
The relationship between mothers-in-laws and daughter-in-laws can be tricky.
Take the Real Simple Quiz – What kind of friend are you?
What Kind of Friend Are You? by Annie Marie O’Conner July 2011 Are you the one pals call when they need advice…or when they need a plus-one for a cocktail party? This quiz isn’t scientific but it sure is fun and you may even learn something about your friendship style. Click here to [...]
Trouble making close friends?
A reader asks whether her problem is related to culture or personality— QUESTION Dear Irene, I have only had one (true) female friend in my life. She has been my childhood friend since I was ten and we’ve been friends ever since. I grew up in Lebanon and then moved to the US to [...]
