The Girlfriend's Guide Book by Marian Jordan

The Girlfriend’s Guidebook

Best-selling author explores the most complicated relationship of all: the female friendship

HOUSTON – There are ample books for women on dating, career, marriage and motherhood, but few thoughtful writings about the everyday handling of female friendships. Interesting, considering numerous studies show that female friendships are an important part of a healthy lifestyle. In fact, bonding between females has been shown to reduce stress, lower blood pressure and even fuel creativity.

How then, can something so good for us, be so utterly complicated? While they are healthy, female friendships are also deeply complex, often involving issues like control and jealousy.

Inspired by the highs and lows of a backpacking trip across Europe with four gal pals, Marian Jordan’s The Girlfriends Guidebook; Navigating Female Friendships (B&H, Oct. 15, 2011) charts a winning pathway through “jealousy, competition, control, anger, manipulation, and resentment—just to name a few less than cuddly aspects of our personalities.”

“When it comes to friendships, women often revisit feelings of insecurity and jealousy they haven’t felt since the growing pains of high school,” says Jordan. “We have thoughts such as ‘What am I supposed to do when my friend is giving me the silent treatment and I don’t know why?’ and ‘How am I supposed to react when it feels like middle school, and I’m the girl not picked to sit at the lunch table?’”

Informed by her faith, Jordan encourages deeper friendships built on Christ-like honesty and love, emphasizing the development of such qualities as loyalty, trustworthiness, compassion and forgiveness. Jordan also makes it clear that The Girlfriends Guidebook should be read first with one’s self in mind, recognizing that when we are freed from our own emotional baggage we will really be able to enjoy the journey!

Jordan can discuss:

• Men vs. women: Why female friendships are more complicated
• What a healthy, loving female friendship feels like
• Details of the backpacking trip that inspired The Girlfriends Guidebook

MARIAN JORDAN is the founder of Redeemed Girl Ministries, showing girls of all ages how to apply God's truth and promises to their individual circumstances. The author of Sex and the City Uncovered, Radiant and Wilderness Skills for Women, Jordan completed her master's degree at Southwestern Seminary. She speaks twice monthly to single adults, high school students and women at Second Baptist Church (45,000 members) in Houston, Texas where she lives and also travels the country in association with Campus Crusade for Christ.

Learn more at www.redeemedgirl.org and www.marianjordan.com.