This warm, wise exploration of female friendship from the best-selling author of You Just Don't Understand will help women lean in to these powerful relationships.

Best friend, old friend, good friend, BFF, college roommate, neighbor, workplace confidante: women's friendships are lifelines in times of trouble and support systems for daily life. A friend can be like a sister, daughter, mother, mentor, therapist, or confessor - or she can be all of these at once. She's seen you at your worst and celebrates you at your best. Figuring out what it means to be friends is, in the end, no less than figuring out how we connect to other people.

In this illuminating and validating new book, New York Times best-selling author Deborah Tannen deconstructs the ways women friends talk and how those ways can bring friends closer or pull them apart. From casual chatting to intimate confiding, from talking about problems to telling what you had for dinner, Tannen uncovers the patterns of communication and miscommunication that affect friendships at different points in our lives. She shows how even the best of friends - with the best intentions - can say the wrong thing, and how words can repair the damage done by words. Through Tannen's signature insight, humor, and ability to present pitch-perfect real-life dialogue, listeners will hear themselves and their friendships in this book. The book explains:

• The power of women friends who show empathy, give advice - or just listen
• How women use talk to connect to friends - and to subtly compete
• How fear of being left out and fear of getting kicked out can haunt women's friendships
• How social media is reshaping communication and relationships

Drawing on interviews with 80 women of diverse backgrounds, ranging in age from 9 to 97, You're the Only One I Can Tell gets to the heart of women's friendships - how they work or fail, how they help or hurt, and how we can make them better.