Lisa A. Phillips, FIRST LOVE: Guiding Teens Through Relationships and Heartbreak
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[0:44]Lisa A. Phillips is the author of First Love, Guiding Teens Through Relationships and
[0:49]Heartbreak.
[0:50]Lisa has written about relationships, mental health, and teens for the New York Times, the
[0:54]Washington Post, long-read psychology today, cosmopolitan salon and other outlets.
[0:58]She teaches journalism and the popular Love and Heartbreak Seminar at the State University
[1:02]of New York at Newbouts.
[1:04]She's published two previous books, unrequited, The Thinking Woman's Guide to Romantic Obsession,
[1:09]and Public Radio Behind the Voices.
[1:11]She began her journalism career and public radio, working for radio stations in the Midwest
[1:15]and Northeast for more than a decade.
[1:17]Lisa now lives in New York's Hudson Valley.
[1:20]Welcome, Lisa.
[1:21]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Butch to talk about First Love, Guiding Teens Through
[1:26]Relationships and Heartbreak.
[1:27]Congratulations.
[1:28]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:30]It's my pleasure.
[1:32]As a mom of two almost 18-year-olds and an 11-10-year-old, I am in this world, obviously,
[1:40]like so many friends of mine, and this is a topic that a lot of us talk about.
[1:43]How do we help our kids through these things?
[1:46]Where is the guidebook?
[1:47]How do we do it?
[1:48]And how much it kind of breaks our own hearts whenever anything happens to a child of ours
[1:53]and brings back our own memories, all of which you write about in this book, about
[1:57]your own story and everything.
[1:58]Tell listeners a little bit about your book and further more like how we can help our kids
[2:04]better through this life stage where we can no longer put child safety things around
[2:11]the table and protect them.
[2:12]It's just, they're out there.
[2:14]Yeah, that's a great way of putting it.
[2:16]They are out there.
[2:17]What do we do?
[2:18]So just to give an overview of what the book is, first of all, is a book that chronicles
[2:24]the challenges that teens face as they navigate the world of dating situationships,
[2:32]crushes, breakups, and all other forms of the joy and the devastation of first romantic
[2:38]experiences.
[2:40]And it also chronicles the challenges parents face both internally as human beings and also
[2:46]as parents doing parenting things and trying to be there to support their kids during
[2:51]this time.
[2:52]And these challenges are really unique.
[2:55]So to respond to the question of how we can help our kids, there's tons to say about
[3:03]that in the book and we can go over a lot of that in this conversation.
[3:07]But I would say the first and biggest step that I would want to emphasize is to not be afraid
[3:14]of talking about relationships with teens.
[3:19]I think we are all very primed to know we need to have the sex conversation and the
[3:25]multiple conversations about sexuality, sex, consent, all that stuff, safety.
[3:31]But we're not as primed to talk about the emotional dimensions of relationships.
[3:36]And this can really scare parents because we remember how hard it was when we were teens.
[3:41]And teens often were really pushed back and say that this is a private matter.
[3:47]But there really are a lot of ways from the time children are young through the teen
[3:51]years into young adulthood and beyond that we can keep a conversation going with our
[3:57]children about the emotional dimensions of relationships.
[4:02]So you tell us the story through your own lens, which I appreciate.
[4:06]You talk about your daughter who at the beginning of the book was in a relationship
[4:10]with a neighbor's boy and then sadly by the end it's had her heart broken and I felt so
[4:14]bad.
[4:15]At the beginning she was so done and at the end she was saying, you know, all those plans
[4:21]that we never get to live.
[4:23]And you called it, you know, like relationship grief which it absolutely is, you know, trying
[4:28]to wrap your mind around a future that you thought was happening and that suddenly not
[4:32]only were you not with this person, but like your whole life the way you saw it is gone.
[4:37]And this is something that can happen by the way to grownups obviously as well.
[4:40]This is not just a kid thing.
[4:42]How do we handle that particular piece of heartbreak right that your daughter went through
[4:49]that we have probably all gone through at one point or another?
[4:52]I think first we need to be in touch with the paradox that you point out that I point
[4:57]out in my book, which is that even though every 13, 14, 19 year old knows that the relationship
[5:05]they're having now is unlikely to be a forever relationship happens sometimes but really
[5:10]rarely.
[5:11]Even though they know that their heart, their brain, their body, they don't know that.
[5:17]And so when a relationship ends it is a really profound experience of grief for some
[5:23]teens.
[5:24]It's the first experience of real loss that they have in their lives.
[5:29]And so it hits really hard.
[5:32]So as parents and as anybody who has a teen in their lives, we need to avoid the tendency
[5:39]to make it small, which we all want to do because it's like that thing we do with really
[5:45]little kids.
[5:46]They fall, they have a little bruise on their knee, we want to encourage the resilience.
[5:51]Get up, keep playing, you know, it's not that bad.
[5:54]And that really helps at that age.
[5:56]But with this kind of grief, the validation piece is really, really important.
[6:01]They need to know that they are undergoing really a primal experience.
[6:05]We are wired to react strongly when we're rejected.
[6:09]It means being cast away from the ancient fire circle.
[6:12]It means all kinds of things.
[6:14]It means losing that concentrated form of resources and attention that a partner does provide
[6:20]really at any age, even if it seems like a starter relationship.
[6:25]This person had been devoted to you.
[6:26]Now they're not.
[6:27]It's a big, big deal.
[6:30]And so the validation is really huge because it sends the message that our hearts need care
[6:37]when we go through these really rough times.
[6:40]And then beyond that, there are some other sort of more concrete strategies.
[6:44]There are a number of them in the book.
[6:46]The one that I often like to put forth is that when you're helping a child through this
[6:54]grief, you want to keep in mind that there's like the big grief.
[6:57]And then often as they're dealing with a preoccupation and the weight of the big grief,
[7:03]that parents can be really good at helping their children solve the small problems.
[7:09]How do I get my sweatshirt back from my ex's house?
[7:12]How do I change my after school work shift to avoid this person for a time?
[7:17]How do I do with the fact that this person is in math class with me?
[7:21]Like really concrete things that may seem small, but they help bring a teen back to their
[7:28]power over the situation, some degree of agency and efficacy, some degree of I can move forward
[7:34]in my life.
[7:36]That can be very powerful.
[7:38]What do you do though?
[7:39]I mean, that's the hardest part about these years, you know, not just teens, but younger
[7:44]kids with crushes, but you also talk about in the book.
[7:46]And by the way, I did not know the origin of the word crush.
[7:49]I found that so interesting.
[7:51]Can you explain that?
[7:52]Oh, it's so delightful.
[7:54]This was a term that came up in the 19th century to describe what happens at balls and other
[8:02]social events where you go.
[8:04]And there's going to be a lot of people and it's going to be a crowded place.
[8:08]And no matter what social worries there are around touch at that time, presumably between
[8:13]the sexes, that, okay, maybe you're going to brush up against this person you want to
[8:18]attract in this socially-sanctioned way, this crowded ballroom.
[8:24]So I think this translates so perfectly to what we hope for in a crush when we have crushes
[8:30]today.
[8:31]Yeah.
[8:32]Yeah.
[8:33]I just always assumed it was because you're going to get crushed yourself, but I do know
[8:37]we asked for something physical.
[8:39]And we can still assume that so many parents would say things to me like, okay, my child
[8:46]finally confessed his admiration to his crush.
[8:50]And she said, no, and he was crushed.
[8:52]And I was crushed.
[8:53]And it means that feeling of like crush, flatten, devastated.
[8:57]Are there, you know, I was just asking about, you know, the fact that when we are grown
[9:02]ups and we have hearts broken or whatever, you might never see that person again, right?
[9:08]That could be the end of it.
[9:09]But in, for young kids, they are often in math class or whatever you, as you said, with
[9:14]the people having to get like almost retriggered over and over and over again, like constantly
[9:19]and they don't have the power to just get out of the situation, you know, it's not like
[9:24]they can take another train and avoid the person that they see, you know, it's, they're
[9:28]sort of stuck.
[9:29]So I love that you say we should give them specific help with situations like that.
[9:34]But what is something helpful aside from, you know, look the other way.
[9:38]I mean, what can you do in the source of your pain is like sitting right in front of
[9:42]you.
[9:43]And it's even more than that.
[9:44]This is a generation marinating in social media.
[9:48]That's a big subject of conversation with parents.
[9:51]And in our culture, we're finally reckoning with how intense this is with the whole movement
[9:57]toward banning phones and social media.
[10:00]in schools. And I think that this is the biggest thing that we have to acknowledge is that
[10:06]math class is 24-7 when it comes to exposure to a crush that doesn't require your feelings
[10:14]or an X. And this is really, really difficult because the social media extends. You come home,
[10:22]you've got it on your phone at any point. You can see that person who's rejected you,
[10:28]wriggling in a TikTok or, you know, bathing in golden hour light on Instagram. And this is a very
[10:34]difficult way to come of age and to start a romantic life. So I think that along with all the
[10:42]conversations about limits on social media at school, we can try very hard because it's going to be
[10:49]difficult to provide the insight and the guidance that young people need, whether or not they
[10:58]follow it again is this whole, you know, whole other difficult thing to think about like, all right,
[11:04]this person has rejected you, getting off, breaking up with them over social media is a really
[11:10]important step. And young people will push back because it feels like it admission of vulnerability
[11:15]unfollow someone on Instagram and all the other apps. But one thing that I've found is really
[11:21]effective with my students. I teach a college course called Love and Heartbreak is to point out
[11:26]to them that what happens on the Instagram feed where they're constantly exposed to images of an
[11:34]X or someone who's disappointed them is exactly what brain scan research does to trigger feelings of
[11:42]grief in people who have recently been rejected by someone they love. Literally, this is what
[11:48]they do. They put them in the brain scan machine and they show them picture after picture of their
[11:54]X. And when I teach the brain scan study in my classroom, I'll say, what does this remind you of?
[12:02]And they look at me like, what do you mean? I've never been in a brain scan machine or watch the
[12:06]brain scan laboratory do its thing. And then I start miming scrolling through their phones.
[12:12]And then they get the connection. It's like, this is this is what they do. They are the subjects
[12:18]in brain scan imagery more or less doing the things that the researchers do to make the rejected
[12:24]people cry and heart pound and grief and all these reactions. So I think that even if the child
[12:34]is wavering about whether to break up with the person who's rejected them over social media,
[12:40]you're giving them this really important data about when you jump on your phone and you're trying
[12:45]to get over this person being on your phone and being exposed to the person's photos and other
[12:51]reminders of their presence is going to send you backwards. And so it's part of that information
[12:58]base. It's part of the way learning about love and heartbreak. That is a powerful experience for
[13:03]young people, parents and other caring adults can be the conduit to say, do you really want to be
[13:09]doing this to yourselves? Interesting. Yeah. In the book, you recommend that people stop following
[13:17]and block their exes so that they're not re-chiggered, which I found interesting because that's
[13:21]always a question, right? Keep following, don't follow. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big question. It's a very
[13:26]hard thing for young people to do. But as part of this conversation about how phones are bad for
[13:32]learning, we can also infuse it with how phones are really bad for breakups. You also have a
[13:38]part towards the end about the sort of obsession, right? This thinking where you can almost
[13:44]be addicted. I'm trying to see if I can find the section. I know. I kept arguing all these parts
[13:49]about you and David, your relationship, which I was like, I was like, oh my gosh, I hope they
[13:55]reunite and then I won't give anything away. But anyway, as you know, you wrote about how you can
[14:02]be almost addicted and obsessive, almost with your relationship because you can fall so hard.
[14:08]And then you have withdrawal, like it's essentially a form of withdrawal when you break up.
[14:13]Can you talk more about that? Sure. It truly is one of the most influential researchers and
[14:18]loved woman named Helen Fisher who died a few years ago. She was brilliant and she was part of
[14:25]the team that did this brain scan research. She pointed out that and her research shows that romantic
[14:31]love is essentially a drive like hunger and thirst and all these things. Of course, we don't
[14:37]need romantic love in that same fundamental way that we need to take a drink of water.
[14:42]But there is a lot in our physical responses that guide us toward romantic love. A lot of those
[14:50]obsessive feelings are indeed related to addiction and the same areas in the brain are triggered
[14:57]as are triggered in an addiction to cocaine or alcohol or other substances, which is a scary thing
[15:02]to think about. But it's a great addiction when it's going well and you crave the person you get
[15:08]to see them and it's a really tough addiction when it's not and you're rejected. So knowing this
[15:15]and talking to young people about this reality of romantic love, give me a little risky because
[15:21]they tend to be like, oh, I want to get addicted and it means they'll throw the whole thing out,
[15:26]like no romantic love. I only want, you know, friendship. That is a big thing that I hear a lot
[15:31]from young people. But when romantic love does come into their lives, knowing that this is part
[15:39]of it can help you guide the young people in your lives to problem solve around it. So for example,
[15:48]when you're guiding a young person through a heartbreak, whatever way they let you into this,
[15:53]it's very important to help that young person get what I call brain breaks where they're going
[16:00]to be super obsessed with a person who rejected them, the crush that didn't respond. And so it's
[16:06]important for them to be doing other things than dwelling on it. So things like if the young
[16:13]person in your life is going through a romantic disappointment to just flip a few dollars in their
[16:18]hands and be like, go to the movies with a friend, you know, go for a hike, make sure you don't
[16:24]talk about this the whole time in the hike. You need to be talking about other things. It's really,
[16:29]really important because the more you're ruminating, rumination breeds more rumination. And that's
[16:35]also another bit of gem of wisdom for parents, which is if you're digging in with the teen in your
[16:42]life, being like, oh, what a jerk. What did he do today? What'd she do after school at the diner
[16:48]or wherever your kids hang out if they are hanging out? What'd they do on social media?
[16:54]That is a form of like you're stirring up that pot of obsessiveness and rumination.
[16:59]And that is very rough because you think you're helping, but in fact, you are stirring things up
[17:06]even more and keeping the young person mired in that state of addiction and rumination where
[17:12]be a lot healthier to be like, hey, let's go to Sephora and try and make up or let's, you know,
[17:18]go do that thing you've been wanting to do. I have a daughter, so I always think in daughter ways,
[17:22]but a thing that a son may want to do and just going for the distraction, which really does help
[17:29]them because it gives them a breather from that constant influx of feelings and yearning and longing
[17:35]and addictive tendencies. I wonder if, and maybe kids don't feel like writing, but when I
[17:43]met with a trauma therapist, or I watched her give a whole talk, Meghan Ridden Jarvis, who deals with
[17:49]grief, right? And her whole thing was the, every time you tell a story about what's happened,
[17:56]you're re-traumatizing yourself, right? If you talk about LA fires, for instance, over and over,
[18:01]each time your brain is reliving it as if you're living at the first time. So if you can write it
[18:06]down, your brain feels like, and tell me if this is science that you already know, obviously you
[18:11]probably do. But, you know, if you could just get it on paper, your brain doesn't feel like they
[18:14]need to hold onto it so tightly and then replay it all the time. So sometimes like the act of
[18:19]writing it down can be really helpful. I really like that. And what that links to in my research
[18:26]is this whole school of people who research breakups and recovering self-concept after a breakup.
[18:33]And what these researchers found that if we can find a way to make meaning from an experience,
[18:39]to say, my fell in love, I got hurt, and I used it to figure out more about what I want in life,
[18:47]more about what I want in a partner, more about what I want and how to be treated. If it's
[18:52]an experience of learning and growth, if that's the way we can tell the story. And in this case,
[18:58]I love the inside of writing the story. I think that's a beautiful way to do it. That's been
[19:02]a big part of my own writing life. I think that what the research shows is that people get over
[19:08]breakups faster when they do that as opposed to when they just stop and go, oh, this means I'm a
[19:14]terrible person. I'm not worthy of love. Or even if they go, oh, I have no idea why this happened.
[19:21]It was like a thunderbolt out of the blue. Those two ways of thinking about breakups are not
[19:26]as helpful for recovery, but making meaning out of it, what researchers call redemption story is.
[19:33]Very interesting. I love that. Yeah, I love that too. How does your daughter feel about your
[19:38]writing about her in this book? Oh, that's a wonderful question. So I have always informed my daughter
[19:46]and asked for her permission about what I do in my writing for the whole time that I've
[19:52]been processing this material of my own reaction to her starting to date and so forth. I've
[19:56]let her know. Okay, I'm writing about this. And I've
[20:00]who has offered her the opportunity to read it.
[20:02]She's preferring, she's 20 now,
[20:04]she's preferring not to read it,
[20:06]but what I did was I talked her through all the ways
[20:10]that I talked about her in this book.
[20:12]And I was very careful to write about her relationships
[20:17]in a way that used them to raise broader themes
[20:21]as opposed to writing memoiristically
[20:25]about the nitty gritty details
[20:26]of every single relationship and thing.
[20:29]I didn't want the boys she dated
[20:32]to get her to feel exposed in any way.
[20:34]And I certainly didn't want her to feel her to expose it
[20:37]in any way.
[20:38]And she has been fine with it.
[20:40]And in fact, I do sense now that she's a junior in college
[20:44]that she's pretty proud of what I'm doing.
[20:47]She's impressed that the attention the book has gotten
[20:49]and I'll add one more thing,
[20:51]which is she's really into this subject matter too.
[20:54]She is a trained peer consent educator at her college.
[20:58]She wants to be a couples therapist.
[21:00]So we actually kind of geek out on this stuff together
[21:03]when we get a chance and we share books.
[21:05]And I love that part of our relationship
[21:07]and that's been a real joy.
[21:09]That's so nice.
[21:10]My son forwarded me some Instagram thing that's like,
[21:14]you know, I'm so proud of my mom.
[21:16]I hope she knows that I was like,
[21:18]that's so nice and I'm like crying.
[21:20]Anyway, it's so nice when our kids can grow up
[21:22]and like see what we do and be a fan.
[21:25]It's just so nice.
[21:26]It feels like a distinct developmental stage.
[21:29]Some kids get to it sooner than others,
[21:31]but this is the conversation that I've been having
[21:33]with my empty-ness friends.
[21:35]It's like, oh, our kids are giving us some advice
[21:37]and they're asking how we are
[21:40]and they're showing care in a new way.
[21:42]And I've been trying to look for small ways
[21:45]to ask her for care because I've got an aging mother
[21:49]and our dynamic is shifting that way.
[21:51]I'm trying to offer and provide more care to her.
[21:54]So, you know, it is beautiful when kids do that.
[21:58]So to simplify a couple really helpful things
[22:02]that we as parents can do that can help our kids
[22:04]and this conversation is then gonna help a whole group
[22:07]of people who don't even know we're talking about them
[22:09]is not letting kids or ruminate
[22:12]and sort of listening maybe once, empathizing
[22:15]and then like trying to put the conversations aside
[22:19]and distract and get them to engage in other things
[22:23]but validate all of their feelings at the same time,
[22:25]acknowledging how hard it is.
[22:27]Does that sound about right?
[22:29]I provide a little bit of a clarification.
[22:31]I don't think there are sort of rules
[22:33]about how many times to listen.
[22:35]It's more art than science.
[22:37]But I think we all have the ability to know it
[22:40]when we see it to get when you really are hearing the same,
[22:45]you've probably been in this experience either
[22:47]with your kids or with other people in your life
[22:49]where they're kind of going through the same story
[22:52]again and again.
[22:53]It's like this real feeling of circling back, circling back
[22:57]and not advancing it forward
[22:59]because we don't wanna disrupt the meaning-making aspect
[23:04]of the experience and they're not necessarily gonna have
[23:07]a lot of meaning-making tools on day one
[23:09]but they might on day 60.
[23:12]So we wanna be able to listen in that way
[23:14]but if we sense again that circular thing
[23:17]where they're stuck in the same way of talking about,
[23:20]it's kind of time to be like, hey, let's figure out
[23:23]what else we can do.
[23:24]And sometimes it's very simple.
[23:26]Sometimes it's like, hey,
[23:28]let's go outside for five minutes.
[23:30]Think about a hot shower.
[23:31]Temperature changes, small sensual pleasures
[23:35]like smelling a new scent, again being outdoors
[23:39]to smell the spring, we're now in spring.
[23:42]Things like that can really make a difference amazingly.
[23:46]Excellent.
[23:47]Well, I think this is such a helpful book.
[23:50]I loved the personal narrative in it as well.
[23:53]I love the notion of maybe the situations you found yourself
[23:58]in as a team that we're upsetting
[24:00]and the relationships, how maybe you didn't know
[24:04]what was going on with the other person.
[24:06]I felt like that was really regulatory
[24:08]with your own relationship that you can think
[24:10]that the other person, you never know what's going on.
[24:13]I mean, the scent's so obvious, right?
[24:15]But like with your relationship,
[24:16]like you didn't know all the hardships
[24:19]that were going on in like your ex's life
[24:21]and maybe what he was going through
[24:22]and how that fit in and maybe he just wasn't mature enough.
[24:25]And anyway, you can look back and have that lens,
[24:29]but it's so important to know that for kids,
[24:33]for grown-ups, like you just don't know,
[24:35]it's not always about you.
[24:38]It can be about what's going on in something else related
[24:41]to them that doesn't mean that you or your child
[24:45]has done anything wrong.
[24:47]Exactly.
[24:48]There's a wonderful researcher at Sony Brook University,
[24:51]named Joanne D'Avila, who has a relationship workshop
[24:54]that I've trained on and I frequently give.
[24:57]And she frames a breakup as when one person doesn't want
[25:01]what someone else has to offer.
[25:04]And what that does is it acknowledges
[25:07]that there's a whole world of you,
[25:09]a whole world of the other person.
[25:11]And that ultimately, relationships are reciprocal.
[25:16]And when the other person doesn't want
[25:19]or can't want for whatever is going on in that person's life,
[25:23]what you have to offer, there is no relationship.
[25:27]And this reframing, I find young people great with great relief
[25:31]because they often feel that relationships
[25:35]are either tribunal on the other person,
[25:37]the other person's worthless and mean and cold and cruel
[25:41]or a judgment on themselves, I am not worthy.
[25:45]And so it kind of releases that whole framework.
[25:48]And sure, you maybe you're dating an awful person,
[25:51]maybe you're an awful person, you're not going to be able necessarily
[25:55]to make those judgment calls all the time
[25:57]because you won't be able to know what's going on in their lives.
[25:59]The more important thing is like no matter who they are
[26:02]or what they are, they can't accept this thing that you're offering,
[26:06]which is really hard to accept, but that's what it is.
[26:10]Love it.
[26:11]Well, Lisa, thank you so much.
[26:13]First, love, guiding teens through relationships and heartbreak.
[26:17]Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
[26:20]And I wish I could take your class.
[26:21]Thank you.
[26:22]Oh, thank you so much for having me.
[26:25]Thanks for coming on.
[26:27]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi.
[26:29]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[26:32]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram
[26:36]at Zibi Owens, and spread the word.
[26:39]Thanks so much.
[26:40]Go and buy the books.