Author, journalist and associate professor at SUNY New Paltz, Lisa Phillips released her third book, “First Love: Guiding Teens through Relationships and Heartbreak” on Feb. 4.
Phillips is a published journalist, with articles on psychology, mental health and love published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Longreads, Psychology Today, Cosmopolitan, Salon and other outlets. “First Love” is Phillips’ third book, with her first, “Public Radio: Behind the Voices” came out in 2006 and her second, “Unrequited: The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Romantic Obsession” was released in 2015.
At SUNY New Paltz, Phillips teaches a seminar course called “Love and Heartbreak” every other year. “At first I saw it as, I’ll just take all the stuff I did for my book and teach them about it,” she said. “But then I started getting a lot of input from my students about what they wanted. They were like, ‘I want to know more about how to do this.’ I learn just as much from the students and where they’re at, and I always look forward to the next crew of students, because they keep giving me stuff to take into consideration.”
The book, featured on Oprah’s Book Club, “chronicles the challenges today’s adolescents face as they navigate experiences of crushes, dating and breakups — and the challenges adults face as they strive to provide guidance and support,” according to Phillips’ website.
“With First Love, Lisa Phillips has written an exceptionally sophisticated, nuanced meditation on the complexity of young romance in the age of social media, smartphones, social isolation, gender fluidity, #MeToo, widely accessible porn, rising levels of depression — you name it … Phillips provides a new vocabulary and navigational tools for this bewildering new terrain and what a service that is; what an eye-opener her work is to read,” Jennifer Senior, winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize and New York Times Bestselling author, said in her review of the book.
In the book, Phillips discusses crushes, LGBTQ+ relationships, consent, break ups, mental health and communication issues, with each topic getting its own dedicated chapter. Interviews from teens from different backgrounds, ages, religions and sexual identities are provided as anecdotes for common problems in relationships.
One of Phillips’ main catalysts for writing this book was her own experience when her daughter began dating, which is the anecdote she begins her book with. “How am I doing these things that I’m so inspired by, in the stories of young people and parents, how am I showing up in my own relationship? It just made me more determined to keep writing and speaking in a way that keeps the conversation going.”
“I think that anything that gets people thinking and talking about love is helpful, and it has been gratifying. I made sure to have young readers, mainly college age, and to get the ways in which it helped move them more deeply into seeing their world from the outside,” Phillips says.
One of the points Phillips drives home in her book is how crushes are commonly demeaned, while love is put on a pedestal for teens. “First experiences of all kinds tend to stay with us. And then I think it is when it comes to love and romantic feelings and crushes are so huge, because they change the dimensions of our existence truly. Suddenly we’re thinking about time in a different way. We’re thinking about ourselves in a different way.” Phillips says.
Phillips discussed the new age of social media and the impact of that on teens’ mental health in her book as well. “When I was in high school, and I was into someone, I would go home and I wouldn’t see them. But that’s really different from now. Maybe this person will like my photo, and will respond to my text. So the triggers, the stimulation of the input of a crush or any romantic experience is 24/7. There’s no boundaries. You can’t shut it off, and that is so hard.”
According to Phillips, one of the biggest surprises she had while working on her book was exactly how entwined teens’ mental health is to their love lives. “I think at first I was really taken aback with how many stories entailed serious mental health challenges, where I kept thinking, I need to change how I’m reporting and how I’m finding sources,” she said.
“In the teen years, relationships cause challenges to mental health because of the ways these experiences are so intense. Even if you’re in a reciprocated, mutual relationship, you may not be used to the fact that if the person doesn’t pay a certain kind of attention to you on a given day, it could kind of rock your whole mood for that day,” she continued.
Phillips hosted a book talk on Feb. 5 in the Honors Center with Noor Tagouri, a fellow journalist. Attendees were offered signed copies of the book, and by the end of the night all of them had sold. “I’m thinking of how great it was to talk about this book at SUNY New Paltz,” said Phillips. “I mean, that was really a beautiful evening. It was a full house at the Honors Center, and just the conversation after that, peers asking peers, faculty members, colleagues and then I had the college students in the room asking questions. It was wonderful.”
“First Love: Guiding Teens through Relationships and Heartbreak” is available on BookShop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google Play. You can visit Phillips’ website at https://www.lisaamyphillips.com/.