Parenting Teens Through Love & Heartbreak: What we do wrong and what helps

0:00Hello and welcome to Teenagers Untangled, the audio hug for everyone supporting anyone going through the tween and teen years. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now we've all been in love at some point and we've experienced heartbreak. That first crush, the intense emotion can continue to have a profound impact on us for the rest of our lives. And now we're supporting our kids going through adolescence, the whole thing can feel, I don't know, massively disorientating and bring up all of those old

0:32emotions and experiences. I created a previous episode in which my daughter openly discussed her experience and what worked in supporting her. And it felt textually different to the way that it was for me. Then I saw professor and award-winning journalist Lisa Phillips's newest book, First Love, Guiding Teens Through Relationships and Heartbreak. And I knew it was one for us. In it, she chronicles the challenges kids face today as they navigate crushes, dating and breakups and the challenges we face in trying to provide guidance and support. Welcome to the show,

1:06Lisa. Thank you so much for having me. When your daughter first fell in love, you describe being a mess. What surprised you most about your own emotional reaction? Well, I think I was surprised that I was a mess because I thought I'd be cool with this, right? You know, I had been writing about mental health and relationships for a long time. It was a subject of study. I'd been thinking about it ever since she was quite small and sparking conversations with her about Disney movies and representations of love and really enjoying

1:37that part of the process. So I thought I was prepared. And I was really struck at the intensity of my emotions when she started to date. Like many parents, it felt too soon, even though she was 13 and it was perfectly normal. And I just felt so vigilant and so afraid for her so far beyond what was actually happening in the relationship. And so I thought, I need to listen to this because if I don't, I'm going to be lost in dealing with these experiences with her. So that was the beginning

2:14of the journey of the book. And you know, it's funny, isn't it? Because I think so much of parenting adolescence feels like that. It's sort of, oh wait, we're here and we're not quite ready. Even with someone like you who's so prepared, it's catch up so much of the time. And there's data showing a spike in parental distress during the teen years. And I think a lot of parents don't expect that. What do you think is happening psychologically for adults at this stage?

2:40Well, a lot. You know, there's information in the research that parents go through a lot of feelings, A, when their kids become teenagers, and B, when their kids start to date. And dating, a research study from the 90s showed, strikes a particular chord. Parents will feel regret, they will revisit past choices. In some cases, they'll be reflecting on their marriage or current partnership or past relationships in a different way. It stirs up a lot. There's even this one data

3:15point that I love to share because it's so wild, which is that sometimes fathers feel a boost in self-esteem at watching their son's date. Like, oh, this is some kind of reflection of me, right? But at the same time, they go through some rocky territory, insecurities, sometimes even depression at other points in time. So there's this real mix of feelings. And so I'm heavy into the research. And then I had a close friend who's also a parent put it so beautifully. And what she

3:46said to me was, we're all still recovering from being teens. And I think that says so much. Yes. It's so true, right? We really are. And a lot of that stuff we haven't really fully unpacked properly. And so we are now going through it with our own teenagers. And it's really tricky. And you argue that every teen relationship story is also a mental health story. Can you explain what parents are missing, you know, when they treat teen relationships as drama rather than kind of developmental milestones?

4:17Yeah. So first I'll address this idea of every teen love story is a mental health story. This is a generation that's acutely aware of mental health and interested in mental health and identified with mental health. So they are going to carry those things into relationships with them. They're a roller coaster. In the crush phase, if somebody looks at us the wrong way, we're devastated. But if they show a sign of interest, we're euphoric, first breakups, first experiences of closeness,

4:51all those things stir young people up in a very regular way. And that will intersect with whatever mental health challenges they're going through at the moment, and they may collide. And so I'll move on to the second part of your question, which is why we need to take first experiences seriously, even if it's the kind of classic, you have a devastating crush on a kid in your math class that you don't even have the courage to talk to. It's so easy for parents who are well beyond that

5:25phase to belittle that moment. Oh, it's nothing. It will pass. It's what you go through. But young people receive some very strong messages when the adults in their lives are dismissive. And that is, that this really intense thing I am feeling right now doesn't truly matter. When in fact, it does truly matter, even if it doesn't result in a relationship product, I could say, it matters. And when you pay attention to it, and you dig in, and you ask questions about it, tell me about this

6:01person. Tell me about what's going on inside of you. What is happening in your body? Does it feel good? Does it feel bad? You're sending this really powerful message, which is that you value the heart, you value emotions, and you value relationship processes. Because in the end, what's going on inside of them is absolutely aligned in the brain and in the body and in the neurochemistry of the human being. It's the same experience as falling in love with someone you're going to spend the rest of

6:34your life with. The only difference is the end of the story. Those first passionate feelings are the same. We know this. So we have to be interested in them because they're going to matter over and over again in one's life. Yes. And it's the first time I think you feel so vulnerable because you don't feel really in control of how you're feeling. And to have somebody who loves you and cares about you rather than laughing at you, which is what my mother did, is to actually engage and try and help you unpick what is really

7:08indecipherable to most young kids at that age. I can imagine being really powerful. Absolutely. Absolutely. It helps young people know that they will have support from their elders, essentially, when they go through these things. And you make an excellent point about how out of control it feels. All this, of course, is predicated on whether the young person in your life is opening up to you, which hopefully they are. And that's a good thing. Yes. Yes. And what a crush is actually teaching the developing brain?

7:41What they're teaching the developing brain, I think that it's a first experience of what I call in my classroom. I teach a seminar called Love and Heartbreak. And in the book, The Symptoms, right? There are a set of symptoms that not only people who look at the psychology of love, but anthropologists have identified in cultures across the globe, including ones that have very little exposure to the media. And those symptoms, I won't list every single one, but they include,

8:13you know, the palpating heart and the butterflies in the stomach, the inability to think about anything else, the fantasies of union, of really merging with this person, which is not necessarily could have sexual elements, but not necessarily. It's like an emotional merging that people will fantasize about when they're in love, feelings of jealousy and exclusivity, like this is the one, this is the person, that's all part of it. So it is a first lesson in what that feels like and how to handle that, which is full of complexity,

8:50right? Because just because you feel that way to someone about someone, what you actually do about it, it raises a whole other set of strategic, ethical, and personal questions. So it's that first lesson in, I feel, and it feels a little crazy and a little out of control. So what do I do? And that's a really great lesson. Yes. And a question you can ask. And one of the points you make in the book that I

9:21absolutely loved was this having crushes on people because it's almost like we admire them or we want to become like that. And I definitely have seen this with my kids where they have fallen for someone and almost lost themselves to an extent because it was something in that person that seemed really appealing and they felt a lack. And then once they got to know them and they sort of sucked up some of that, it wasn't so important. Can you explain how we as parents can discuss this concept

9:52with our kids? Yeah. The identity crush is a powerful thing because we all need people we admire, our role models, and people who kind of draw us into a different space in our lives, a space we want to be in. It could be a space of leadership. It could be a space of creativity. It could be a space of achievement, all kinds of things. So if your child, for example, is having something that we

10:24all have our radars up for right now, which is the inappropriate crush, like a crush on a counselor or a teacher, knowing about the identity crush can be so powerful because it has the capacity to redeem the crush. I mean, obviously a parent is going to be concerned. This is a vulnerable thing. You don't want your child engaging in a relationship with a camp counselor or, God forbid, a teacher, right? But you also want to be able to have a conversation about what is it about this person

10:56that you're so drawn to and to illuminate for them that this possibility that they're so drawn to them because they want to be like them in certain ways. And that is a powerful, powerful thing. If something in that person is speaking to you, say they're really good at playing guitar, just a very simple example, take that crush to your guitar. That's much more appropriate. Yes. And that will stay with you forever.

11:27Yes. And then you have this other portal, which is to illuminate these questions of, okay, if this feels like something you want to do something about, which is quite possible, it's a chance to talk about the dangers of that. Having a crush on an authority figure, on a much older person, and you can talk about the power and privilege disparities and the ways that they don't want to be vulnerable to someone who might exploit them. I completely agree. And I did notice that one of the things I've seen in other places,

12:01as well as your book, is that kids actually want more guidance rather than less on this more emotional side of things that they feel, you know, that you get sex education in school, but they just want to talk to somebody who really cares about them, about these other things. Yes, they do. It's so funny because parents will tell me all the time, my kid is not going to go there if I ask them about their love lives or their relationships or their crushes. And my response is always, it's worth it to find periodic, not overly aggressive ways to keep trying.

12:35Because the fact is, is when young people are on their own, when they're in college and after, what the research shows is that the vast majority, 70% of 18 to 25 year olds, wish they had more information from their parents about the emotional aspects of romantic relationships. So if you don't keep going and keep trying on those conversations when they're with you at home, they will feel it later on. It's not too late later on. And you can still talk about it then as well. But it just shows that this conversation is

13:09so worth it because young people crave mentorship on this issue. I think that's absolutely true. And my bonus daughters, they've grown up, their mother's no longer around, but I've only recently been able to say to them, you know, you know, if you want to talk about something when I've been having problems with their relationships, I'm here and I'm really, really keen. And they've sort of tentatively opened it up. And we finally got to the point where they're very comfortable talking to me. And I think it's so valuable and so important. And one of the things that you mentioned in the book as well was that boys' crushes, we treat them differently to girls. And the girls kind of

13:43exchange gossip about their crushes and they're very, it's almost like they're rewarded for having crushes and talking about them. Not always, but there is an element of that. And then with boys, quite often they're mocked. And what is the impact of that? The impact is huge. I think we're in a real reckoning time right now with the messages we send to boys from very early in their lives about emotional expressiveness. And when I took the step

14:14while I was reporting this book to speak with teen boys and young men, the age range was generally like 17 to 25, the people I interviewed. And they talked to me about 13 years. What really struck me was when they talked about their first crushes, they were experiences of reckoning suddenly with the hugeness of their emotions, their capacity to feel the way people responded to feelings.

14:46One boy told me about this experience at 11 where he just, he just started weeping and sort of had to hide. And the girl came over to him and the girl he had a crush on and rubbed his shoulder. And it was this like, wow, if I'm, if I let my feelings show, there's this combination of shame and reward. And what do I do about it? But then when he got home that day, because his family was so quiet around issues of emotions, he didn't talk about it at all. So it's really important to provide space for boys,

15:27even if they don't seem as overtly interested to discuss their crushes, because it is again, that very early signal that your heart matters. And it's so much, it's so urgent to send boys that message, because they will get so many other messages about how they have to hide their hearts and hide their vulnerability and focus only on what they can get, how they can score, who can agree to go out with them, all the results and the results and the results. But we all know that so much of what

16:00we go through in our hearts is about the things we don't get results from the unrequited experiences, the mourning of losing someone, the things that aren't going on and aren't reciprocated. So, so I was just so struck by their stories. And they were so grateful to me for being the first person to ask them about these experiences, which they considered so meaningful in their life history, but they had no space to talk about. Wow, that's moving. And they're beautiful stories. I mean,

16:32I love all the stories you've got in your book, the individual situations that people found themselves in. And interestingly enough, there's a lot of data about this now that young people are dating later, they're having sex later, there are fewer pregnancies. You know, we know that in the media, that Gen Z are saying, we don't, we don't want any of the sex in it. We just, or romance, can you stop that? We just want, we want relationship information. And some of them are avoiding labels altogether. What's driving that shift? It's fascinating. I think that we can

17:06look at a number of factors. We can look at social media, their reliance on the online world generally, online porn, online dating. Now there's Gen AI chatbots that can respond to you just like a devoted partner. So all those things are playing this role in backing up and backing up and backing up from in-person interactions, which they're having less of overall, even with friends. And I think some

17:37parents greet this data with like, yay, no pregnancy, none of the risks of sex, none of the risks of dating person to person, all of those things. Um, and I think that there are some good things. Like if a young person is telling me they're keenly aware that they want to be truly ready for these experiences, I joined the A's. I think that's beautiful. And it's much better than when I was growing up. I can't speak to the UK rites of passage, but when I was a young person in high school in the

18:1080s, you had to have a date of the opposite sex to even go to the prom, this American ritual that we all see in the movies. And it's really good that young people are starting to shake some of that off. And the culture, I think that educators, um, promote as well, that's starting to shift. So that's all great. But then you have to look at the other side, which is the World Health Organization is calling teens the loneliest people on the planet. Yes. And one in five feels painfully

18:41disconnected from other people. So in the backing off and backing off and backing off of in-person interactions, you get a really dark downside to that too. So I think that we can take this duality and say, yes, it's great to wait until you're ready, but make sure that you're not so keenly freaked out by the vulnerability of in-person romantic interactions that you're too afraid to try or

19:13your bar for readiness is so terribly high that nobody's going to fill it. Or that if someone seems like they might be able to sneak in, uh, over this bar that the first sign of something difficult will freak you out so much and make you feel so vulnerable that you don't want to go there. So I think that I encourage young people, the ones that I teach and the ones that I talk to, to really understand that whatever they want to do with their love life has to take into account that vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of emotional intimacy. You don't get one without the

19:49other. You don't get the reward without the risk. And that the first sign that vulnerability is going to hurt is like, welcome to the, to being human, to being an adult human who has a romantic sexual and emotional existence in the world that involves other people. I just really discourage over-identifying every dark and disappointing feeling with a huge mental health crisis. And I think sometimes there's an over-protectiveness of the self that I, I witness among young people and,

20:22and being really hard on themselves not to be vulnerable, not to be the one who cares more. Yes. And I'm feeling like they need to be perfect. I mean, not one of my girls, but I was speaking to an older girl who said she was in a relationship and she said they were getting sexual. And she said, I just stopped and went, I don't know what I'm doing. Um, let's just stop. And I just thought, this is so sad because it's almost like she feels it's a performance and if she doesn't know what she's doing, then she can't do it. And I think there's, there's an element of having to be perfect before you can actually proceed in a relationship, which is maybe we felt that way

20:54when we were younger. I didn't. Um, yeah. Yeah. Another thing, if I could add what young people are dealing with is there's a real shift in the nature of their relationships. And a lot of them are very ambiguously defined. Yes. Friends with benefits, situationships. So the fears and the self-protectiveness, I think, come in part from existing in that world where you're swiping left and right on people. You know, even if you're too young to actually be on those apps, but you know that that's the metaphor for your existence in the world. It's like you're approved of or you're

21:29disapproved of. People like the way you look or they don't. They want to go further with you or they don't. So that's tough. And self-protectiveness in that arena, I, I, it makes a certain amount of sense to me because I would not last a moment in that environment as a, as a young person. When you think about that environment, the social scripts for dating have completely changed. And to an extent, I mean, what are the social scripts? Because how do you know when you're going to get serious? Cause it used to be, you would be in a relationship or you wouldn't be a relationship. And

22:01now they have so many different words for these different things. Who pays? How soon after that you've seen someone do you call? There's so many things now that I think must be very confusing for teenagers. I think it is. One of the big words that's sort of come up in this world since I published my book is nonchalance. You'll hear young people talking a lot about nonchalance. And I think that's such an interesting use of that word because it's sort of this beautiful word, but it's also this,

22:32this very aloof word. You just got to play it cool. And that's a lot of pressure and it makes it really hard to honor the nobleness of deep human feeling. My view is that we should not be ashamed of big hearts and big feelings. We have to learn how to navigate them, but we should not be ashamed of them. And we should not play this game of the one who cares the most loses. I can't control that if that's the environment that young people are existing in. But I do hope for a movement similar

23:07to what happened. Remember when fast food got really big and then there was the slow food movement in response to all those McDonald's meals. People were talking about making soup from scratch and bread and you know, long meals and things like that. So I'm kind of gunning for a counter trend where it's not about ambiguity and who, you know, whoever cares the less wins and who cares more loses, where people really honor big feelings and an emotional connection of the romantic kind.

23:41I guess if you're in a situationship, as they sometimes call it, and then they break up with you or, you know, they no longer want to see you, that's really hard because actually, you know, in terms of a breakup, that's a much more difficult thing to process because you're not even able to give it a label and say, this is what I'm going through. Yeah, I think there's a real role for parents and anybody in a young person's support world around this issue because the grief over a not-yet-relationship can be just as huge and

24:14sometimes more significant than the grief over a relationship that's beneficial and played itself out. So this is real grief and validating that grief is a very important role that a parent can play. And making sure that this young person really has space to talk it through, to feel like it's valued and heard, that it's real, even if the relationship never became official. So what would that sound like? What would that sound like? I think that would sound like, tell me how you're feeling about this,

24:50you know, this situationship. I mean, and it gets really hard because a parent might not even know about a situationship because the person going through the situationship may not have felt able to give themselves permission to validate it by telling the parents about it, right? So I think that there's all kinds of factors. If a young person lets you in while this situationship is going on, there's some great things you can do to offer support. And these are not my suggestions,

25:24they're from a wonderful psychologist and professor named Alexander Solomon, who teaches at Northwestern. And she advises almost a somatic approach. You ask your teen, how are you feeling in your body as you're anticipating connecting with this person? How do you feel after, during the connection? And all those things help a young person get in touch with like, wow, well, I'm madly attracted to this person, but the asymmetry of this is causing me so much anxiety that I'm not enjoying any of it. So that's

25:57a real like, okay, let's talk about that, you know? And then after, I think you can take after a situationship ends, you can take a similar approach where, where are you at in your body right now? Are you in grief? What do you need right now? I think one of the things in any kind of relationship ending is to focus a lot on concrete problem solving, like a small thing you can do. Say this person is in class with the person they had the failed situationship with, strategizing around how

26:32to deal with that classroom space, how to deal with the space of a campus or a school where you're going to see this person all the time. Can you have a friend sit next to you and make sure you're, you're held and protected? You know, just these really small concrete things that help, help it all feel real and not just like something they need to tough through, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And how do we distinguish between healthy intensity and unhealthy enmeshment? You know, we're now at that

27:02state where they said, I'm, I'm in this relationship. They seem to be spending a huge amount of time talking to this person or, or on the phone to them or wanting to be with them. That's a wonderful question because young people fear losing themselves in relationships and parents fear that young people will lose themselves in relationships. So there's a, an alignment yet young people lose themselves in relationships all the time. And this is so tricky because what a young person might be

27:37experiencing, what they feel is a very positive to use the literature of psychology, self-expansion. I'm growing. This person is changing my life, changing me. I'm inspired. I'm different. And there could be some ways in which that's absolutely true. And then some ways in which it's absolutely too much. And there are stories in my book where I can see both sides very clearly. And I don't necessarily think the parent is completely right, or nor do I think the child is completely right. And it's really not for me to decide. So I think there, I think we have to acknowledge that there will be

28:11different perceptions and feelings around what is a healthy relationship versus what is enmeshment. And, and I do think that starts with parents allowing that, that young people can have very close, very generative experiences together, which a lot of parents don't allow. It's anything is too much, right? That the whole thing scares them. So allowing that is, I do think a critical part, but as to the danger of enmeshment, I think that a very powerful question that Richard Weisbord,

28:48who runs a wonderful nonprofit named Making Care in Common, advised me to ask and to put in my book, is when you are in this relationship, do you feel like more of a person or less of a person? And what I love about this question, I see you nodding. And I'm thinking, even as I speak to you about my relationships as a teen and the ways that even if I was terribly in love, I could feel so small and insecure with this person and like lost with this person. And I feel like that question,

29:23whether the young person answers it directly or not, because they may not be ready to, that question gets in there, right? And gets into those feelings of loss that can so often accompany passionate love, you know, where you're really not yourself with this person. So that is a starting point. I don't think I have the exact recipe to prevent. I would be making millions, right? But

29:54that is a really great opening gambit there. You know, when you're feeling uneasy about the level of enmeshment. And then I think, you know, being open about just saying you're really, you seem pretty preoccupied by this person and your moods are totally dependent. You know, you can share what you are seeing. And I know there's risk in that. But when you say, I notice, and if you say it with compassion, and you say it in ways, I know it's going to sound like, how can you say it without

30:28judgment? But I think you can say it without judgment and just say, I want to let you know that I'm seeing this. I think that that can also be very powerful. I've had parents who've been struggling, and they were saying to their child, oh, you know, how are you getting on? Are you okay? And the child was going, oh, yeah, no, it's fine. And they know it's not fine. And I think what you've identified is that if you're actually much more specific about what you notice, then it gives the child a hook to sort of think, oh, actually,

30:59because I think the worry is when you don't, you don't actually like the person. Let's say your child's dating someone, you just worry about them because maybe they do drugs or they're just not somebody you really want your child with. It can be very, very tricky path to walk. Yeah. And I think that a strategy that I found very heartening and potentially powerful is that when you have like deep worries, like is this abusive, is, you know, the hard part about that

31:32is what you want to do is yank your kid away from them, like saving your kid from the bully in second grade, right? But the problem is, is that may not work. They may sneak away. They may continue to see this person. And so another really effective tool, and this was from the domestic violence advocacy and support community, is having conversations with your child about strategy, about what are you going to do when you feel unsafe? What's the family strategy? When can I swoop in if you need me?

32:03And then also to have conversations about what this advocate that I interviewed called the fact versus the feeling. So the feelings are powerful. The feelings are, I love him. I want to be with her. But then there's facts. The facts are, sometimes you feel incredibly unsafe with this person. Sometimes this person drives with rage. Sometimes this person does things that threaten you.

32:30And so when you're facing that data with your eyes wide open as a parent, which is so scary and hard to do, you are saying, this data is here. I understand there's also the feelings, but let's also strategize around the data. And I cannot imagine how difficult that must be for a parent going through this. But I want to say parents are going through this, including, amazingly, some of the domestic violence

33:02advocacy experts that I talked to. They would confide this in me. They'd be like, even my child is going through this. So I'm sharing that to just say, this just shows how this isn't a matter of some magic thing you're going to say or some resource you're going to get. It's the ability to sort of carry and hold space and stay safe as your child is figuring out what to do. Yeah. Because if you just try and shut it down, you could end up, you know, driving them into the arms of that person. It's very tricky. It's very tricky. Relationships that go underground are,

33:36that's what you don't want. You don't want your kid to be hiding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the other things that's interesting is, I think you said in the book, nearly one in five young adults now identifies as queer. So what does that mean when parents approach love, identity, dating conversations, you know, particularly if they're coming from quite a conventional background? Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's so much to think about. One is that there's a certain amount of inner work that we may need to do to let go of what I call

34:09the straight story. This idea that your daughter's going to grow up, get married to a man, have babies, have the white wedding dress, you know, all those things, right? Which are things we hold dear because many of us went through them and want to replicate that. Or obviously it's something that our culture places great value on as well. But that's just something that a parent of a LGBTQ plus child may need to let go of. And then the other thing is that our first responses to changes,

34:46of course, shall we say, to the child who always, a girl who always had crushes on boys and then suddenly is completely head over heels about another girl. Where if we throw to them like, wait, but you always, you know, played boy-girl, buried all Ken stories when you were little and where did this come from? And how do you know you don't like boys? That's a really common response. It's like, wait, that has nothing to do with it. I might like a boy in a week or a year, but right now I like a girl and that's all I'm thinking about. And what, when you respond in

35:19those ways as, as innate as they may feel, that is one of those things that I have found in my interviews does send kids underground with their relationships because they feel you don't approve and they still really care about how much you approve, even if they really don't, they really care. Yeah. So, so, um, you know, I think it's okay to be like, Hey, I'm surprised or whatever, but really try to keep that like, wait, but you were this person and now you're that person. And

35:52how do I know you're not faking it? That kind of, obviously no parent is going to say that, but sometimes that's implicit in their words. So that's, I think something every 21st century parent should be prepared for that kids, these days are super fluid and they're moving through a lot of different experiences and they just don't see it the way we do. They see their life as full of possibility and that possibility could include a relationship with a girl, a boy, someone non-binary and very few of them are like, I'm this way and that's it these days. Yeah. And when it

36:27comes to actually having a relationship and the consent issue, because I think I've mentioned it earlier that there's a lot of talk in schools about, um, well, let's talk about sexuality and sex. And I know that my daughter, when she went to university, what was brilliant was right at the very start, first week, one of the things they did was talk about consent. Um, but I think you said in your book that it needs to be more than a one-off conversation we need to have because it's quite ambiguous. It is, it is consent. It's so interesting. It's something young people care a lot about and

37:00they know about it earlier and sooner. And it's coinciding. It's this kind of ironic juxtaposition with, you know, the huge rise in toxic masculinity and phenomenon, phenomenons like the one portrayed in the movie Adolescent and then things like online porn, which, you know, to put it lightly, doesn't really place that much of an emphasis on, on consent and on especially female pleasure. Um, so yes, consent ideally is a conversation that starts as soon as possible. You know,

37:31even the toddler years, there can be lessons about consent. And then I think that a real, um, there are a couple of things that I would say to that issue. One is to, again, there's the theme of my book. One of them is aligning who you are and what you're going through and trying to find ways to reconcile that with the world that your child or the young person in your life is entering and on issues of consent that can really collide. And I write at length in my book about an experience I had

38:06where a really old voice in my head, that kind of boys will be boys voice, um, made it so that I couldn't quite see something that was going on with a, my daughter's friend who was sexually assaulted at a, at, I think it was 12 or it was 13 and took it through a court case and everything. And, um, I felt like I was able to give my daughter really good support, but not at, not truly at first. At first I was like, wait, what's the big deal here? And then as you described it, yeah, as a situation

38:41folded, I was like, oh my God, it is a big deal. And me, I, who have done work on domestic violence issues and reported on them and volunteered on hotlines, couldn't quite see because I had that really old voice in my head. So I think that's just something that even the most progressive parent needs to be aware of. And then finally, I'll just say to, you know, a big thing that the consent conversation in my view misses is, is, is the gray that a lot about sexuality and sexual,

39:13sexual encounters has to, has to grapple with the yes within the no and the no within the yes. And there are no easy answers to that, except to try to work as hard as you can as a parent and as, and to encourage your young person to give expression, to give expression, to wait, I'm confused right now, which doesn't necessarily mean everything stops or everything's not okay, but just to work through the confusion and realize that confusion is not the same as someone assaulting

39:46you. But it's also true that reclaiming your voice and knowing when like, okay, the yes is a yes is a hugely important thing. But no matter what you do, they're always going to be those like weird turning points and to create space for those and, and navigate those in a way where you come out feeling right about the encounter. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's one of the things that really worries a lot of moms of boys in particular, because they just look at it and think, where is this gray? And how could that be interpreted in a way that might harm my child? Coming on to breakups,

40:22because your, your, your book very nicely goes through the crushes, through all of these things. Then we come to the breakups. And one of the things I thought was absolutely brilliant was when you talked about this experiment that was done with teenagers, where they put them in an fMRI scan, if I remember rightly, and showed them photographs of the person that they'd just broken up with, and looked at what was going on in their brains. Can you talk about that? Yeah, that was an experiment that was done sort of in the earlier years of fMRI imaging, and we could see all this stuff in the brain. And what happened was when they were, these subjects,

40:55these college age subjects were shown pictures of the, the loved one who'd dumped them when they were still in love, that they wept, they expressed themselves, expressed mourning, and their brains, you know, it really showed in the brain scans that the areas associated with, with addiction, with grief, with strong attachment, with physical pain, lit up. And when I say lit up, that means that blood rushed into those areas of the brain. And another area of the brain that also

41:32lit up, which I think is so helpful to know about, is the prefrontal cortex, which is the area involved with assessing gains and loss and making decisions. And so that's very helpful to know too, because even as all these difficult things are happening, your brain is trying to figure out what went wrong. And that's so useful, right? You know, when you can say to a young person, it's like, there's opportunity here for learning. Oh, I like that. It's like trying to figure that out. Like, okay, what, you know, what do I do with this information?

42:02How can I redeem this difficult experience and see it as, as growth? So, yeah. And, and one thing I always point out to my students, you know, they'll read about this experiment. It feels really foreign because there are machines and brain image, brain scan images. And, but I'll point to the method, which is they got, they showed these pictures of the loved ones to the subjects. And I'll say, what does that remind you of? And they'll be like, what do you mean? I've never been an fMRI. And then I'll take out my hand and I'll make like, I'm holding my phone and scrolling.

42:37Yeah. And I'll, I'll just say to them, what are you doing every day on Instagram? You know, if you've just broken up with someone, chances are you are exposing yourself to photos of that person constantly because they're still in your feed in most cases. And think of how painful that is. So that sends a really strong message about if it's at all possible these days, doing a digital breakup as well as, as a breakup break.

43:08I think it's quite hard. And I, that was one of the conversations I had to have frequently with my daughter and just say, you need to just completely block. The problem is when you've got lots of friends who are connected with each other, it's very hard to actually enact a proper, I don't know, breakup in that way, but I think it's really important. So what would be greatest if you can explain to parents what a healthy support sounds like and looks like when a teen has broken up in those next few weeks and days? Yes. Some of the things I have mentioned earlier, which is that you want to validate the feelings.

43:43That's always the first thing, because if you try to make them small in that moment, that's just going to really estrange the young person in your life. They won't trust you because what they're going through is really huge. I think also to acknowledge that this may be for your child, their first real experience of grief. So that makes the validation even more important. And I think the tip I'll conclude with is that one of the misperceptions about supporting somebody

44:13when they are going through a loss like this, a breakup loss, is that the thing you should do is dig in. You know, what did he do to you today? How did he treat you today? How did she react to you today? And to kind of mull over every single moment? And what that can turn into is something called co-rumination, which actually increases obsession and doesn't decrease obsession. So distraction is really important. If your kid's into hiking, going for a hike, take them to the

44:45movies or give them money to go with a friend to the movies. Work on cleaning out the garage, all those things. And that will help your child have some freedom from the obsessive thoughts, even if it's just for a short while. And that's incredibly important. And then again, reiterating what I said before, solving a problem with them, something really concrete, like how do I get my stuff back from this person's house? Have a date, drive them over, make it fast, do something else right

45:16after to distract them. And they will feel like, okay, I have some small amount of control over the difficulties of this breakup. It's absolutely fascinating discussion. Is there anything last thing that you would like to convey to parents about first love, about the way that they can best support their kids or anything else? I think the most important thing is get used to talking about love in a low stakes way. Talk about a movie you've seen, a TV show that you've been watching

45:46either with your child or you're each watching it separately, which was a lot of the ways my household worked for various reasons. Because it just makes it more casual. You know, debate the ethics of love. Do you agree with what that character should do? And it just kind of loosens things up when it comes to talking about the real challenges in real life. Have those conversations. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us today. If anybody would like to get hold of you, could you just let us know the best way to do that? Obviously, I'll put your links in the podcast

46:20notes. There is contact information for me on my website, lisaamyphillips.com. And you can find out all about the book and get connected to my socials. And I hope you do that. Thank you so much. That's it for Teenagers Untangled for this week. If you want to find out more information, I'll put some more notes and things on my substack, which is teenagersuntangled.substack.com. There's my website, which is www.teenagersuntangled.com. And you can email me any questions at teenagersuntangled at gmail.com.

46:52That's it. Have a great week. Big hug from me. Thank you so much, Lisa Phillips. Thank you so much. It was a great conversation.

47:05Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.