Friday, June 12th at noon in Meeting Room #5
Portland, Maine - The year she turned thirty, Lisa A. Phillips fell in love with an unavailable man. At first her feelings gave her hope and pleasure. But he didn’t respond to her increasingly persistent efforts, and something inside her shifted. Her unrequited love became obsessive, transforming her -- a stable, accomplished professional -- into someone unrecognizable and driving her to a very dark place. Everything came to a head one day when, in response to her incessant pounding on his apartment door, he emerged with a baseball bat in one hand and a phone to call the cops in the other.
How did this radical upheaval occur? Years later, a fully healed Phillips set out to understand the one-sided fixation that had overtaken her so completely. She opened up about her experience first in a widely read New York Times “Modern Love” column and now in UNREQUITED: Women and Romantic Obsession, a revelatory new book that examines the perils and power of obsessive love in women’s lives.
From her unique perspective, this journalist and professor explores the many dimensions of romantic obsession, uncovering the forces that inspire it, considering its possible meanings, and probing its inherent dangers and surprising benefits. Interweaving her story with candid interviews, online survey results, and in-depth research in science, psychology, cultural history, and literature, Phillips details how romantic obsession takes root, blossoms, and shapes our thoughts and behaviors.
Provocative, nuanced, and enlightening, UNREQUITED is the book Lisa A. Phillips wishes had been available to her when she was terribly obsessed, one that will now help countless women come to terms with the volatile, otherworldly state of romantic obsession, as well as its causes and consequences.
About the Author:
Lisa A. Phillips is a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz and the author of Public Radio: Behind the Voices. Her articles have appeared in many national publications, including the New York Times, Psychology Today, Cosmopolitan, Salon, The Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. A former radio journalist, she has contributed stories to NPR and other public radio outlets.
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