Why Did Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn Break Up?

From Joe Jonas in 2008 to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce currently, Taylor Swift has had a host of boyfriends.

The last long relationship that Swift was a part of before she began dating Kelce in September of 2023 was with Joe Alwyn, an actor from England who has starred in several films. Before her relationship with Kelce (on which you can bet on at top betting sites), she dated Matty Healy for a brief period of time, but her last long-term and really serious relationship was with Alwyn.

Swift’s relationship with Alwyn is notable because, at over six years, it is her longest relationship to date.

Let’s try to wrap our heads around this: she was in a relationship for over six years with a single person and then decided that things weren’t going to work out. This seems baffling because it does not take six years of intimate contact to really know a person inside and out.

Let’s say that it takes a year to get to know someone superbly well. After that period of time, when you really know that person, you would surely be able to judge what kind of a relationship you’re able or not able to have with that person. You judge whether you like being with someone by spending a lot of time with that person and getting to know him or her. Nevertheless, it took close to seven years for Swift and Alwyn to decide to part ways.

In order to overcome this sense of feeling baffled, let’s try to explain what happened.

When Did Swift and Alwyn Meet?

The time period during which Swift was dating Calvin Harris, in 2016, was also when she probably met Alwyn for the first time.

She has a song called “Dress” in Reputation where she refers to her first meeting with Alwyn, implying via references to his physical features that she immediately found him physically attractive. 

The “love blackout” a thread:

Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn met on May 2, 2016 at the Met Gala. This is referenced in Dress. They dated for six years before announcing their breakup on April 8, 2023. pic.twitter.com/fWk8JF53lk

— Jeannie ⎕ 🖤 (@robbersinneon) March 29, 2024

Progression of Their Relationship

This meeting likely took place in the 2016 Met Gala.

It is hard to know many details about their relationship because they tried hard to keep it private, notwithstanding tidbits that Swift has expressed in her songs – an artist typically creates art centering on his or her own private life, which comprises the things most familiar to the artist – and that both Swift and Alwyn have revealed in interviews.

As will be especially evident when they break up and Swift gets emotional in her concerts, they built up a lot of emotion together during their relationship.

The fact that their relationship became so intimate and emotional will make one wonder all the more intensely why they did break up.

When reports about their dating life began circulating more widely in May of 2017, they had already been together for several months. The relationship soon became serious. in June of 2017, Alwyn and Swift were caught by paparazzi. This was likely when Alwyn met Swift’s parents for the first time.

4 years ago today, taylor swift and joe alwyn pictured for the FIRST TIME EVER since they became a couple while they were having breakfast on taylor’s nashville house balcony.

june 3, 2017 pic.twitter.com/3BdLmv4Unf

— Taylor Throwbacks (@ThrowbackTaylor) June 3, 2021

She wrote a song in 2017 called “Gorgeous”, which she specified was about Alwyn.

Public Versus Private

We see the seeds of the end of their relationship even in the early years of its flourishing.

Alwyn was very clear in interviews and the like about his desire to keep his relationship with Swift private, to maintain the privacy of his private life, and certainly to avoid sharing intimate details about his relationship with Swift. However, Swift is talking about her relationship in a public way, sharing details about it and about her feelings for Alwyn for her fans.

There are two things to things to talk about here. One, Swift is more comfortable with the public dimension of their relationship and is indulging in this comfort in ways that bother Alwyn. The very fact of their publicity is something that Alwyn wants to run away from, so any acceptance on her part of the publicity must be something that irks him. She is making their relationship more public than Alwyn wants because she wants to write songs and connect with her fans.

So, two, she is prioritizing her career over her relationship with Alwyn.

It Could Not Work Out

Of course, she is put in this position where she must choose what she wants to prioritize because Alwyn is uncomfortable in the first place with the public dimension. This could be said to be an Alwyn issue rather than a Swift issue. But it’s also fair to say that we see that she was unable and unwilling even in the earliest years of their relationship to respect Alwyn’s wishes for more privacy.

Obviously, a lot of things were going right between them because they lasted together for so many years. In a relationship, when you really like your partner, you might try to ignore the negative things in order to relish in the positive. But at some point, Alwyn couldn’t take it anymore. The negative things stop being able to be ignored.

This is especially the case, in their relationship, as Alwyn struggles to thrive in Hollywood. In terms of success, he felt like he lagged behind her, and this bothered him. So, it’s not just the public nature of their relationship, but it’s the feeling that he can’t measure up to her.

Their relationship lost its balance – essentially, she was this big superstar, which Alwyn was not, and she prioritized her career, and Alwyn couldn’t tolerate her prioritization of her career.

It makes sense, now, that she is dating someone who is a star – Kelce is an extremely good and well-respected football player, a Super Bowl champion who plays a significant role in his team and is used to the limelight. He even went on stage at one of her Eras Tour concerts.

🎩 SURPRISE! Travis Kelce came onstage and carried Taylor Swift during her outfit change skit for “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” #LondonTSTheErasTour

🎥: @PEOPLE’s @Kirsty_Hatcher pic.twitter.com/5KadoRpl52

— Brian A. Hernandez (@BAHjournalist) June 23, 2024