It’s doomsday in Swift City. Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn, her boyfriend of over six years, are in the news with rumors running rampant that they have broken up.
Neither party has confirmed – and USA TODAY has reached out to Swift and Alwyn’s representatives for comment. In the meantime, fans are picking apart her Eras tour setlist, dissecting the songs she’s written about him over the course of her last five albums and investigating her social media posts for hints.
One thing is for sure: Fans are invested and care deeply about the state of this celebrity relationship. Perhaps a little too much.
From ‘Dear John’ to ‘Lover’: Why Taylor Swift fans are so invested
In the case of Swift, her personal and professional lives have gone hand-in-hand for more than a decade, thanks to her revealing song lyrics, and fans have built an investment not only in her happiness, but what her life trajectory could signal for theirs.
Longtime Swifties have watched the singer date the men that inspired some of her most chord-striking breakup songs, including “All Too Well” and “Dear John,” and subsequently rejoiced in seeing her in a long-term committed relationship with the person who not only inspired “Lover” and “Invisible String,” but teamed up with her to write more hits.
“My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue / All’s well that ends well to end up with you,” Swift sings in 2019’s “Lover.”
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“Fans tend to project a lot on to the celebrity relationship: a lot of their own fantasies about what the relationship is, what it was, what it means,” licensed psychotherapist Jenn Mann previously told USA TODAY. “There’s a lot of fantasy fulfillment for the fan.”
But a highly-regarded celebrity relationship ending doesn’t mean that all relationships are doomed to end, and fans should remember that they don’t know all the details of why anyone’s relationship doesn’t work out.
“It’s important to not hold celebrities to impossible standards because these are fallible humans with inevitable flaws and shortcomings, just like the rest of us,” said Shana Redmond, a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. “What we see on social media is a small slice of who they are – we can’t substitute that glamour for the whole.”
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How this obsession affects celebrity couples
Plus, carrying the weight of being #CoupleGoals isn’t easy.
“Being a celebrity means carrying a giant target on your back for people’s psychological projections,” said W. Keith Campbell, an expert on narcissism, personality and cultural change. “Sometimes those can be great but sometimes those can be really negative.”
Swift has been vocal, mostly through her music, about how the public’s discourse about her love life has negatively affected her relationships and mental health.
Most recently, her single “Lavender Haze” explored the stress of wanting to focus on a relationship while the rest of the world chimes in with scrutiny and speculation. “Talk your talk and go viral / I just need this love spiral / Get it off your chest / Get it off my desk,” she sings.
Fame can also affect stars’ psychology in a myriad of ways, said clinical psychologist Donna Rockwell, who co-authored the only published, peer-reviewed study on the psychology of fame and celebrity. They may have feelings about losing their anonymity, having to always be “on” to meet fan expectations and a loss of trust in old and new friends.
“It’s very isolating,” Rockwell said of exploring a new relationship in the spotlight. “It puts a lot of pressure on the couple…”
What Taylor Swift fans should keep in mind right now
Erica Chito Childs, a professor of sociology at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, explained when it comes to celebrity culture, “our desire and hunger for it never ends.
“When you’re engaging more of this hypercritical speculation on people’s lives, who you don’t even know, whether it’s celebrities, or it’s your neighbors, it’s having the same impact. It’s a negative thing.”
The key is to stay positive, experts say. Fans should try not to go too far down the rabbit hole when it comes to dissecting Swift’s relationships, and instead focus on more uplifting news – or on the music they love so much.
And they can be assured, they’ll hear from her in due time. Swift’s artistry when it comes to writing about romance and heartbreak and everything in between is one of the things her fans connect to the most. They’re sure to be singing along to tunes about this flurry of headlines soon enough.
Contributing: David Oliver
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