When pop megastar Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album today, her ‘Swiftie’ army quickly cherry-picked her lyrics and connected them to her exes.
As has become the norm for a Swift album, Tortured Poets Department is filled with references to old flames, including actor Joe Alwyn, whom the pop star dated for 6 years.
There are also apparently multiple references to Matty Healy, the frontman of indie band The 1975, with whom Swift had a brief fling last year.
The lyrics have become the latest issue for critics who claim the pop star is in some kind of obsessive relationship.
But this is probably just an example of how women tend to process breakups, venting to their social network, Melissa Fabello a California-based sex and relationship coach told DailyMail.com.
“Men and women process breakups very differently,” Fabello said. She explained that men are more likely to keep their feelings to themselves because they are not raised to express their emotions openly, she said.
Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, is her eleventh studio album.
Swift dated actor Joe Alwyn for six years. The two ended their notoriously private relationship in April 2023.
This can cause men to develop less healthy coping mechanisms after a breakup, such as abusing alcohol or having a lot of casual sex, even when they are relatively silent about their breakup.
Meanwhile, women tend to experience their breakups out loud: crying, venting, and “talking their asses off” to their friends, family, and anyone who will listen. This could make it seem like women are more obsessed with their exes, she said, when in reality they’re just processing it.
Swift’s fans were fully supportive of the singer venting about her romantic problems.
“You can never make me hate Taylor Swift, I’m sorry…this bitch is crazy and she KNOWS IT,” user idkcloudy shared in an X in response to the album.
User pdesis shared a similar sentiment, ‘THE DEQUISIFIED TAYLOR SWIFT IS BACK, SHE’S BACK GUYS,’ with a gif of a person jumping off a cliff.
People also made fun of how Swift’s new boyfriend, Chiefs star Travis Kelce, must be reacting to the news. User swainsch posted a gif of someone shaking X with the caption: “killatrav listening to an album full of songs about how much Taylor Swift wishes she was still dating Matty Healy.”
Swift has been candid that the songwriting process is cathartic for her.
During the Melbourne stop of her Eras tour, Swift shared with her audience that writing ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ was a ‘lifesaver’ for her.
“The things I was going through, the things I was writing about… it kind of reminded me why writing songs really helps me get through my life,” he said.
Fans say Swift was writing about Alwyn in her song ‘So Long, London’, when she sings that she felt like she was going to ‘implode’ while in a relationship.
It’s unclear exactly how long Swift and Healy were dating, but the two were photographed together several times around the summer of 2023.
Reflecting, the billionaire singer sings that she was screwed with you. [he] Let me give you all that youth for free.’
Feeling this frustrated during a long-term relationship is incredibly common, Dayana Romero, a registered psychotherapist who focuses on couples and practices in Ontario, told the Daily Mail.
He noted that many of his clients feel like they’ve wasted their time with a partner who was dragging their feet.
“When you have people who have been in a relationship for a long time and they don’t stand out and move the way they want, and it ends in a breakup, their regular clients are going to feel very betrayed.” she said.
Swift released her new album after spending much of the last year on her ‘Eras’ tour.
On ‘Fortnight,’ the album’s first single, fans quickly became convinced that Swift was dissing Healy.
In the song, Swift calls someone “a miracle drug addict” and says “I love you, it’s ruining my life.”
Although it is impossible to pinpoint an exact date, as the couple never publicly confirmed their relationship, it probably lasted a few months.
This type of intense, short-term relationship is incredibly common, Romero said. Furthermore, although this intense infatuation feels like love, it is unlikely to develop into a healthy relationship.
Sometimes these short-term relationships are the most painful, Fabello said, because you still have an idealized version of your potential partner in mind.
So when you get rejected, it can make you feel like something is wrong with you.
‘That is painful, that is rejection and abandonment. And that hurts no matter how long the relationship has lasted,” Ms. Fabello said.
Fabello said men and women experience this pain equally, but they tend to deal with it differently. Some studies have agreed.
Anthropologists at Binghamton University revealed similar trends in a 2011 study of 1735 university students. They found that men were three times more likely than women to develop risky sexual habits and abuse drugs and alcohol after a breakup.
Swift and Super Bowl-winning tight end Travis Kelce confirmed their relationship in September 2023
In comparison, women were three times more likely to rely on their social network for support after a breakup. This could mean talking to her friends, family, or, in Swift’s case, her fans.
Additionally, the study found that women were twice as likely as men to internalize the breakup and reported that it affected their long-term self-esteem, making it more difficult to form new relationships in the future, the authors wrote. This could make them seem more “attached” to their former partners.
Additional research on the topic in research 2021 at Lancaster University found that while men were less likely to publicly express their distress, it hurt them just as much as their female counterparts.
The study, which tested 181,000 Reddit users seeking breakup advice online, was “surprising,” the authors wrote.
Ms. Romero, however, was not surprised, as this was in line with what she had observed in her 15 years of practice. “At the end of the day, emotions are not separated by men or women, emotions are emotions,” she said.
Most importantly, anyone of any gender can feel incredibly intense emotions after a breakup, Romero said. He said that men and women don’t differ much when it comes to lost love.
So maybe, said Ms. Fabello, a self-proclaimed Swiftie, people could take a page from Swift’s book and consider letting some of that pain out in therapy. Unless you like Swift and want to do it on stage.