Taylor Swift's love songs can teach us so much, actually

Since the beginning of her career in 2007, Taylor Swift has always been under scrutiny because of her love life, like pretty much any celebrity. However, no other artist has been as strongly linked to their exes as her, to the point where she earned the reputation of "the one that's constantly singing about her long list of exes".

Aside from the obvious double standard and subtle slut-shaming implied by this mold that the media put her into, I think it is safe to say that Swift's discography documents quite vividly her romantic relationships and the emotions she felt throughout them. Through her songwriting abilities, Taylor Swift has been indeed able to vividly tell her own experiences in a way that allowed her listeners to recognize themselves in those experiences as well.

With these premises, why can't we all try to learn something from her experiences instead of looking at it through a lens of shame?

For this reason, I will now list a series of lessons that I learnt about relationships from her songs.

Break-ups are not always black and white.

This may surprise people who think Taylor Swift can only write petty break-up songs. However, Happiness is a song that really explains how a finished relationship is not necessarily a terrible relationship and a partner can be hurtful for leaving you, but they can also be the people who brought amazing memories, especially if the two of you broke up on good terms.

This lesson is important because it helps us mature and break the black and white thinking that is often promoted in break-up songs, even in other songs by Taylor Swift herself.

Romance is not enough for a relationship to thrive.

This might be a hard pill to swallow for some of you, but sometimes relationships do not work because the goals of the people involved clash with one another in a way that cannot be fixed unless one of the two gives up on them.

As represented in songs like Midnight Rain and Champagne Problems, this concept is important in order not to fall in love with someone's potential and break our own heart.

However, its importance is often overlooked or glossed over by the media and our society. If you think about relationships in the past, such a discourse was not being brought up in the first place because of strict gender roles that often implied that women were the ones giving up on goals such as education or a career in order to bring their relationships on the further stage - marriage and the creation of a family.

With said gender roles getting less and less strict over time, this lesson is acquiring more and more relevance, partly because of how extensively it has been mentioned on social media as well.

Age matters.

This is probably one of the things that set Taylor Swift way ahead of her time: calling out the adults who pursue partners who are barely of age to control them better.

Such dynamics flew quite over everyone's head in 2010, the year when Dear John was released, but during the time of the re-release of Red and the ten-minute version of All Too Well, in a post-MeToo era, people finally recognized how Swift highlighted the emotional consequences of said relationships for the younger partners, as the older counterparts often manipulate them and reinforce their insecurities by exploiting their inexperience.

This might not sound relevant to our personal lives, but it helps us not romanticize certain type of dynamics among celebrities and in fiction. For example, Olivia Rodrigo recently called out an ex's behavior in her new single Vampire, where she also mentions the fact that he conveniently dated her because she was significantly younger than him and did not know better.

Another example, this time from fiction, is the relationship between Ezra Fitz and Aria Montgomery in the series Pretty Little Liars, which is even more problematic because Ezra is Aria's teacher as well. As if this was not enough to raise concerns, Ezra displays pretty weird behavior during the series, such as spying on Aria with a hidden camera when she was staying at his house. In spite of all these weird details, many fans only realized how problematic it was years later, when they were adults.

Not romanticizing these relationships is key to find a healthy partner for ourselves as well.

Communication is crucial

Okay, I know that most people know this song mostly because of the line "he looks up grinning like a devil", however Cruel Summer also contains some wisdom that has been a bit overlooked.

I'm talking about the line "I don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you". This line suggests that, while Taylor is being drunk and quite playful in the song, she also doesn't want to hide certain sides or problems that she is facing just so that she will appear more likeable to her lover.

The key takeaway here is that, while we should never be toxic to our partners, we cannot expect to have a fulfilling relationship if we hide our flaws and struggles to the other person.

The power of evocative songwriting

The bottom line here is that, if we actually stopped and read the lyrics of many songs written and sung by Taylor Swift, we could actually learn something about love ourselves, or even relate to some of the scenarios she describes.

This makes it even more unfair when we think about her reputation of only writing petty songs about her exes. While this is true to some extent, it erases what I think is the most captivating part of her discography - managing to express the multitude of nuances of love.

Do you listen to Taylor Swift? Do you feel like her song taught you something? Tell me in the comments below.