Last year, when I saw ’s Eras Tour concert movie in theatres, half of my time was spent sobbing — every song reminded me of either a guy I was in love with or crying over at some stage of my life. When the 10-minute version of All Too Well was released, I remember being 24, having broken up with an emotionally abusive, narcissistic guy who was a decade older than me. Our three month situationship left me with trauma and sounded similar to Taylor and Jake Gyllenhal’s (who the song is rumoured to be about, with Jake a decade senior to her and them having dated for the same length of time).
I was 25 when Taylor’s Midnights album was released and I scream-cried to You're On Your Own Kid from my apartment in Paris after breaking up with my French boyfriend. And at 26 on that day at the cinema, I couldn’t think of an age when I wasn’t enmeshed in some kind of boy drama. Even in high school I was dating a casanova and trying to keep tabs on how many girls he was flirting with.
Then Julia Roberts’ famous Eat Pray Love line about either being with a guy or breaking up with a guy since the age of 15 ran through my head and it felt like the slap in the face that I probably needed. Did I really want to get to my 50s and describe every year of my life as one tethered to a man? Could I be a chronic love addict, as some critics describe Swift? And is there a cure to this addiction? I came out of the cinema and made a pledge: I was going to stay single for the rest of my twenti.