Do You Date Like Taylor Swift

Women's Dating

Do You Date Like Taylor Swift?

Dr. Wendy Walsh

Written by: Dr. Wendy Walsh

Dr. Wendy Walsh

Known as America's Relationship Expert, Dr. Wendy Walsh is an award-winning television journalist, radio host & podcaster, and the author of three books on relationships and thousands of print and digital articles. More than 1.5 million people follow her sage advice on social media. She holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and teaches in the Psychology Department at California State University Channel Islands and has been the host of "The Dr. Wendy Walsh Show" on iHeart Radio's KFI AM 640 since 2015. Walsh is also a former Emmy-nominated co-host of "The Doctors," as well as former host of the nationally syndicated show "EXTRA." She was named a Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2017 after speaking out about harassment at a major news network.

See full bio »

Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to ensure DatingAdvice articles have been edited for overall clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement. She has worked at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Gwinnett Daily News, and The Gainesville Sun covering lifestyle topics.

Discuss This! Discuss This!
Advertiser Disclosure

Pop star Taylor Swift has a red-hot career, but it seems the media would rather focus on her string of famous boyfriends and her many heartbreaks.

So what’s going on with Taylor? And what can the rest of us learn from her many losses in the love wars?

Taylor shares something many average women face:

Difficulty in finding a peer relationship.

With more women in the workforce and single, childless 20-somethings making more money than their male peers, it has become more difficult for women to meet men who can be a partner and financial peer.

Now imagine how hard it is with Taylor’s über fame and riches.

If a woman subscribes to a traditional gender ideal where the man is the primary provider, those men become fewer and fewer as she rises in economic power.

The solution:

Reframe your idea of what a great guy is.

Maybe he’s a protector and caregiver. Maybe he’ll have your back no matter what and even help more around the house and with the kids.

We all know money and power are connected, so the solution for you (and Taylor) is to find ways a guy can feel powerful and have a voice outside of money.

“The heartbreak she sings about touches

a nerve with many female fans.”

Anxious attachment style.

If her lyrics tell the story, we know Taylor Swift can spot trouble when it walks in and becomes attracted to it to the point where she keeps getting back together with it.

This is a classic pattern of one who craves intimacy but invites in the very thing she fears, that is, one who abandons her at a critical moment of need.

In our culture today, our revolving door of romantic partners suggests many of us suffer from the same unstable attachment style.

It is related to early life neglect or abuse and also to the high degree of mobility in our population.

We moved around as our parents chased new spouses, jobs or education, and instead of learning to bond and stay attached to our friends, we mostly learned to say goodbye.

We also learned saying goodbye hurts, yet we still choose that pattern because it is familiar.

Happiness and feelings of security can be terrifying if we’ve never experienced them before. Learning to trust love and chose people who can love us back in a secure way is a crucial relationship skill.

One thing is for sure about Taylor Swift’s love life: It has provided her with plenty of artistic material. The heartbreak she sings about touches a nerve with many female fans.

We know some men are trouble and we are happy to sing her anthem that we will never, ever get back together.

Advertiser Disclosure

DatingAdvice.com is a free online resource that offers valuable content and comparison services to users. To keep this resource 100% free, we receive compensation from many of the offers listed on the site. Along with key review factors, this compensation may impact how and where products appear across the site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). DatingAdvice.com does not include the entire universe of available offers. Editorial opinions expressed on the site are strictly our own and are not provided, endorsed, or approved by advertisers.

Our Editorial Review Policy

Our site is committed to publishing independent, accurate content guided by strict editorial guidelines. Before articles and reviews are published on our site, they undergo a thorough review process performed by a team of independent editors and subject-matter experts to ensure the content’s accuracy, timeliness, and impartiality. Our editorial team is separate and independent of our site’s advertisers, and the opinions they express on our site are their own. To read more about our team members and their editorial backgrounds, please visit our site’s About page.