Joe Alwyn Just Confirmed That He And Taylor Swift Split Just One Month Before Her Relationship With Matty Healy Went Public

Speaking to the Sunday Times’s Style magazine, notoriously private Joe remained diplomatic as he was quizzed on the split, saying: “I would hope that anyone and everyone can empathize and understand the difficulties that come with the end of a long, loving, fully committed relationship of over six and a half years. That is a hard thing to navigate.”

So, with this in mind, here is a definitive timeline of the entire Taylor/Joe/Matty situation.

Even after Taylor’s return to the limelight the following year, she and Joe opted to keep their romance as private as possible. In her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, Taylor explicitly said this was a joint decision, sharing: “We decided together we wanted our relationship to be private.”

And Joe reiterated this in his Style interview, where he is said to have “firmly” told the reporter: “As everyone knows, we together — both of us, mutually — decided to keep the more private details of our relationship private. It was never something to commodify, and I see no reason to change that now.”

While lyrical interpretation is subjective, Taylor’s music suggests that her and Joe’s relationship started to sour as far back as the winter of 2021.

The song also kicks off a recurring theme in suggesting that marriage was a contentious topic in Taylor’s relationship, with the star singing, “I wouldn’t marry me either.”

In December, Taylor’s longtime collaborator and close friend Jack Antonoff revealed that “You’re Losing Me” had been written and recorded long before her and Joe’s split. In fact, he gave the exact date of Dec. 5, 2021. 

This seems to echo Taylor’s lyrics in her 2024 song “Fresh Out the Slammer,” where she says of a relationship: “Splintered back in winter, silent dinners, bitter.”

In her hit single “Bejeweled,” Taylor admits to actively dulling her sparkle because she was so focused on her relationship, before starkly warning that while she was happy to reject the spotlight for a time, the subject of her song shouldn’t underestimate her ability to “reclaim” the popularity that she once had.

Vulnerability in her relationship is also exposed in the Midnights (3am Edition) track “The Great War,” where Taylor sings about mistreating her partner because she is so paranoid that he will eventually betray her. 

The song ultimately ends with a sense of triumph, with Taylor repeating that they had “survived the Great War.” 

“Labyrinth” also suggests that her and Joe’s relationship wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed to outsiders, with Taylor singing about resigning to the fact that a relationship was over, only for her partner to surprise her by fighting for it. 

“I thought the plane was going down / How’d you turn it right around?” she asks. 

In case you’re unaware, the two were first romantically linked way back in 2014, and many fans believe that Taylor's music confirms that they subsequently enjoyed an on-again, off-again situationship of sorts for the next nine years. 

In “Guilty as Sin?” Taylor sings about fantasizing about someone while in a relationship with somebody else. Notably, the song starts with the lyrics: “Drowning in the Blue Nile / He sent me 'Downtown Lights,’” with “The Downtown Lights” by the Blue Nile publicly known to be one of Matty’s favorite songs. 

After admitting that she has grown bored in her current relationship, Taylor sings about the other person: “My bedsheets are ablaze / I’ve screamed his name / Building up like waves / Crashing over my grave.”

She also suggests that Matty "stole" her from Joe in the song “loml,” where she sings: “Mr. Steal Your Girl, then make her cry.”

And, as mentioned, Taylor repeatedly alludes to marriage being a sore topic between her and Joe. In her song “So Long, London,” which is widely believed to be about the British actor, she sings: “You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? / I died on the altar waiting for the proof.”

She also repeatedly hints that Matty preyed on this apparent weak spot in her and Joe’s romance by love-bombing her, also singing in “loml": “You shit-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles.”

And in “The Tortured Poets Department,” she adds: “At dinner, you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one / People put wedding rings on, and that's the closest I've come / To my heart exploding.”

Throughout the month of May, Matty was regularly spotted in the VIP friends and family box at her concerts, and even performed on stage with Taylor’s opening act, Phoebe Bridgers. 

Taylor and Matty were also seen kissing and holding hands while out and about together, with Matty often caught entering and leaving Taylor’s New York City apartment. 

But the whirlwind romance was dogged with controversy from the get-go due to Matty’s long history of problematic behavior, which included appearing to do a Nazi salute on stage, and candidly saying that he masturbates to Black women being “brutalized” just months earlier.

On “The Tortured Poets Department,” Taylor suggests that Matty “ghosted” her, and seemingly refers to him as “the smallest man who ever lived” in an angry breakup song where she appears to question his intentions for pursuing her in the first place. 

Taylor moved on with NFL star Travis Kelce the following month. Matty started dating Gabbriette Bechtel in September, and the two announced their engagement just last week.

Meanwhile, Joe has not publicly been in a relationship since his and Taylor’s split 14 months ago.