I guess it’s time to share my thoughts on the whole Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce situation. I’ll say right off the bat that I’m probably just as (if not more) exhausted that you are when it comes to the incessant coverage and speculation and dissection of every detail surrounding this romance, but I do think it’s worth thinking about from a bigger picture perspective.

At the base level of all of this, it’s really so refreshing to see her so clearly happy, so clearly having fun and so clearly being herself in a relationship again. Given the monstrously successful year she’s had that might seem like a given, but it’s actually been a while since we’ve seen this from her.

During her years of dating Joe Alwyn, which started during her reclusive Reputation era — a time when she famously didn’t do any interviews after being scorned by the press coming out of her victorious 1989 era (she won the Grammy for Album of the Year) that left her over-exposed (the girl squad, bringing guests up on stage every night of her tour) and maligned (the whole KimYe feud that, at the time, she was on the wrong side of public opinion on) — Taylor became (and stayed) extremely private.

he was rarely paparazzi’d, she didn’t walk many red carpets (and never did with Joe) and her social media got much less personal. While this timid approach to her relationship with the press and the public might’ve been born out of the whole idea of being torn down after reaching her initial 1989-fueled apex, it always felt as though she remained that way because of Joe.