Listening to Taylor Swift as an Adult Child of Divorce
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American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour concert at Sofi Stadium in Inglewood, CA, Aug 9 2023
Image attribution: Paolo V, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Like many other women my age, I was ecstatic when Taylor Swift began re-releasing her early albums. A lifelong Swiftie, each listen through has vividly brought pieces of my life back to me. While I am biding my time waiting for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) to drop in October, I am playing Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), released in July, on repeat. When I press play on the first song, I am still transported back in time.
I remember making an entire ritual and event when Taylor Swift released “Mine” in 2010, the single from Speak Now. I curled up on the couch and put in my earbuds, pressing play with all the pomp and circumstance a fifteen year old could muster. It was the first time Taylor was releasing a single since I fell in love with her music—but that wasn’t why I remember that moment so vividly: it was because of the close-to-home lines and message of the song.
That summer, my parents were two years away from splitting up, but the tension in their relationship and our home had been present my whole life, including a year-long split while I was in elementary school. As an only child on the verge of becoming an adult, I was the confidant of each of my parents: I both saw each’s flaws in how they treated the other and felt the need to walk on eggshells to keep the peace. So when I heard the line “you made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter,” I felt seen in a way I hadn’t experienced before.
“Mine” goes on to portray what could easily be the experience of an ACOD in a committed relationship—which is not surprising, considering that she wrote the song not long after her own parents separated. Early in the song, she sings, “you learn my secrets and you figure out why I’m guarded. You say we’ll never make my parents’ mistakes.” Using her firsthand experience, Taylor simply lies out the fears that I had and that many of us share.
The bridge goes even farther into our experience, describing the panic that comes when fighting with a partner, one I learned as an adult: “[I] brace myself for the goodbye / ‘cause that’s all I’ve ever known.” This is a fear and cynicism that cries out in so many ACODs who don’t trust relationships because of their broken experience. There is a deep thirst for the continual, stable presence of a partner, which is also reflected in the lines immediately following: “you took me by surprise / you said I’ll never leave you alone.” Ultimately, “Mine” paints a hopeful future for a wounded individual in love.
This image of committed, lasting love is not universal to Taylor’s work, however. While the theme of marriage is an “invisible string” throughout, her view of the institution develops throughout her discography, gradually moving from idealism to cynicism, a change in perspective common to the experience of many ACODs.
In her early country albums, Taylor sees marriage as a highly-regarded ultimate goal. This is most clear in “Love Story,” her first hit single from Fearless, which ends with her beloved proposing: “marry me, Juliet, you’ll never have to be alone … I talked to your dad / go pick out a white dress / it’s a love story, baby just say yes.” It’s the culmination of the entire song: a traditional happy ending that functions as the climax of every “Love Story,” as the title suggests.
She sees marriage as the ultimate end even in Speak Now and Red, the first two albums after her parents’ separation. She upholds its presence even while using marriage as a less serious prop. In the title track “Speak Now,” she crashes a wedding and gets the groom to leave his bride at the altar. Red’s “Starlight” is another fictional tale where she sings “we could get married, have ten kids and teach them how to dream.” In both, marriage is just a storytelling device: some “impossible dream” that is still the goal and a decision one doesn’t want to get wrong.
Her pop albums mark the shift to a more broken view of relationships, with conclusions and coping mechanisms all too common in the culture today: getting rid of or avoiding marriage altogether by turning to hook up culture or low-commitment relationships. Marriage is not mentioned at all in 1989, while the idea of “a long list of ex-lovers” (“Blank Space”) is. Taylor hasn’t stopped desiring lasting love, though: instead, her cynicism has resulted in the belief of her own incapacity for marriage.
From Reputation to Midnights, this is the predominant theme—one that coincided with her relationship with her partner of six years, Joe Alwyn. Once she has found her beloved, she is obsessed with the fear of losing him. On Reputation, there is “End Game” and “New Year’s Day,” which both hope for forever but express a fear of losing her partner—lyrics also echoed in Lover’s “Cornelia Street,” where she muses that she can never pass by the apartment they shared if they ever break up.
She uses explicit wedding imagery in two of the songs on Lover, placing them in the midst of this anxiety. In the title track, she replaces “husband” with “lover” in the recognizable vows formula: “ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand / with every guitar string scar on my hand / I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover.” It’s almost as though she’s acknowledging marriage doesn’t last, but she hopes that by foregoing it altogether, their love might. She also has a bright, upbeat song with a chorus that sings “I love shiny things but I’d marry you with paper rings.” The lasting sacramental object of golden rings is replaced with something temporary and easily breakable.
Finally, the darker, more subdued most recent third of her discography brings the sadness of this anxiety to the forefront as opposed to hiding it behind pop beats. Her album folklore has “peace,” where she tells her beloved “I’d give you my wild, give you a child” but also wonders “would it be enough if I could never give you peace?” The sister album evermore takes this same idea to a more stark end, where Taylor sings about rejecting a proposal because the speaker “'would’ve made such a lovely bride, what a shame she’s f— in the head,' they said.” By way of somewhat explaining her choice, she states, “I never was ready, so I watched you go.” There is a deep belief that the speaker—whether Taylor or a fictional figure—is not capable of lasting love and needs to reject marriage altogether.
This theme takes a sad conclusion—for now—in a final “From the Vault” bonus track from her most recent studio album, Midnights. Called “You’re Losing Me,” it’s about her breakup with Joe Alwyn, the partner and subject of five of her ten studio albums. The bridge contains a self-deprecating line that is her final say on the subject: “I wouldn’t marry me either, a pathological people pleaser.” She dismisses her worthiness and ability for committed, lasting love.
This cynical, anxiety-ridden view of marriage is part of what connects Taylor most to her fellow ACODs. Seeing our parents’ marriages fall apart instills in us the idea that love doesn’t last. Many of us adapt to this through people pleasing to keep people from rejecting us or guarding ourselves with a deep cynicism that keeps people at an arms’ reach so they don’t get close enough to reject us.
My own personal experience has gone through a lot of doubt, fear, and people pleasing. My parents split as I left for college, which caused all of my relationships during those four years to be marked by anxiety. It would present itself in different ways: bursting into tears after the smallest disagreements with my roommates, ruthless perfectionism in practicing my faith, and chasing after guys who were not interested. I always worried that I wasn’t good enough—smart enough, holy enough, or pretty enough—for people to care about me or stick around.
It took years of work with loyal friends and a good therapist to heal my relationships. My friends were patient with me through my college years and beyond, showing me that no matter what, they were here to stay. Most importantly, therapy and prayer helped heal my relationship with God, where I stopped trying to impress God the Father and began to believe that He loved me as I am.
In my relationship with my husband, I have had to fight this doubt of worthiness and fear of losing him each new time it reappears—which is ongoing. We dated throughout the pandemic, which brought both of our respective harmful coping mechanisms and self-beliefs to the forefront in ways that demanded being dealt with. Through couple’s therapy, I came to understand how my anxieties hurt him and how his actions were hiding his own fears. We gained tools to help each other work through our respective moments of anxiety so we could remind the other that we were safe and loved.
Years after I had first heard and related to the song, “Mine” had become an image of my own relationship. During the course of the difficult growth and issues that brought us into therapy, we had plenty of 2:30 a.m. fights of our own where I felt sure that “everything was slipping right out of our hands.” It was the union of my own healing journey and my now-husband’s reassurances that he “would never leave [me] alone” that helped me stay grounded. Whenever I was certain things were breaking, he was able to help me discern what was false and what was true, and showed me through his actions that his love was truer than I could have hoped.
As Taylor re-releases her early albums, we’re able to see a mature Taylor revisit her young view of marriage and reconsider it ourselves, both the artist and us as listeners holding it up alongside our experiences. Taylor, who has lost her own faith and experienced countless heartbreaks both at the hands of a ruthless hookup culture and the very real struggles of anxiety and doubt, is still in the midst of a “Great War” to find a committed, lasting love.
My parents’ divorce has thrown endless obstacles between my husband and I along our journey to and since the altar, and it was only through leaning on a healing faith, a community of friends, and my husband’s and my mutual commitment to each other that I was able to confront and overcome these obstacles. I know that new aspects of the wound will continue to show themselves, but they do not take away from my worthiness of love and will not take away the “best thing that’s ever been mine.”
[Editor’s Note: This article was updated by the author after publication after we were made aware that Taylor is, like so many of us, an ACOD.]
About the Author
Branan Thompson is a former English teacher and youth minister who writes about literature, faith, and neurodiversity at The Bookish & Distracted Catholic. She is an only child ACOD who lives in Maryland with her husband. Connect with her on instagram @bdt.jmj to chat about writing, hand lettering, or local coffee shops.
Reflection Questions for Small Groups or Individuals
If you are familiar with Taylor Swift and her music, how do her lyrics resonate with your experience?
How would you let Taylor Swift know how her music connects to your experience as an ACOD?
What would you say to Taylor to help her work through her wounds?
Do you relate more to the people-pleasing or cynical self-protective habits?