After Joe Alwyn Confirmed Exactly When He And Taylor Swift Ended Their Six-Year Relationship, Here’s A Definitive Timeline Of Their Split And Her Subsequent Matty Healy Romance

While many had theorized that Taylor and Joe ended their six-and-a-half-year relationship long before the news of their split went public, Joe has confirmed that it was actually just one week beforehand.

When it was reported that Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn had ended their six-and-a-half-year relationship on April 8, 2023, fans were shocked, to say the least.

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And people were left all the more confused when, less than one month later, Taylor’s new relationship with The 1975 frontman, Matty Healy, went public.

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Their romance was first reported on May 3, and came after Taylor had made a surprise appearance at The 1975’s London concert on January 12.

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This, coupled with fans retrospectively interpreting Taylor’s October 2022 album Midnights as a Joe breakup album, led many to believe that their relationship had secretly ended long before the news was made public.

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The observation that news of their split broke on Matty’s birthday further fueled this belief, with Swifties theorizing that Taylor had purposefully chosen this date as a kind of birthday gift to her new beau.

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But, after staying silent on the situation for more than a year, Joe has now clarified the timeline of his and Taylor’s relationship in a new interview.

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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.”

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He then revealed that he and Taylor had only split one week before the news went public, explaining: “What is unusual and abnormal in this situation is that, one week later, it’s suddenly in the public domain, and the outside world is able to weigh in.”

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

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For context, Taylor and Joe started dating in the fall of 2016, after Taylor had retreated from the public eye following her infamous feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

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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 in the winter of 2022.

In May of last year, she released her heartbreak song “You’re Losing Me,” which is told from the point of view of someone who is desperate for their partner to fight for their relationship, only to be left feeling like an “imposition.”

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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 December 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.”

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In October 2022, Taylor released her album Midnights, which includes songs that suggest that she was starting to tire of the more low-key lifestyle that she had been enjoying in recent years, and also hints at being unhappy in a relationship.

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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.

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Meanwhile, Taylor’s songs on her most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department, suggest that Matty started to creep his way back into her life while she was still with Joe.

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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 “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.”

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On January 12, 2023, Taylor surprised fans at The 1975’s London concert when she came out on stage to perform her song “Anti-Hero,” as well as a cover of The 1975’s “The City.” She and Matty appeared to be on great terms at the time, and Taylor even posed with his mom, Denise Welch, backstage.

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And it has now been revealed that she was still with Joe at this point, and they were officially together until early April. News of the breakup was first reported on April 8.