The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.
We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.
@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)
If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.
(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)
We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.
Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.
By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.
But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)
One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)
With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.
To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)
At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.
TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.
I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.
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My Steddie Gifsets: 1/?
10 Things I Hate About You AU
Nancy wants to date Robin. But she knows Robin would feel far too guilty to ever say yes to the girl who broke her best friend’s heart. Unless it was clear Steve had truly moved on. So Nancy enlists the help of her younger brother and his friends, promising to do their homework for a month so they have more time to work on building a campaign if they can get Steve in a relationship. So Mike and Dustin embark on a mission to get Steve a date.
Steve stopped dating after his heart was broken. Everyone knows it, because practically every girl in Hawkins has asked him out, only to be rejected. With the pool now so small, Dustin knows he has to get creative and choose someone who will really be able to grab Steve’s attention. So Eddie- the head of his D&D club and the resident bad boy- seems like the perfect fit. Unfortunately, Dustin also knows that anti-establishment Eddie would never date somebody like Steve- who represents everything he hates- unless there was something in it for him (even if Dustin insists that getting to date Steve should be enough of a prize). So Dustin pools up some money (and his most prized miniature that he knows Eddie has been eyeing), and tells Eddie it’s all his if he can get a date with Steve. He hopes that maybe they can both find happiness together. And things seem to go perfectly. Steve and Eddie fall for each other, Robin and Nancy get together. Love is in the air. But of course, the truth always comes out…
(If anyone feels compelled to use this as a prompt, please send the results my way, I’m obsessed with the idea of this AU)
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you know what i was thinking about.
like.
to me it feels like kaeya grew up to become what diluc needed. he had already been thrown away by his father once, and now, in this new home, he tried to make himself as useful and irreplaceable as possible. a confidant, friend, brother. but once he realized he was just playing a part, just as his father sent him to do? once he told diluc, knowing how it would end between them?
i feel like the kaeya we see in-game is largely grappling with that realization. honestly, he’s flirtatious and aloof but it constantly feels like a front. he no longer has to be diluc’s second half and shadow. but then, what’s left is a man fighting for a country that he feels was never really his to begin with. it still feels like he still has himself convinced that he’s just playing a role and deceiving those around him.
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I somehow got warped into listening to a Gilmore Girls podcast where they discussed the infamous "I know you" line with two r*gan fans and only one lit fan and of course, everyone was against it. So it got me wondering what your opinion on that line is, specifically? I never considered it bad or even "manipulative" of Jess because even if you were to argue that he "tried to guilt Rory for not being 'a perfect version of herself that he made up'", that doesn't really hold up within the narrative in season 6 when Jess pretty much leaves her alone afterwards? And many like to argue that Jess just knew "a version" of Rory about 1.5 years before seeing her again when she dropped out of Yale, but that alone isn't a) a significant amount of time that has passed, and b) doesn't negate the fact that Jess could obviously tell that Rory was just lost and aimless, not that he was angry with her because she dropped out of Yale and decided to pursue something else because obviously, Rory had not taken up any other route after the season 5 finale, she had just become aimless. So yeah, if you'd be interested about discussing this, I'd love to hear your opinion on it
i imagine the people who say they’re against it only do so because they’re biased and just… don’t understand what jess meant by it. the bottom line is, he does know her. he knows her ambitions and life goals—to become an overseas correspondent, the next christiane amanpour, to attend an ivy league school and do well there. academia has always been a passion of rory’s; you could even go so far as to identify it as a piece of her personality, so the fact that she’d dropped out of a school she fought tooth and nail to get into was definitely alarming (to everyone, not just to jess). of course he was gonna ask her what the hell was going on??? he was concerned. beyond that, everything he said was true, and you can tell from rory’s facial expressions that she knows it. also, the fact that this conversation gets her to go back to yale says everything. i don’t understand why people are so against it. like, literati aside it’s what gets rory back on track, so the fact that people resent it even as a narrative device when these are the same people who hate on rory for dropping out and “spiralling” just baffles me. anyway, i don’t at all see any part of the speech as manipulative or guilt-tripping. i see it as someone who loves rory and understands her questioning why she’s settling for a guy who drags her down and a lifestyle that doesn’t at all suit her, nor compliment her interests. there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
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