Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn: Relationship Timeline (2024)

Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn kept their romance relatively private, but there were plenty of milestones to look back on prior to their April 2023 split.Swift’s relationship with the U.K. native was made public in May 2017. One year later, a source told Us Weekly exclusively that the Grammy winner believed that Alywn was “The One.”“She wants to get engaged to him,” the insider said. “She just doesn’t feel as though she has to impress anyone at this point.”Swift often spoken about her decision to keep her romance under wraps. [cut extra sentence and added credit in quote] “I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives,” she shared in a November 2020 Rolling Stone interview with Paul McCartney. “I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.”In April 2023, Us confirmed that the pair split after nearly six years.Scroll down to relive their low-key love story:

Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn kept their romance relatively private, but there were plenty of milestones to look back on prior to their April 2023 split.Swift’s relationship with the U.K. native was made public in May 2017. One year later, a source told Us Weekly exclusively that the Grammy winner believed that Alywn was “The One.”“She wants to get engaged to him,” the insider said. “She just doesn’t feel as though she has to impress anyone at this point.”Swift often spoken about her decision to keep her romance under wraps. [cut extra sentence and added credit in quote] “I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives,” she shared in a November 2020 Rolling Stone interview with Paul McCartney. “I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.”In April 2023, Us confirmed that the pair split after nearly six years.Scroll down to relive their low-key love story:

Following her September 2016 split from Tom Hiddleston, The Sun reported that Swift had been dating Alwyn for months. The outlet alleged that the singer wore disguises to keep the relationship quiet and rented an apartment in London to be near her new boyfriend.

Getting to know her friends! The pair double-dated with Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds while visiting Swift’s Rhode Island home, a source told Us Weekly at the time.

Fans got new insight into the “Delicate” singer’s romance when a source revealed to Us that the couple are “very much in love,” adding, “They have quite a low-key relationship, which Taylor likes. It’s very normal, and no one really knows about it right now. They just work out, watch movies together and invite friends over. Taylor loves to cook and bake for him. They are still taking it slow.”

Taking it to the spotlight! Swift prepared to “come out of hiding” ahead of the release of her album Reputation. “She wants to reveal their relationship when the time is right,” an insider told Us. The source also claimed the pop star could see herself having children with Alwyn “down the line.”

When Reputation hit shelves, fans began speculating that the Grammy winner met the Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk actor at the 2016 Met Gala, thanks to lyrics in “I Did Something Bad,” “Getaway Car” and “Dress.” Swift was still dating Calvin Harris at the time but was spotted dancing with Hiddleston at the event.

The “Look What You Made Me Do” singer packed on the PDA with Alwyn while taking in her best friend Ed Sheeran’s Jingle Bell Ball performance in London. Fan videos caught the duo dancing and kissing in the audience. Earlier in the evening, the Brit was spotted enjoying his girlfriend’s set.

Ready to settle down? “Taylor really believes Joe is the one for her,” a source told Us. “She wants to get engaged to him. She just doesn’t feel as though she has to impress anyone at this point.” As for Alwyn? “Joe feels privileged that he gets to be with Taylor,” the insider added.

Her biggest fan! After rumors swirled that “Gorgeous” was written about him, the Boy Erased actor was spotted bopping his head to the tune at Swift’s Glendale, Arizona, tour stop.

“Joe has really showed her a different lifestyle and the value of privacy,” a source revealed to Us. “She’s the happiest she’s ever been.” The pair were seen enjoying a romantic vacation in Turks and Caicos on July 4. “Taylor is so much happier without her personal life in the open,” the insider noted. “She credits Joe for that and realizes how much better off she is.”

Swift and Alwyn made a rare public appearance as they stepped out for dinner in London. The two held hands and kept their heads down as they entered an award-winning steak restaurant for date night.

Swift supported Alwyn at the NYC premiere of his movie The Favourite during the New York Film Festival. They held hands as they exited their car and made their way inside Lincoln Center.

That same month, Alwyn opened up about the privacy he and Swift had built in an interview with British Vogue. “I’m aware people want to know about that side of things,” he shared. “I think we have been successfully very private, and that has now sunk in for people.”

A source told Us exclusively that Taylor’s guy “unconditionally supports her,” and she finds him “to be one of the coolest guys.”

The Favourite actor opened up about his relationship with the “Gorgeous” crooner to Esquire in December 2018. “I didn’t seek advice on that. Because I know what I feel about it,” he said.

The happy duo took a hand-in-hand stroll in New York City the day before New Year’s Eve, with Swift in a burnt orange coat and a cap and the Mary Queen of Scots actor in a blue shearling jacket, jeans and a beanie.

A source told Us in December that an engagement could be on the horizon for the lovestruck pair. “Joe is very keen on proposing soon,” the source exclusively told Us. “But he wants to make it unforgettable and extremely special.”

The Grammy winner and the actor got flirty with each other at the 2019 Golden Globes, where Swift was a presenter. “She was smiling at him while she walked off the stage,” a source told Us of the songstress. “She looked over her shoulder and gave a sassy cute little smile at his table’s direction.”

The pair held hands once more while making a rare public appearance together at a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards afterparty in London on February 10.

A video of the couple at Vanity Fair’s 2019 Oscars afterparty showed them packing on the PDA, with Alwyn resting his hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder and Swift rubbing his back. “Taylor stayed for a long time. She mingled throughout the party and seemed very happy the whole night,” an eyewitness told Us exclusively. “She was chatting to everyone and being very casual. She and Joe seemed really happy together and very relaxed.”

A source told Us that Swift’s closest pals “are all talking about a proposal and how she really wants to marry” the actor.

Swift hinted at her romance with Alywn in “Lover,” a song from her seventh studio album of the same name. One of the lyrics — “I’ve loved you three summers now, honey, but I want ’em all” — appears to hint at the length of their romance. However, some fans have speculated whether the bridge was indicative of her potential future wedding vows to Alwyn: “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.”

In a rare interview moment, the Harriet actor opened up about his relationship with the Grammy winner. At the time, he told London’s Sunday Times that he has no problem with being a source of inspiration in Swift’s music. “No, not at all,” he said. “No. It’s flattering.”

Swift revealed in her Miss Americana documentary that Alwyn’s “wonderful, normal, balanced kind of life” is something that sparked her interest in him.

Swift and Alwyn packed on PDA when they attended the NME Awards together.

Swift and Alwyn “have talked about their future and marriage,” a source told Us. The lovebirds “don’t have a set deadline in place, but they’re very much in love.”

Alwyn confirmed that he was quarantining with Swift amid the coronavirus pandemic by posting several photos of the singer’s cat Benjamin Button hiding around the house.

Swift’s eighth studio album, Folklore, left fans with more questions than answers about the couple’s status. Some social media users speculated that the duo called it quits as Swift sings about losing who she thought was “The 1,” while other listeners called attention to the lyrics in “Invisible String,” which refer to Alwyn’s former job at a yogurt shop.

“Green was the color of the grass / Where I used to read at Centennial Park / I used to think I would meet somebody there,” Swift sings. “Teal was the color of your shirt / When you were 16 at the yogurt shop / You used to work at to make a little money.”

Another theory was that Alwyn secretly cowrote two songs on the album under the pen name William Bowery.

Swift opened up about her decision to keep her relationship with Alwyn private during an interview with Paul McCartney for Rolling Stone magazine. “But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a story line to be commented on in tabloids," she explained. "Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture — the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song ‘Peace’ is talking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave?"

While reflecting on the challenges of writing Folklore amid the coronavirus pandemic, Swift admitted that date nights with Alwyn played a big role in her early inspiration for the record. "I wasn't expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night," she told Entertainment Weekly during an interview published in December 2020. "I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination ... The only people who knew were the people that I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and then my management team."

Alwyn returned to cowrite three songs for Swift’s 2020 album Evermore under the pseudonym William Bowery after debuting the moniker on Folklore. She confirmed his contribution in her November 2020 Disney+ concert special, Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, explaining: “There’s been a lot of discussion about William Bowery and his identity because it’s not a real person. So, William Bowery is Joe, as we know.”

Swift gave Alwyn a sweet shout-out while accepting the award for Album of the Year for Folklore.

“Joe, who is the first person that I play every single song that I write,” she gushed. “And I had the best time writing songs with you in quarantine.”

“Betty,” which the pair cowrote, won an award for "Most Performed Songs of the Year" at the BMI London Awards.

Swift and Alwyn are given a "Thank You" credit for the film Sharp Stick, directed and written by Lena Dunham, one of Swift's BFFs. The filmmaker explained that the couple got to critique the movie early on.

“They are just really great friends of mine who watched a really early cut of the film and gave me notes," Dunham told IMDb during the Sundance Film Festival. "They’re both just really interesting perceptive people. Taylor’s been one of my close friends for a really long time and Joe is an actor who I actually ended up working with on a project that I shot just a few months after this."

“I think people can do what they want and makes them happy. I’m obviously happy in a monogamous relationship,” he noted during a panel for the show in February 2022 via Deadline.

Swift didn't mention her boyfriend in her Instagram Story, which included a screenshot of a good review of Alwyn's TV show Conversations with Friends. Instead, she simply noted that she "can confirm it's phenomenal" when the show debuted on Hulu, and she added an "out now" sticker.

During an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Alwyn explained why he chose the name William Bowery for his songwriting credits on Folklore and Evermore. “It was a combination of William, my great-grandfather — who I actually never met — [who] was a composer,” he explained. “He wrote a lot of classical music and he wrote a lot of film scores. And then Bowery is the area in New York that I spent a lot of time in when I first went over there. So, stick ’em together.”

The actor added that he and his girlfriend decided to hide his identity at first so that fans would approach the songs without any expectations about his involvement. “We chose to do it so the people, first and foremost, would listen to the music first before dissecting the fact that we did it together,” he said. “[The name] sounds like a kind of Agatha Christie character that should be wearing a monocle with a big mustache.”

The two were spotted packing on the PDA while on vacation in the Bahamas.

“Taylor and Joe have the best of all worlds right now,” a source exclusively told Us of the pair’s romance. “They love dividing their time between England and Nashville and that’s the way they both like it.”

From the moment the “Exile” songstress started dating the English actor, “It became apparent to both of them that they were happiest doing their own thing in a low-key way,” the insider said, noting, “that was a big reason why they bonded.”

More than five years into their relationship, the couple “are wildly happy together and are excited about their future together,” the source added.

With the release of her 10th studio album, Midnights, Swift's relationship with Alwyn was once again thrust into the spotlight. Not only did the actor cowrite the track "Sweet Nothing," but the "Maroon" singer-songwriter sang about the ever-present engagement rumors on "Lavender Haze."

"All they keep asking me (All they keep asking me) / Is if I'm gonna be your bride," Swift sings on the track. "The only kinda girl they see (Only kinda girl they see) / Is a one-night or a wife."

“If I had a pound for every time I think I’ve been told I’ve been engaged, then I’d have a lot of pound coins,” Alwyn joked in an interview with WSJ. Magazine. "I mean, the truth is, if the answer was yes, I wouldn’t say, and if the answer was no, I wouldn’t say."

Although Alwyn wasn't seen at the 2023 Grammys, Swift wore his black leather jacket to an afterparty. The Celine coat was worn over a green sequin mini dress in photos shared via her pals, including Kelsea Ballerini, on Instagram.

Us confirmed that Alwyn and Swift split after six years together.

One year after news of the exes’ breakup made headlines, Swift released her 11th studio album titled The Tortured Poets Department. The record — and its bonus extended version, TTPD: The Anthology — featured many songs seemingly inspired by her romance with Alwyn, providing possible insight into their romantic downfall.

“And you say I abandoned ship / But I was going down with it / My white-knuckle dyin’ grip / Holding tight to your quiet resentment,” Swift sings in the bridge of “So Long, London,” the title of which is an apparent nod to Alwyn’s U.K. roots. “And my friends said it isn’t right to be scared / Every day of a love affair / Every breath feels like rarest air / When you’re not sure if he wants to be there.”

In the lyrics of one of the album’s most heartbreaking songs, “loml,” Swift states, “Oh what a valiant roar / What a bland goodbye / The coward claimed he was a lion / I’m combing through the braids of lies / I’ll never leave, never mind / Our fields of dreams engulfed in fire / Your arsons match your somber eyes / And I’ll still see it until I die / You’re the loss of my life.”

Alwyn broke his silence on the split more than one year later in an interview with The Sunday Times. “I would hope that anyone and everyone can empathise and understand the difficulties that come with the end of a long, loving, fully committed relationship of over six and a half years," he shared "That is a hard thing to navigate. 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.”

He continued, adding, “So you have something very real suddenly thrown into a very unreal space: tabloids, social media, press, where it is then dissected, speculated on, pulled out of shape beyond recognition. And the truth is, to that last point, there is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said. I have made my peace with that.”

Alwyn emphasized that he'd continue to remain quiet about their romance. “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,” Alwyn explained. “And, look, this is also a little over a year ago now and I feel fortunate to be in a really great place in my life, professionally and personally. I feel really good.”