This article, published Sunday night, is being repromoted in light of Tuesday’s engagement announcement between Grammy-winning singer and songwriter Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
A few weeks ago at a professional conference for marriage and relationship educators in Washington, D.C., a speaker asked, “What can we do to make marriage cool again?”
Our response: “Get Taylor and Travis to put a ring on it.”
This isn’t (exactly) a joke.
To say Taylor Swift’s influence is monumental is an understatement. Cultural touchstone. Master storyteller. Navigator of broken hearts and masculine deception for Swifties and their moms worldwide, all of whom look to their fearless, beautiful leader to get back on their feet again and “shake it off.”
It’s not kosher to stick our noses into people’s personal business. And romance is as personal as it comes. So, pardon our social faux pas. But we can’t help but dream about the incredible power for good that you two possess.
We suspect you — especially Taylor — may have more capacity to move contemporary culture in positive directions than any other human beings on this perplexed planet right now. We’re not only talking about the “royal” wedding of the century that would suck up every ounce of media bandwidth for a month. (OK, that would be kinda cool too!)
We’re talking about what it would mean if you were to model for the young people of this crazy, lonely world the liberating force of a forever vow — followed by regular shares with your 300 million followers about the prosaic beauty of day-to-day marital love.
Countless young and not-so-young eyes are on you, Taylor, wondering if the relationship with Travis is going to end with “we are never, ever, ever getting back together,” “it’s over/I don’t need your closure,” and a post-breakup “new hell every time you double-cross my mind.”
The emotional upheaval of rotating through relationships without commitment — some call them “situationships” — are center stage in all those wonderful lyrics. The heartache, breakups and regret are familiar to anyone who dates, but perhaps especially when a couple consummates without commitment, then loses any connection at all.
The impact is real, as evidenced by what writer Patricia Snow describes as the Eras Tour’s collective remembering-and-purging: “tumultuous occasions of female catharsis, as all those pent-up, proscribed emotions–petulance and rage, disabling anguish and persistent desire–sweep the amphitheaters where Swift performs, in a spectacle of passionate solidarity ratified by the ubiquitous talisman of the friendship bracelet.”
But what about an alternative route out of emotional duress? Yes, “No one teaches you what to do/ when a good man hurts you/ And you know you hurt him too.” But you also sang about “the time we walked down the aisle/ Our whole town came and our mamas cried/ You said I do and I did too.”
Instead of relationships that give men “all of that youth for free,” and beg the question “did the love affair maim you too?” — consider the following scenario from your collection, Taylor (Travis, are you listening?): Would this kind of commitment offer you both, along with hundreds of millions of easily influenced Swifties and Chiefs fans, a healthier trajectory?
“We’ll rock our babies on that very front porch
“After all this time, you and I
“I’ll be eighty-seven; you’ll be eighty-nine
“I’ll still look at you like the stars that shine.”
Taylor’s heartbreak songs often call out individual bad behaviors — men using women, or girls “too young to be messed with.” Patricia Snow’s analysis calls for more attention to the cultural forest surrounding these behaviors — one that encourages irresponsibility and lack of commitment.
Given that, we’d like to helpfully highlight a few ways, Taylor and Travis, that choosing marriage could possibly shift our societal relationship forest through the union of your two strong trees.
By offering up the reality of marriage alongside the glamour of Super Bowl sightings and sold-out concert venues, you’d hereby give cultural credibility to these data-driven, research-supported realities about love that would especially help your more economically (and emotionally) disadvantaged devotees.
Marriage, on average, creates greater financial stability and wealth than the alternatives. That’s not something either of you need, but heavens, your many followers sure do.
Children in a stable marriage are unlikely to ever know poverty. And children who grow up in a stable, married family also have distinct developmental advantages in terms of mental health, academic achievement and avoiding destructive paths.
Just imagine how darling your own children would be? Despite what you might read, children don’t ruin a relationship. Married moms and dads are happier in the long run than all the alternatives.
In fact, a stable, healthy marriage is the strongest predictor of happiness that social scientists have ever found. Married women and men are much more likely than singles or cohabiting couples to say their lives are meaningful and purposeful than singles.
And the relationship alternatives to marriage just don’t measure up (as your songs often well describe). Singles are twice as likely to say they are lonely and are much more likely to commit suicide.
Cohabiting relationships, now the default union for young adults in the United States, are also much more unstable, with lower relationship quality that negatively affects future marital commitment and longevity (don’t even get us started on polyamory).
Still, Taylor and Travis, all the research findings in the world, along with all the existent marriage education programs and conceivable pro-marriage policies will never reach hearts and motivate behavior the way your marriage story would.
In one particularly sad story, Taylor, you describe a “girl who got frozen.” Years later, she’s still feeling 23 “at the restaurant, when I was still the one you want.” But “You told me that you met someone” and now, after everyone else has moved on, she’s stuck. “I’m sure that you got a wife out there,” she muses, “Kids and Christmas, but I’m unaware. ... You’ve left me no choice but to stay here forever.”
Please help young Americans out with a choice that beautifully models for an entire globe not staying on the broken relationship treadmill forever. If anyone could turn around America’s marriage apathy, it’s you two.
We get it. Photos of Taylor and Travis carrying diaper bags can’t compete with the paparazzi shots out on the town. Oscar Wilde makes a valid point when one of his characters observes, “I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. ... Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
But uncertainty doesn’t take couples to 87 and 89 together, Taylor, rocking on that front porch of your lyrics. As middle-age beckons you both, how about a union grounded in pledges, selflessness and responsibility?
And don’t forget to invest in a good marriage preparation program to strengthen the foundation of your commitment, so that you are ever, ever ever, going to stay together.
