By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the news…#HiddleSwift is no longer. While it’s a fate most of us saw coming, we would’ve hoped things would be different this time around. After all, it wasn’t long ago that Tom stood by Taylor through the Kimye Snapchat debacle. They’d met each other’s parents already, for goodness sakes. But if there’s one thing about Taylor’s dating life that we’ve learned, it’s that she’s never met a breakup song she doesn’t like. But seriously, Taylor’s fallen hard and fast plenty of times before. Heck, she even wrote a song about it. Remember Red?
Loving him is like driving a new Maserati down a dead end street / Faster than the wind passionate as sin ending so suddenly / Love is like trying to change your mind once you’re already flying through the free-fall / Like the colors in autumn so bright just before they lose it all
While Taylor rarely names actual names in her breakup songs, speculation long ago confirmed Red to be about ex-beau Jake Gyllenhaal, another whirlwind Taylor Swift romance which reportedly ended because Gyllenhaal was uncomfortable with such a public relationship. Age was reportedly another factor, as Gyllenhaal was 30 to Taylor’s 21 at the time of their breakup. Sound familiar?
Today, Hiddleston is 35 to Taylor’s 26—nine years her senior, just like Gyllenhaal. Tom and Taylor had a whirlwind romance, very in the public eye. So it comes as no real surprise that it suffered a similar fate. However, there’s a pretty substantial twist. According to a source who spoke with E! Online, “Taylor felt he wanted to take the relationship to be too public and she was not happy about it and thought it was too much publicity.”
What now?
According to early sources, it appears Taylor was the one to break things off. This might mean she’s learning. She’s still allowing herself to act before thinking, getting swept up in the whirlwind romance to distract herself from a fresh breakup. But it also might mean she has more in common that we might suspect with another person in the spotlight after a recent breakup: Nick Viall.
Last night, the season finale of Bachelor in Paradise aired. Nick Viall, one of only four remaining bachelors deducing whether or not to propose to their vacation flings, had a difficult night with Jen. Just last week, Nick had been named the next Bachelor for the ABC franchise this Fall, basically spoiling the fact that things couldn’t end all that well for him last night.
But while we knew their unfortunate fate, poor Jen seemed optimistic. She’d been saying all season long that Nick had walls up, but she thought they were making progress, that they were breaking through them together. But Nick came with a lot of baggage.
We first saw him in 2014 on Andi Dorfman’s season of The Bachelorette, where he came close to finding love. He made it through the entire season only to have his heart broken when she chose Josh instead. But Nick didn’t let that stop him. He came back to try and win the affections of the next Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe in 2015 on the following season. Again, Nick made it all the way to the finale and again was the runner up when Kaitlyn chose Shawn over him. He decided to come back to see if the third time was the charm on Bachelor in Paradise this summer, only to realize that his past relationship troubles were too dark a cloud for him to overcome.
Sound familiar? Both Nick and Taylor have had multiple relationships which they’ve carried out in the public eye. They’ve both let themselves fall fast for someone, had very public breakups, and dealt with the aftermath as everyone dissected their intimate, vulnerable moments. It’s only natural that they’d have some walls up. It’s only natural that past hurt might make starting with a clean slate nearly impossible. But trying again is admirable. And publicly communicating that your own insecurities are keeping you from seeing a future with someone who’s falling for you? That’s downright brave.
And so it’s with a heavy heart that I say farewell to Hiddleswift. What can we learn from Nick and Taylor? Relationships are made up of two people and—no matter how fun the promise of a new relationship can be—you owe it to the other person to speak up if you fear you’re not on the same page. Maybe Taylor really loved Tom and it was all moving just a little too fast. Perhaps Nick really have feelings for Jen but he was too insecure about his Bachelorette finale disasters to take a chance.
Whatever their reasons, ending it “swiftly” when you can’t picture a future together is better than waiting for the honeymoon stage wear off as mutual feelings turn “viall,” right? 
