Op-Ed

Tom Hiddleston Opens Up About Lost Love and Taylor Swift

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Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift took the world by storm last Summer as their romance traveled all around the world. Their adventures took them from America, England, Italy and even to Australia. They looked so happy together, so happy that no one could believe their love could truly be real, that it must be some magical PR ploy to help Swift out of her recent heartbreak and to help Hiddleston further his career in America.

 

In the months after, we haven’t heard much about the relationship. Swift hasn’t released any music about him (if she does, we imagine it will be a magical love story), and Hiddleston hasn’t talked about the relationship much in the press. Can you blame him? The entirety of his relationship, his motives and sincerity was being questioned. He couldn’t go out for a run without cameras following him. He was not use to this much attention or distraction from his career roles. Instead of being asked about the movie he was working on (Thor: Ragnarok,) he was asked about his relationship with Swift. Was the relationship real? What was she like.

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I wrote a piece on a similar subject before: Here’s Why Some Celebs Can’t Handle Being Friends With Taylor Swift. In it, I address how hard it is for other celebrities to be friends with Swift, because every interview, every interaction becomes about her instead of about them. The media knows Swift is the biggest Pop star, that her very name will immediately attract attention. So what better way to ensure that their articles do well? Ask a question about Taylor Swift. After they do this, instead of promoting say a model doing a fashion show and leaving the headline to be about what it’s truly about, they turn it into “So and So Says XYZ About Taylor Swift…” Imagine, nothing is about you anymore. You love this person, but you also lose sight of you and the importance of what you’re doing and what you want to say. Only the strongest people can put all of that aside and it’s not for everyone.

This kind of attention takes its toll not just on friendships, but especially on relationships. When the very nature of you is questioned. When every look on your face somehow has an alternative meaning and everything about you from your hair to your shoes is analyzed, simply because of who you are dating. No one else gets this kind of criticism. Why has the world put so much attention and focus on who is in Taylor Swift’s life?

People joke about Swift and how she hasn’t had much luck with dating. Mind you, she spent 15 months in a relationship from 2015-2016. Could anyone find luck with dating when everything that couple does seems to be on some sort of sick public trial? It’s a lot of pressure and relationships, especially new ones, are hard enough. There are enough doubts and insecurities in a new relationship, adding cameras, fake headlines, falsities and rumors can quickly detangle that.

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Hiddleston has finally opened up about his relationship with Swift and not with some quick, over-rehearsed answer. No, he was passionate about his answers, he went on and on even when the reporter told him he didn’t have to talk about it anymore. He wanted to set the record straight, that things done in private, that get broadcasted to the media without permission and taken out of context are the kinds of things that bring sadness and pain. He also wanted people to know how real the relationship was and how they both decided they didn’t want to hide and were going to truly live their lives and do things they wanted to do, despite the cameras.

Hiddleston opened up to GQ about the relationship saying:

“If you’re under attack, if your values are under attack, if you’re being shamed, if you’re being humiliated, the animal response is to hide in the bush. It’s to be less, to make yourself smaller, to diminish in size and volume. And the lesson of 2016 is we have to love more, we have to risk more, we have to be braver, we have to be more outspoken.”

The reporter went on to say: “It wasn’t until much later that night, after we’d parted, that I realized we had started talking about Taylor Swift long before we started talking about Taylor Swift.”

Hiddleston continues with her: “Taylor is an amazing woman, She’s generous and kind and lovely, and we had the best time. Of course it was real.”

When the reporter asks if he wants to say anything about Australia, about the Fourth of July party and the infamous ‘I ♥ T.S’ tank top he says:

 

“The truth is, it was the Fourth of July and a public holiday and we were playing a game and I slipped and hurt my back. And I wanted to protect the graze from the sun and said, ’Does anyone have a T-shirt?’ And one of her friends said, ’I’ve got this.’ ” The friend pulled out the “I ♥ T.S.” And we all laughed about it. It was a joke.”

He went on to shared how he doesn’t want other people’s opinions to affect his life and the way he lives. He definitely found that to be a lot harder than he could have previously imagined.

“I have to be so psychologically strong about not letting other people’s interpretations about my life affect my life. A relationship exists between two people. We will always know what it was. The narratives that are out there altogether have been extrapolated from pictures that were taken without consent or permission, with no context. Nobody had the context for that story. And I’m still trying to work out a way of having a personal life and protecting it, but also without hiding. So the hardest thing is that was a joke among friends on the Fourth of July. I don’t know, I just, I was surprised. I was just surprised that it got so much attention. The tank top became an emblem of this thing. I only know the woman I met. She’s incredible. A relationship in the limelight… A relationship always takes work. A relationship in the limelight takes work. And it’s not just the limelight. It’s everything else. (They both wanted a regular relationship) So we decided to go out for dinner, we decided to travel.”

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After going to Australia to film Thor: Ragnarok, he would get up in the morning to run and the cameras would be there. He says: “I’m getting up so I can do this job well. I’m getting up to go for my run so I can play Loki as well as I can.”

The reporter shares one of the most important parts about the difficulty of a relationship in the limelight:

“Everywhere he went, whether it was checking e-mail on a park bench or looking at a menu, if he furrowed his brow it meant he was miserable and that would incite a new tabloid story about how hard he was taking all of this. It was a tough time, a public tough time. Chris Hemsworth gave him some good guidance; Hugh Laurie checked in. His family worried. So you can think whatever you want about Tom Hiddleston, you can swift-boat Hiddleswift all you want. But he is as bewildered by the whole thing as you and I are.

He looks at me finally and he says;

“I’m not going to live my life in hiding. Because you have to fight for love. You can’t live in fear of what people might say. You know, you have to be true to yourself.”

 

The end of the article is the most vulnerable, it’s not recorded, it’s not documented for the world to read, but the reporter gives us true insight into how broken the world can make a person. How despite the fact there is “freedom of press and speech” that what people fail to realize is while they’re trying to make a buck, they’re destroying lives by writing about things that 1. aren’t even true and 2. don’t even matter. People all need to spend a little more time analyzing their own lives and relationships and why those are going wrong instead of trying to ruin and pick a part perfectly happy ones.

“I turn my tape recorder off and I stand up, but he doesn’t. He shakes his head again, his hands clasped together, and he hangs his head. I sit back down and we talk some more because I finally understand that he isn’t here as someone who needs to explain his side in a PR battle; he’s here as someone who is still crushed by the end of a relationship.

So we sit and talk for a while. We talk about how relationships go sideways, how the ripples of a breakup can still pin you to a wall even months later. We talk about heartache. We talk about sadness and healing. We talk about what it’s like to love and what happens when the object of that love withdraws but all your love is still there. We talk about how those things can really change a person. The world will chip away at your optimism, and you just have to fight back. You have to be someone who is still full of joy and full of love, who can still use a word like “obsessed” about porridge. You have to be bold and open. You have to be honest. You have to be like Tom Hanks. We all have to be more like Tom Hanks.”

Let’s promote love and cheer people on who find happiness instead of trying to destroy it. After all, love is what creates us in the first place and hate is what is destroying the world around us.

Categories: Op-Ed, Taylor Swift

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