Look, we’ve all been in a relationship at some point with a crazy asshole that tore through our lives and made it a complete Hell by filling it with co-dependent love bombing. These kinds of affairs are filled with an intense passion that is carried through its duration, often leading to an explosive ending with shattered hearts everywhere.

Thankfully, these courtships with Satan usually burn hot and fast and are over within a few months. With that said, it’s important to remember that though these romances don’t last long, the flames from that passionate heat can leave a very real path of destruction in its wake.

And to be honest, before I fell down the rabbit hole of Taylor Swift’s relationships and how they’ve impacted her art, I held a preconceived notion that she was exactly this kind of crazy asshole.

Between 2006 and the present day, Taylor has had 14 relationships that have “inspired” at least 20 different songs. Also, it’s worth noting that a majority of those relationships lasted about three months—with an average of one month equaling one song, in terms of creative output. When using these numbers for context, the emotional impact displayed in the lyrics to many of Taylor’s songs based on her prior dating experiences takes on much more of a “roller coaster ride into DisneyHell” vibe.

Yet, the further I went on with my investigation, the more I would come to find out that I was incredibly off-track and there may be something much more nefarious taking place.

The main reason I feel my assumption is incorrect comes from the fact that none of her exes talked shit about her. Well … some of them did, but nothing that ever questioned her grip on reality. Mostly, the exes that were upset had been hurt over the fact that the inner-most emotional core of their time with Taylor was put on full display for the world to see.

But in reality, can they be THAT upset over her using their love as fodder? I mean, this is what she was trained to do by the fame-machine since her first release.

Having spent half a decade in the 2010s working in the music business (both as a journalist and as a PR manager), I learned that whenever an artist has success of some kind, anyone who can shape their career—managers, record labels, etc.—wants that exact same thing duplicated over and over again.

With Taylor’s first taste of success coming in the form of a break-up song called “Tim McGraw,” the die was cast.

While a teenager in High School, she was dating an older boy who was a senior. She knew that at the end of the year, he would be leaving, and the relationship would come to an end. For a teenager, having a deadline set on how much longer you can love someone hanging over your head would stir up a million different emotions. Taylor was emotionally smart enough to tap into this well and co-write the song “Tim McGraw.”

This track became the lead single off her self-titled debut album and was an immediate hit, reaching the Top 10 in the Country Music charts and eventually going double platinum. This track would also become the blueprint for her musical output over the next two decades.

I truly believe that Taylor is completely in touch with her emotions and knows how to use them to her advantage. Between the despair she felt while writing “Tim McGraw” to the intense endorphins that were released when the same song took her career into the stratosphere, she paid attention. And this is where I believe things take a much darker turn; I think she’s manipulating these men in order to gain the most intense emotional outcome needed to allow for maximum creative output.

When you look through her relationship history, you’ll see that between the Swift-ness of her album releases in conjunction with the relationships that happened prior to that album’s completion, it’s like she has some internal schedule. It’s like she’s thinking, “Well, I have six songs written, but the album is due in nine months, so I’ll need to get with at least two guys over the next …”

This explains why her relationship with Travis Kelce has lasted so long—she just released an album, so she doesn’t need any “inspiration” right now. But, eventually, she will, and then he’ll be immortalized in some Top 10 hit.

As a side note, I hope she needs some of that “inspiration” soon … before September, at least. I absolutely detest the Kansas City Chiefs and want Kelce to be met by the wrath brought about by a sea of newly acquired Bronco-Swifty hybrids whose only mission is to cause his demise when he comes to play at Mile High after the breakup.