I Don’t Know Jessica Simpson or Taylor Swift, but We Have Something in Common
By: Maylin Tu
Tags: Emotional Abuse, Relationships, Celebrity, Women, Love

When I listened to the audiobook version of Jessica Simpson’s new memoir Open Book, I went down a rabbit hole of “How much of John Mayer’s shitty reputation is very, very well-earned?”

The answer? I mean, listen—it’s probably even worse than you thought.

His behavior matches my own experience and observation of emotional abuse and manipulation. And it’s all so familiar—I’ve seen this movie before, even in my own life—everything from how he broke up with her right before a big performance to how he charmed her family in an effort to win her back.

And then I listened to Taylor Swift’s “Dear John,” and everything made so much more sense.

I had never really listened to this song before, but holy shit… It tracks with Simpson’s experience almost line for line. I knew vaguely that Swift and Mayer had dated (from December 2009 to February 2010). I knew that she had written that she was “too young to be messed with,” but I thought that had to do with the age-gap in their relationship (Swift was 20 and Mayer was 32). I didn’t realize that she had penned an entire ode to an emotionally abusive ex (assumed to be Mayer, but never confirmed).

So, let’s journey together through Swift’s song, “Dear John,” courtesy of my degree in English.

(Not sure if this is what my professors had mind when they taught me close reading, but times are tough). We’ll look at how these two texts interact and illustrate a similar pattern of emotional abuse.

First Verse

Long were the nights when my days once revolved around you

Counting my footsteps,

Praying the floor won’t fall through, again

My mother accused me of losing my mind,

But I swore I was fine, you paint me a blue sky

And go back and turn it to rain

And I lived in your chess game,

But you changed the rules every day

Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone

Tonight, well I stopped picking up, and this song is to let you know why

In the first verse, Swift uses a number of metaphors to describe the kind of relationship she had with John. Her days “revolved” around him—he was the sun, but he was also the rain: “You paint me a blue sky / And go back and turn it to rain.” She juxtaposes sunny and stormy weather—the Jekyll and Hyde dynamic of an abusive relationship. The same person loves you and hates you until it finally dawns on you that even their love is a kind of hatred.

She compares their relationship to a “chess game” where John “changed the rules every day.” Intermittent reinforcement can be a powerful way to control another person. If you never know “which version” you’re going to get—Jekyll or Hyde, you become hyper-focused on your own behavior, avoiding missteps so that the “floor doesn’t fall through.”

The problem is that there is no reason for the turn from blue sky to rain. Emotionally abusive people count on your reactions to their volatility to keep you hooked—if you think that you can appease them or predict what might set them off, then you maintain an illusory sense of control in the relationship.

According to Simpson, she got back together with Mayer nine times. He broke up with her repeatedly, always through email.

Chorus #1

Dear John, I see it all now that you’re gone

Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?

The girl in the dress, cried the whole way home, I should’ve known

Swift shifts from first-person to third-person and then back to first-person. The feelings around the “girl in the dress” who cried the whole way home are too tender to face directly, so she uses the distancing technique of third-person — which makes the image even more heartbreaking.

What the dress signifies is left to the listener’s imagination. Perhaps this was a dress she chose for him, a beautiful dress she thought he would love. She showed up as her best and brightest self and was sent home anyway. It’s not that emotionally abusive people kick you when you’re down—they shoot you out of the sky when you’re flying high.

Maybe you just got a promotion at work or have a big project due the next day or your best friend is getting married—anything that takes your focus off of them can be perceived as a threat.

It’s fascinating how the blame shifts back and forth between John and the speaker — the self-reproach that we reflexively expect women to perform when they are mistreated or abused. By repeatedly bringing up her age in the chorus —“too young” — she attempts to shift the blame back to John. However, even this attempt is framed as a rhetorical question instead of as a statement, as if she needs him to acknowledge that he was wrong. She ends up blaming herself instead with, “I should’ve known.”

From a sociocultural perspective, even though relationships between older men and younger women are more common and socially-sanctioned than the reverse, sometimes that power imbalance exacerbates an already abusive relationship. How many women who date men have been in exactly this kind of dynamic? Men exploit the inexperience and naiveté of younger women for their own benefit and it’s considered normal.

Verse #2

Well maybe it’s me and my blind optimism to blame

Maybe it’s you and your sick need to give love then take it away

And you’ll add my name to your long list of traitors who don’t understand

And I’ll look back and regret how I ignored when they said “run as fast as you can”

In this verse, Swift continues to muse on who or what is “to blame.” Although she repeats the word “maybe”, there’s a stark contrast between “blind optimism” and “a sick need to give love then take it away.” This goes back to the role of intermittent reinforcement in an abusive relationship. When you’re up, you’re up, and when you’re down, you’re lower than low.

In Simpson’s memoir, she writes about how Mayer was obsessed with her “physically and emotionally.”

After their first breakup and make-up, she says, he studied “every inch” of her body. Simpson’s description of this kind of obsessive love is consistent with many emotionally abusive relationships. It’s not an ordinary kind of love. It can feel intoxicating, overwhelming, even empowering—no one has ever loved you quite like this and no one ever will. It’s like being loved by a living heart-eyes emoji. They don’t just love you, they’re obsessed with you.

Simpson writes:

The extravagant gestures continued, and made my anxiety kick in. The higher he lifted me, the longer the fall would be when I disappointed him, and I knew I would.

This makes the fall from grace even more devastating—the person who worshipped your body, mind, and soul won’t even text you back. In narcissistic abuse, it’s extremely common for the person to engage in an ongoing cycle of idealization, devaluation, idealization, devaluation, idealization — and on and on and on.

According to Mayer, when Taylor Swift released “Dear John,” he never got an email, a phone call, nothing. The email part hits differently now, knowing he broke up with Simpson multiple times, and always over email. This is just what you do: politely inform the person you are seeing that you can no longer see them. Someone writes a song laying out your pattern of emotional abuse and your response is: How rude! Not even an email!

Swift had already predicted that Mayer would add her name to his “long list of traitors who don’t understand.” I love this line because it perfectly describes how abusers take on the victim role. Instead of addressing the content of the song, Mayer focuses on Swift’s lack of social decorum. In an interview with “Rolling Stone,” he says he was “humiliated” and accuses her of “cheap songwriting.” Reversal of blame is an extremely common tactic for those who don’t want to take responsibility for their actions.

Chorus #3B

Dear John, I see it all, now it was wrong

Don’t you think nineteen is too young

To be played by your dark twisted games, when I loved you so?

I should’ve known

After repeating the chorus, Swift tacks on a second part, elaborating on “too young” by specifying that she was only nineteen when she was “played by your dark twisted games.”

It might seem like the detail of her being “nineteen” is technically incorrect—they reportedly met when she was nineteen and dated when she was 20. But this is a Taylor Swift song. She is giving us clues about the identity of John and the trajectory of the relationship. In fact, the way the two relationships evolved—Mayer and Simpson and Mayer and Swift—seems strikingly similar.

Simpson met him at an industry party. He praised her song “With You” and they began a written correspondence that became romantic after she ended her marriage to Nick Lachey. In Swift’s case, Mayer tweeted that he wanted to collaborate with her on a song called “Half of My Heart.” She was shocked and flattered and they went on to record the song together.

He might not have dated her until she was 20, but this lyric implies he started grooming her when she was nineteen. That’s where the “should’ve known” and “I was too young” come into play—she was too young to know what game he was playing.

In hindsight — “I see it all now, it was wrong” — Swift realizes that he took advantage of her, that he exploited the underlying power dynamic and her admiration for him as a musician. This is an important distinction: This is not a song about a broken heart, but about emotional abuse.

Bridge

You are an expert at sorry,

And keeping the lines blurry

Never impressed by me acing your tests

All the girls that you’ve run dry

Have tired, lifeless eyes

’Cause you burned them out

But I took your matches before fire could catch me,

So don’t look now, I’m shining like fireworks over your sad, empty town

The most brutal line in the entire song comes in the bridge: “All the girls that you’ve run dry / Have tired, lifeless eyes / ’Cause you burned them out.”

Simpson writes about how Mayer would break up with her when she was “run dry”, then change his mind when she started to get some of her light back:

John loved me when I was shining, and he drew strength and inspiration to write from that light […] When he tapped me dry, he looked at me like I was withholding something from him.

I think it’s important to note this dynamic in Simpson’s account of her relationship. She was constantly trying to be the woman that Mayer wanted her to be, trying to live up to the ideal he had projected onto her. It reminds me of an emotionally abusive dynamic I was once in, and how he would tell me, “You have so much potential.”

There’s that love and approval that’s always just out of reach:

He would tell me that my true self was so much greater than the person I was settling on being. Like there was some great woman inside of me waiting to come out, and I had to hurry up and find her because he wanted to love that woman, not me.

In perhaps the most damning revelation of this entire saga, Simpson writes about her realization that Mayer was breaking up and making up with her for his own personal creative process. Yup, he used their breakups for new writing material:

I was a pet bird. He would throw me into the sky and watch me catch air and soar long enough that it meant something when he pulled a gun from his back pocket to shoot me down […] To think that every single time I lay on the ground, broken and bewildered, he took his time walking over. Observing me to jot down notes and hum a new song of heartbreak.

If Simpson got “burned out” by Mayer, Swift claims to have escaped that same fate. She took his “matches” and now she’s shining brighter than ever.

In my experience, it’s normal to feel used after being in an emotionally abusive relationship. It’s as if you never got to exist as a real person—instead you existed only to meet the needs of the other person, to make them feel good or keep them from feeling bad.

Chorus 4B / Coda

I see it all now that you’re gone

Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?

The girl in the dress wrote you a song

You should’ve known, you should’ve known

Don’t you think I was too young? You should’ve known

In this last chorus, Swift reprises some of the lines she’s repeated throughout. She is the girl in the dress who cried the whole way home. By repeating the line, “Don’t you think I was too young?” over and over again, Swift turns that final question into a heartbreaking statement:

I was too young.

I didn’t deserve to be abused.

There’s something about the experience of emotional abuse that feels universal, even down to the self-blame of “I should’ve known.” But in these final lines, Swift turns that blame back on John: “You should’ve known.” It feels cathartic. As long as women blame themselves for being abused, nothing will ever change — in fact, blaming yourself is how shame and abuse reinforce each other, forever and ever.