Joe Alwyn has moved on from Taylor Swift breakup, says others should too: 'What I feel'

Joe Alwyn has a message for anyone still concerned with his "invisible string" to Taylor Swift – he’s moved on, and he thinks it's time everyone else does too.

The “Conversations with Friends” star dated Swift for six and a half years, reportedly first meeting at the 2016 Met Gala in New York City. The pair kept their relationship private, calling it quits just after Swift embarked on her Eras tour in April 2023.

In an interview with The Guardian, Alwyn pushed back against a suggestion that he must want to move on from that relationship, saying that he already has.

“That’s something for other people to do,” he told the British outlet. “We’re talking about something that’s a while ago now in my life. So that’s for other people. That’s what I feel.”

Swift, too, has moved on – she’s been dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce since late 2023. The pair were first linked in September 2023 and shared a Super Bowl kiss heard ‘round the world in early 2024. Kelce has also joined Swift onstage at her record-breaking Eras tour.

Alwyn shares what kept him 'tethered' after Swift split

Alwyn opened up about his split from Swift for the first time in a June 2024 interview with The Sunday Times, just months after Swift’s 2024 album “The Tortured Poet’s Department” thrust the breakup back into the spotlight. With songs like "I Can Do it With a Broken Heart" and “So Long, London,” Swifties speculated much of the album was about him. The album title is rumored to be a reference to the group chat name Alwyn shared with actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott.

Even before the split, fans were picking apart other songs with possible nods to Alwyn like “London Boy" and “Lover." Alwyn also wrote five songs with her under the pen name “William Bowery” across her “Folklore” and “Evermore” albums.

In the June interview, Alwyn said he had made his peace with the fact that “there is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said.”

“So you have something very real suddenly thrown into a very unreal space: tabloids, social media, press, where it is then dissected, speculated on, pulled out of shape beyond recognition,” he told The Sunday Times.

He also called on fans to empathize with the realities of a “long, loving, fully committed relationship” coming to an end.

“That is a hard thing to navigate,” he said. “What is unusual and abnormal in this situation is that, one week later, it’s suddenly in the public domain and the outside world is able to weigh in.”

Now, discussing his new film “The Brutalist” with The Guardian, Alwyn said his family and friends kept him “tethered to the ground” during difficult career and personal moments.

“I have tried just to focus on controlling what I can control,” he said. “And, right from the beginning, tried to focus on the things that are meaningful for me: friends, family, work, of course. So noise outside of that, I think I’ve done what lots of people who find themselves in the public eye do, which is just try and ignore it. If you don’t, and if you let all of that other stuff in, and if it starts to affect you and your behavior, you’re living from the outside in.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Taylor Swift's ex Joe Alwyn shares that he's moved on from split