“A shallow person will have only shallow relationships,” Bloom wrote on Instagram the day of their engagement. “Real love is not one person clinging to another, it can only be fostered between two strong people secure in their individuality. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince wrote in a work called Wind, Sand and Stars, ‘Love is not two people gazing at each other, but two people looking ahead together in the same direction.'”
It’s been quite the ride for the couple, who first began a flirtation in early 2016 and, through several ups and downs, made their way to a proposal. Below, check out a complete timeline of their relationship:
January 2016: Perry and Bloom reportedly have a mild flirtation at a Golden Globes after-party. “Katy and Orlando had a total dance-off—it was the best part of the party,” a source told Us Weekly at the time. “Katy literally dropped to the floor and was waving her booty around, beckoning Orlando.” That same month they saw a production of The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey in Culver City, California, and posed for a photo.
May 2016:Us Weekly reports Bloom and Perry are an item but are consciously avoiding being photographed together. A prime example of this was at the amfAR Gala during the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where they sat at separate tables.
The minute Riverdale premiered on The CW in January 2017, its cast of young stars became tabloid fodder. In a matter of months, rumors starting swirling that maybe Lili Reinhart and Cole Sprouse, who play Betty and Jughead on the hit show, were dating. That was later confirmed.
The two have remained fairly private over the course of their relationship. Nevertheless, here’s a complete timeline of everything we know about the couple, affectionately known as “Bughead” onscreen.
April 2017: Sprouse posts photos of Reinhart to Instagram but keeps quiet about the nature of their relationship.
July 2017:Peoplereports that during an Entertainment Weekly party at Comic-Con, Reinhart was spotted wearing Sprouse’s jacket, sparking conversation. Later that month, the two were spotted showing some PDA on the Riverdale set in Vancouver. “Cole and Lili were holding hands and looked really coupley,” a source told Us Weekly. “Also, the way he grabbed her waist to bring her in for a photo seemed more than friendly.”
August 2017: Reinhart postS a very sweet message on Instagram for Sprouse’s birthday. “To the man who has showed me more beautiful places in this past year than I have ever seen in my whole life,” she wrote. “Happy birthday, Cole. Thank you for all of the adventures and here’s to many more ?”
November 2017: Sprouse reflects on being in the public eye but still gives up nothing on the pair’s offscreen relationship. “Lili and I are constantly talked about in the public eye, and for me I think that it is being deeply informed by the love of the characters and wanting to see us together,” he told People. “I think that in many ways it’s offensive and an invasion of privacy, but it’s also a badge of honor because it means you’re creating a chemistry onscreen that is so understandable that people want to see it in real life, which is flattering from a professional perspective.” He succinctly answered, “No comment” when asked if he and Reinhart are dating.
Ever since going public with their relationship this year, Cara Delevingne and Ashley Benson have been seen out more frequently, exchanging a little PDA. The couple, who starred in the 2018 film Her Smell together, have done a few red carpets together, attended sporting events, and even made a joint appearance at Zoe Kravitz’s wedding in the spring.
Through it all, they’ve had to put up with a pretty intense rumor mill. Engagement chatter sparked after the two were spotted wearing matching rings on vacation. “I get why people care so much, and I don’t want to be so secretive that people think I’m ashamed of anything,” Delevingne told Elle UK. “But I’ve never been in a relationship where things are so public, or where I posted pictures of someone else. This seemed different. We had gotten to the point where we had kept it a secret, or at least not wanted attention, and now I feel like I’m not going to not be proud. Which isn’t the same thing as wanting to pose on a red carpet together, either. People make their own assumptions and that’s what worried me. Because if it is something that is so good, you don’t ever want anyone to ever change it, even though people shouldn’t have that power.”
Here’s a compete timeline of how it all started.
May 2018: The relationship rumors kicked off when Delevingne and Benson were seen out and about together. Someone saw them at a bowling alley, and another fan noticed them near a parking meter in Hollywood.
Benson posts her first photo with Delevingne, but doesn’t say anything that implies a relationship.
August 2018: Things heated up when a photo circulated of the couple kissing at London’s Heathrow Airport. Benson also hung out at Delevingne’s 26th birthday alongside Margot Robbie and Sienna Miller. That month, Benson took a selfie wearing necklaces with a letter “A” and “C,” which many people thought referred to her and Cara.
September 2018: Delevingne and Benson both went to the Toronto International Film Festival to premiere Her Smell, which they appeared in together. While they posed on the red carpet separately, photographers captured them hanging out with some of their co-stars at a cocktail party later.
While there are some naysayers online who think it’s all about publicity, the two singers appear to being going strong after a sexy performance at the MTV VMAs and some well-documented PDA. Now, fans are analyzing every move they make and lyric they sing to try to learn more about the relationship they call #Shawmila.
But how did we get here? Let’s take a look back at how it all began.
July 2014: Cabello (as a member of Fifth Harmony) and Mendes meet while they are both opening acts for Austin Mahone’s tour. The singers recently discussed that time with V Magazine. “I remember thinking we met on the Austin Mahone tour, and I remember I wanted to hang out with you, but you were always on the tour bus, just learning guitar,” Cabello said. Mendes replied, “Yeah, that was me. I didn’t talk to anybody. You were the only person that talked to me. Like, you were the only one of everybody on that tour who would say words to me. Actually, I think if we go into our DM’s or something, there’s a photo from the day we met, I think.”
“And I thought you were out of your mind,” he continued. “I’d be in my bus where no one could see me. I’d be looking through the window and I’d see you, like, flying around on a scooter and jumping and doing cartwheels. I’d be like, she’s insane. Close the window and go to sleep.”
April 2015: Mendes plays a game of “Lips, Wife, or Leave It” and opts for Cabello as the “wife” over Chloe Grace Moretz and Jade Thirwall from Little Mix. “Yeah, she rocks,” he said.
[embedded content]
November 2015: Cabello and Mendes drop a song called “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” which sparks dating rumors. “We were just backstage hanging out,” Mendes told Rolling Stone of how they wrote the song while on Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour. “I pulled out my guitar and we were just messing around, not really thinking about writing a song.”
Mendes and Cabello perform at the 2015 Jingle Ball in LA.Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Miley Cyrus was all over the news this past summer. The singer released new music, announced her split from Liam Hemsworth, and reportedly started a new relationship with Kaitlynn Carter, who herself is fresh off a breakup from Brody Jenner. (Neither Cyrus nor Carter has commented publicly about the status of their relationship.)
The two were first spotted on a vacation in Italy and now they’re reportedly living together, according to People. “They live together and are very happy,” their source said. “Miley is doing great. She is moving on. She seems to have no regrets. She loves being with Kaitlynn.”
Let’s break down exactly how we got here.
August 2: Carter and Jenner, who both star on The Hills: New Beginnings, announce they are splitting up. Anyone who watches the MTV reboot knows their relationship wasn’t the smoothest: The two were in different places about when to have children, among other issues. “Brody Jenner and Kaitlynn Carter have decided to amicably separate,” their reps said in a statement. “They love and respect one another, and know that this is the best decision for their relationship moving forward.” The couple had a wedding ceremony in June 2018, but it’s unclear if the marriage was actually legal.
August 9: Carter posts vacation photos with Cyrus from Italy, but at this point there is no reason to think they are anything more than friends. Jenner even commented, “Hot girl summer” on one of the images.
August 10: Cyrus and Hemsworth announce they are separating after 10 years together and seven months of marriage. “Liam and Miley have agreed to separate at this time,” a rep for Cyrus told People. “Ever-evolving, changing as partners and individuals, they have decided this is what’s best while they both focus on themselves and careers. They still remain dedicated parents to all of their animals they share while lovingly taking this time apart. Please respect their process and privacy.”
Taylor Swift released her highly-anticipated seventh studio album, Lover, on Friday, August 23. Lyrically, the 18-track record is reminiscent of her earlier albums, like Speak Now (2010) and Fearless (2008). Sonically, however, it’s more on par with Red (2012) or 1989 (2014). It’s arguably her most varied work to date—some of the songs are pure pop while others are more soulful and subdued. There’s even a glorious return to country. In short, there’s something for everyone.
There is one consistent through-line on Lover, though: Swift’s love for…well, love. The album is wildly romantic and thematically seems to track the timeline of a relationship, from its early stages to finally realizing the situation is serious. Knowing Swift’s previous music history, it’s safe to assume—or at least theorize—that Lover is about the progression of her relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn.
Swift is notoriously private about this—and there’s nothing on Lover that mentions him directly (save for the aptly-titled track “London Boy”). But half the fun of being a Taylor Swift fan is coming up with theories, and this is mine: In my opinion, Lover is her way of telling us how the Joe Alwyn relationship came to be. My evidence lies in this track-by-track review below.
Swift doesn’t start Lover with a love song, but rather a track where she proclaims all the people who once brought her down are no longer an issue. She mentions no one specifically, but it’s safe to assume she could be talking about her ex-boyfriends, Calvin Harris, who she dated before meeting Alwyn. It’s clear from Reputation things did not end on good terms with Harris, but Swift seems to have moved past the drama on “I Forgot You Existed.”
“How many days did I spend thinking about how you did me wrong?” she sings. “[I] lived in the shade you were throwing ’til all of my sunshine was gone.” In the chorus she proudly declares, “I forgot that you existed, and I thought that it would kill me, but it didn’t” before later saying, “I would’ve stuck around for ya, would’ve fought the whole town… [I] would’ve been there front row, even if nobody came to your show.” (Harris is a DJ.)
The gist of this song? Swift has shed the snakeskin from her Reputation era and is open to new possibilities.
Enter track two: “Cruel Summer,” which documents the flirty, occasionally tumultuous early stages of a relationship. “It’s new, the shape of your body. It’s blue, the feeling I’ve got,” Swift sings. In a separate section she says, “It’s cool, that’s what I tell him. No rules…We say we’ll just screw it up. In these trying times, we’re not trying.”
To me, this sounds like Alwyn and Swift’s earliest stage: a period where maybe they kept what was going on from friends and family. “I don’t want to keep secrets just to keep you,” she sings. And sometimes, this type of dynamic can cause drama: “Summer’s a knife,” Swift sings at one point.
But that stage ends quickly. By “Lover,” it seems Swift and Alwyn have become a full-on couple. In “Cruel Summer,” she sang about having “no rules” with a partner; now she says, “This is our place, we make the rules. “
“Have I known you 20 seconds or 20 years?” she sings later on. “Can I go where you go? Can we always be this close?…I’ve loved you three summers. Now honey, I want ’em all.”
[embedded content]
We deviate from a love story, slightly, on “The Man.” Here, Tay muses about how her career and reputation would have played out in the press if she were a man. “Every conquest I made would make me more of a boss to you,” she sings. “I’d be just like Leo in Saint Tropez.” (Some subtle Leonardo DiCaprio shade for ya!)
