Taylor Swift And Travis Kelce's Love Story Is All The Proof We Need That Opposites Attract Isn't Just A Myth

Swifties rejoice; we're basically about to get the closest thing to a royal wedding that we could ever get. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are officially engaged. The two of them announced it on their respective Instagram pages with the caption, "Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married." With just that caption alone, it's clear that the two of them are well aware that their relationship could very well be seen as an example of how opposites attract. Kelce is the macho football player who likes to golf, while Swift is an artist who likes to bake and sew. Swift even sang about the differences in her song "So High School" with the lyrics "You know how to ball, I know Aristotle."

There are examples in the world of opposites coming together to make a whole. Think of magnets; they only stay together when you join their opposite poles. And the trope shows up in all kinds of romantic comedies, like when the good girl goes for the stereotypical bad boy. But what's true in science and in fiction has not always been proven to be true when it comes to real-life matters of the heart.

There's a depth of scientific proof that the adage "opposites attract" is actually a myth. However, there are aspects of Kelce and Swift's relationship that, when you dive into the nuance of it all, show us that it can definitely still happen, and that it can be worth it to give someone a chance who seems different than you. But you'll have to put in some work, and there's going to have to be some kind of underlying shared values for the relationship to really last.

While most people believe that "opposites attract" is a real phenomenon and we've certainly romanticized it enough (just look at all the times Swift has sung about the bad boy), the science doesn't really support that. Having similar interests, backgrounds, and passions can help bring and keep a couple together.

A scientific study from Nature Human Behavior determined that the majority of people in longer-term relationships were both attracted to and stayed with people who were similar to them. This phenomenon of what is called assortative mating, where someone chooses a partner who is similar to them, has been seen in humans time and again.

But as we know, science can have outliers. And we seem to see that in Kelce and Swift. It seems most likely that what makes them seem so opposite is actually more surface-level differences. Given the science of relationships, it seems that they must have enough underlying shared values to outweigh anything else. They both have a strong work ethic, as evidenced by them both being at the top of their game in their careers, and they both value family. So things like when he joked on the "New Heights" podcast about her using big words that he didn't know seems like a more surface-level difference.

Beyond whether opposites can attract, can they stay together? The novelty and the initial physical attraction can wane the more you get to know someone and see how different they are. But with Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, it appears they worked to embrace their differences, even if they didn't understand each other's world at first.

On the "New Heights" podcast, Swift talked about how she had zero interest in football before Travis. But it wasn't just Swift's style that transformed after she started dating Travis; she expanded her interests to include his. She studied the game, and now, as she said on "New Heights," she "fell in love with it." It could have been easy for her not to get into football; it's not like she doesn't have enough to do. But she went for it. It's just one of the love lessons we've learned from Swift.

It's okay to not like every one of your partner's hobbies, and it's important to develop your own life outside of your relationship. But it's a different story if the practicalities of how you want to live life are in diametric opposition to your partner's and you can't find any flexibility in that or appreciation for what they're doing. If you can't show up for each other without resentment in the places where you're different, it won't last. When we see Travis on stage with Swift during the Eras Tour and hear the way he hypes up her music, we can tell he's clearly taken the time to get to know her life, too. If the two of them hadn't bothered to do that, we think they would have been magnets that came together at first over an initial attraction, but then gradually turned away from each other.