Bianca Cirimele HCOM 440 PCP “I Knew You Were Trouble” “I Knew You Were Trouble” by Taylor Swift has been a chart topper in recent weeks. The young artist has gained a reputation for writing songs that are inspired by her personal experiences with love and loss. It is widely accepted that the lyrics describe her failed relationship with fellow singer, John Mayer. The singer describes excitement turned to fear, and ultimately the hurtful rejection that she saw coming even before the fling began. The lyrics follow the foreseeably turbulent relationship from beginning to end. Many of the accounts from the song exemplify concepts from Vangelisti’s “Communicating Hurt” as featured in “The Dark Side of Interpersonal Communication” by Spitzberg and Cupach. The song’s title speaks volumes in terms of the singer’s expectations going into the relationship with Mayer. “I Knew You Were Trouble” indicates that Swift was consciously aware of her partner’s propensity for trouble, and therefore relational turbulence. Vangelisti asserts that one of three factors that affect the intensity of hurt feelings is “The degree to which recipients expect to be hurt by the other person.” Furthermore, that people who more readily expect hurt tend to “buffer themselves from emotional injury.” (Vangelisti, 2009) It is apparent that she tries to project that she is unaffected and uninjured when she sings “no apologies, he’ll never see you cry… now I’m lying on the cold hard ground… you’re drowning.” (Swift) it is obvious that this act is not true to her hurt feelings. Swift indicates not only did she expect “trouble” from Mayer, but that this was not her first time making a mistake in the romantic department. She sings, “Once upon a time, a few mistakes ago…” (Swift) indicating that she has been relationally hurt with some recognizable frequency. Contrary to the scholarly literature, she does not seem to have learned her lesson, and goes forward with the relationship despite advanced awareness and contradictory intuition from experience. Although she knowingly ignored what her past had taught her, she recognizes that it was her willingness to take the risk that lead to her own hurt. Vangelisti notes that sometimes when people are asked to “explain someone else’s hurtful behavior; people sometimes cited their own behavior as a cause.” (Vangelisti, 2009) Swift demonstrates this behavior, “and I realize the blame is on me… so shame on me now.” (Swift) The literature states that this response may establish a pattern of behavior that perpetuates this type of hurt. In classic fatal attraction style, the artist overlooks and is even attracted to a characteristic that later contributes to her broken heart. She states, “I guess you didn’t care, and I guess I liked