Taylor Swift softly graces the April 2013 cover of Vanity Fair. In the accompanying interview, Taylor speaks out about her heavily-publicized love life through her own words and the words of a trusted friend who she’s allowed to speak on her behalf.

“If you want some big revelation, since 2010 I have dated exactly two people,” Swift tells the magazine, meaning Conor Kennedy and One Direction’s Harry Styles.

Taylor’s close source elaborated on Taylor’s relationship with Styles. “‘He wore her down,” the source says, explaining that Styles chased Swift for a whole year before she agreed to date him. “He was all, like, ‘You’re amazing—I want to be with you. I want to do this.’’’

Swift’s relationship with Styles ended when he texted her to warn her of a photo swirling on the internet of him kissing a friend good-bye. Except Taylor’s source says the photo was of Styles and the other girl “making out like with their hands all up in each other’s hair.” So, Swift called it quits with Styles. That’s when Styles chased Swift again for a few months until Swift caved in again. “But the whole time she says she feels like he’s looking at every girl.” And then when the two were in London together, Styles “disappears one night and after that it was like he just didn’t want to keep going.’” So, that was that with Styles.

Taylor has also dated some of Hollywood’s hottest men including Jake Gyllenhaal, Taylor Lautner, Joe Jonas, and John Mayer. Taylor’s source blames the age difference in some of those romances for the ensuing problems and says, “‘It was like a pendulum for her, swinging back and forth.”

About Conor Kennedy who was 17 at the time he dated Swift, the source says, “it was just like a two-month thing…and Swift says he was awesome.” With the much older Gyllenhaal and Mayer, the source says Swift dated them “when she was really young and they were in their 30s, and she got really hurt. So it was like ‘That hurt—this won’t. But then it did.’’”

Taylor chimed back in during the interview to speak about the media’s portrayal of her: “For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that’s taking something that potentially should be celebrated—a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way—that’s taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist.”