Taylor Swift on Love: 'Happily Ever After Doesn't Happen in Real Life'

"There's no riding off into the sunset," the singer said.

ByABC News
May 8, 2015, 9:36 AM
Taylor Swift performs at the Tokyo Dome on May 6, 2015 in Tokyo, Japan.
Taylor Swift performs at the Tokyo Dome on May 6, 2015 in Tokyo, Japan.
Jun Sato/LP5/Getty Images

— -- When Taylor Swift first started writing songs as a teenager, she'd never been in a relationship, so she based her material on things she'd read about, or seen in movies, or heard about in song lyrics.

But Swift admitted that now, her view of love is a lot less magical.

"Once I fell in love, or thought I was in love, and then experienced disappointment or it just not working out a few times, I realized there's this idea of happily ever after, which in real life doesn't happen," she told Elle magazine. "There's no riding off into the sunset, because the camera always keeps rolling in real life."

"Now I have more of a grasp on the fact that when you're in a state of infatuation and you think everything that person does is perfect, it then -- if you're lucky -- morphs into a real relationship when you see that that person is not in fact perfect, but you still want to see them every day," she added.

Swift, 25, who is currently on her 1989 world tour, was most recently linked to musician Calvin Harris. And while she's learning about love from her friends ("You Are Love" is about her friends Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff's romance), she said that even the most ideal relationship -- when lovers are also best friends -- isn't all it's cracked up to be.

"I think that that kind of relationship -- God, it sounds like it would just be so beautiful -- would also be hard. It would also be mundane at times," she mused.

Elsewhere in the interview, Swift said she doesn't regret any decisions she made when she was younger.

"I'm not going to sit there and say, ‘Oh, I wish I hadn't had corkscrew-curly hair and worn cowboy boots and sundresses to awards shows when I was 17; I wish I hadn't gone through that fairy-tale phase where I just wanted to wear princess dresses to awards shows every single time.’ Because I made those choices. I did that,” she said.

“It was part of me growing up," she continued. "It wasn't some committee going, ‘You know what Taylor needs to be this year?’ And so with 1989, I feel like we gave the entire metaphorical house I built a complete renovation and it made me love the house even more -- but still keeping the foundation of what I've always been."