Over the years, Taylor Swift has used music to vent her feelings about love affairs and ex-boyfriends.

Swift said she uses songwriting like her diary; she works through complicated emotions through song. This has been worrisome to some of her exes. Swift said that after she wrote a song about one ex, he was horrified about the attention it could bring him.

Taylor Swift said 1 ex was worried about the attention her music brought him

In the song “Should’ve Said No,” Swift addresses a cheating ex. She said she pulled some of the lines from real conversations she had with a former boyfriend.

“I wrote this song by myself, and it literally took me just 20 minutes to write before we recorded it,” she told Great American Country, adding, “I was living every line in this song at the time. I wrote this song about a guy who cheated on me who shouldn’t have.”

Swift hid messages for her fans on album covers and in lyrics. She admitted that the name of the boyfriend she sings about in “Should’ve Said No” is hidden in the song lyrics.

“I like to encode capital letters in the printed lyrics, so they spell out phrases,” she told Women’s Health. “I encoded the ‘Should’ve Said No’ guy’s name over and over. It was only his first name, but everyone figured it out.”

The letters S, A, and M are frequently capitalized in the written lyrics. Swift said her former boyfriend didn’t like the scrutiny on him, but she struggled to feel much sympathy.

“I’d get texts from him,” she said. “He was scared out of his mind I’d crucify him on a talk show. All I could think was, ‘Well, you should’ve said no. That’s what the song is about.’”

She shared what she hoped to convey with the song

Swift compared “Should’ve Said No” to “Picture to Burn,” another song on her debut album that deals with a relationship gone bad. She said “Picture to Burn” has an “angry and I’m-done-with-him attitude,” while “Should’ve Said No” makes “more of a moral statement.”

“It’s an ‘I love you, we were awesome and great together, but you messed this up and I would still be with you’ kinda thing,” she said. “You said yes, and you should’ve said no.”

Taylor Swift joked that writing about her exes wasn’t good for future romantic prospects

In 2008, Swift wrote about being single on her MySpace page. She said she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, but admitted she might find it hard to get one if she was.

“I’ve never been the kind of girl who needs a boyfriend,” she wrote, per the Washington Post. “I believe that love will find you when you’re not looking for it. So I’ve been actively NOT looking for it for about 3 years now. I’ll let you know how that works out for me. It probably doesn’t help that I write songs about every guy I talk to.”

After years of writing songs, though, Swift is now happy in her relationship with Travis Kelce.