How long is an appropriate amount of time to grieve a relationship? How about a relationship where you did all the things people in relationships do, but without ever calling it a relationship? What do our hearts say? And what do the hearts of artists say, whose emotions are their lifeblood?

It was this recognition of the delicate line between dignity and desperation that endeared Sex and the City, the column as well as the show, to so many. When it aired, the series provided a new cultural reference point for what love and, more notably, the pursuit of love looked like, treating aspects of this pursuit, such as romance, friendship, dating, and sex, as worthwhile subjects and establishing time spent on the wrong people as not only important to finding the right one but also to developing character.

Searching for love on the streets of New York and reporting her findings each week, Carrie won our hearts by opening hers. On the hills and highways of Los Angeles, singer-songwriter Lexi Jayde is reportedly following in Carrie’s footsteps, sharing her earnest, unrelenting belief in love on her debut album, LOVER GIRL.

“I had a few Mr. Bigs on the project,” Jayde admits, explaining that over the four years it took to create LOVER GIRL, she had her fair share of ambiguous relationships turned long-term heartaches. “Nobody has a time limit. Sometimes it might be the rest of your life. I hope it’s not, but sometimes it feels like it could be.” In her experience, the length of a relationship is rarely proportional to its impact, and the shorter, undefined ones often sting the most. “Everybody has felt the yearning for the unknown,” she says, comparing the sweet, seductive fantasy of something unattainable to the less thrilling reality of an actual relationship. “You are seeing the best version of someone, and that’s all you have to hold on to.”

“It feels wrong to give yourself a timeline when it comes to heartbreak,” she decides, unconvinced by Charlotte’s rule, whether for a relationship or a non-relationship. “It’s a universal thing, missing somebody longer than you were actually with them.”

Jayde meets me on the heels of announcing her upcoming The Lover Girl Tour, and it’s difficult to picture her in any state other than the beaming one in front of me. At 24 years old, she has a resolve that seems beyond her years, able to state with complete certainty that pain in the pursuit of love is worthwhile—that perhaps anything is. “I am a lover girl and always have been,” she declares, defining the title, in essence, as someone with a perpetually open heart. “I’ve never felt things halfway. I feel things so deeply, and I wear my heart on my sleeve.” The album embodies this ethos, spanning heartbreak, desire, regret, jealousy, and self-doubt, assembling a portrait of someone living at the mercy of love. “I talk about feeling everything so deeply, and that’s what LOVER GIRL is,” she adds, an identity nestled somewhere between the depth of feeling and the willingness to return for more.

But being a lover girl extends far beyond romantic relationships, functioning more like a mindset, a philosophy, a way of life—one whose pillars seem to include persistence, tenacity, and a little bit of delusion. “Being a lover girl is choosing to feel again after being hurt, choosing to love again after going through heartbreak, and choosing to keep going even after you get told you’re not good enough,” Jayde explains.

This week, coinciding with the start of The Lover Girl Tour, Jayde will release a new single, “summer’s over,” along with the accompanying visualizer, the first since LOVER GIRL’s release. Co-written with Mary Weitz and Nick Ruth, the song traces a summer romance to its bitter end, one that won’t carry into autumn: “Now that the summer’s over / So are we.”

Still, the bounds of lovergirldom aren’t fixed but malleable—reshaped by experience, amended to protect the lover girl herself. “I’ve learned a lot in the past four years about love and standards, and that you don’t have to settle with somebody who doesn't treat you the way you want to be treated,” she says, lamenting what she once accepted in the name of love and dedicates ample time to on the album. “Now I would have broken up with that person immediately on the spot—I probably would never even have been with that person.”

For Jayde, the realization wasn’t deciding that love isn’t worth the trouble, but recognizing that the right kind of love—the real kind—doesn’t require it. “I think you’re hearing me in real time, trying to figure out my life and find my way back to myself,” she says, happily reporting that she is now in a healthier place, both romantically and in her relationship with herself.

“I really just am so excited to continue this new era and this new chapter. And I just feel really grateful that the music is finally out,” Jayde says brightly. She hopes her songs might do some good: reminding listeners they aren’t the only ones, that love is never wasted—that heartbreak won’t last forever. After all, Jayde is driving down the streets she once cried on, this time catching a glimpse of her very own billboard promoting her very own album. “It makes for good songs,” she laughs, and perhaps that’s enough.

Directed & Photographed by Shelby Goldstein
Styled by Layna Vancauteren
Written by Mikaela O'brien
DP: Sam Roden
Set Design: Nike Schroeder
Hair: Ashley Lynn Hall
Makeup: Jordan Alex
Digi: Shaun Mendiola
Lighting Asst: Brooks Gallo, Sean Bonilla
Stylist Asst: Sasha Campbell
Dobra Production: Michelle Kapuscinki, Saria Chauhan
Special Thanks Milk Studios