Jessica Simpson Madly in Love ... With Love

"I met a wonderful man. Damn I'm lucky!" she tweeted Sunday along with a googly-eyed photo of her and ex-NFL player/Ivy Leaguer Johnson looking all giddy and cute. It almost makes you want to outline it with a red heart or break into song with "Jessica and Eric, sitting in a tree ..."

But then you remember. Wasn't it just a few months ago that something similar was happening with a different wonderful man?

Yes. It was. That would be Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, now 43, whom Simpson was rumored to be dating earlier this year. The pattern wasn't exactly the same -- the two repeatedly dodged questions about whether they were romantically involved or just close friends -- but there was the gushing and the invoking of spirituality and, of course, the requisite Twitter pics.

"I am blessed," Simpson tweeted in January of her budding relationship with Corgan, posting a photo of the pair in a recording studio together. "Fun to be lost in laughter." She also said in an Allure magazine interview that she has "an emotional type," and that type sounded an awful lot like a rock star named Billy.

"I definitely will marry an artistic man," Simpson proclaimed. "It will show you the colors of my character, the person that I fall in love with next. I don't even have a type! I don't have a physical type. I have an emotional type. When you have yourself together, I don't care what you look like at all. You can be tall; you can be short." You can be bald, you can be 13 years older.

Corgan followed up with talk that Simpson is "worth loving" and later defended her by slamming her have-sex-and-tell ex John Mayer for his infamous raunchy Playboy interview in which he said he was addicted to Simpson and compared her to "sexual napalm."

Speaking of Mayer, let's revisit that romance when it was just beginning to bloom, shall we? You might hear an echo.

The year was 2006, and it was shortly after her divorce from first-and-only husband Nick Lachey was finalized (more on him later). News began to spread that Jess and John were an item.

"She's tiptoeing back into the dating world," a source told PEOPLE that summer. "She's never been happier."


But, actually, if you listen to Jess, she had been just that happy with former hubby Lachey. The couple catapulted to superstardom thanks to the MTV reality show about their marriage, 'The Newlyweds.' And even amid rampant breakup rumors, Simpson insisted in late 2004, "We're madly in love."

What a difference a year makes. Cut to November of 2005. That's when Jess and Nick announced their plans to split for good. Their divorce became official the following June. And the cycle would repeat itself for every guy Jess gave her heart to from then on.

Despite never being happier with on-again, off-again boyfriend Mayer, Simpson was never more shattered when they broke up either time in 2007. Until her foray into the world of Tony Romo that same year.

A refresher: In late August 2008, Jessica's "How I Found Love Again" was PEOPLE's cover story. She practically frothed at the mouth talking about how Dallas Quarterback Romo was "her perfect guy."

"I just told him today, 'You're the love of my life,'" she gushed. "I don't really ever say that to anybody." (Raise eyebrows here.)

The following summer, after two years together, the love of Jess' life dumped her. But he didn't just dump her. The sweetie did it the night before her 29th birthday, in July 2009. A source said the singer was "heartbroken" and "loves Tony, but it's been difficult lately." Jessica was described as "blindsided," as well as "sad, mad and confused."

Those feelings didn't deter our girl from dusting herself off and plowing ahead again. Will she go the distance this time around, or will her relationship with Johnson end in tears and a public display of hurt feelings like all the others?

History is tipping the scales toward the former outcome. But history also shows that Simpson will bounce back because of her never-ending quest for love. Even when she found herself single again in May and told Us magazine that she was "feeling out" some romantic prospects, she still had faith.

"I think when we're in love, when we have love in our life, that's when we look beautiful," she said.

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