Kayla Nicole On Dating After Travis Kelce Split

After her public relationship with Travis Kelce, Kayla Nicole is doing dating differently.

For a quick recap, before Travis was with Taylor Swift, he was in a five-year on-and-off relationship with Kayla, who’s a media personality and sports journalist. The pair started dating in 2017 and broke up numerous times before calling it quits for good in 2022.

Last year, while appearing on the Fox reality show Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, Kayla broke down over her and Travis’s painful “public breakup,” calling it “overwhelming.” But now, she’s reflected on what she learned from the split and how it’s changed her attitude toward dating going forward.

“I am like John Cena now with men,” Kayla said in response to a fan question during the April 3 episode of her Pre-Game podcast. “You don’t see me. You don’t see me with a man. And you won’t ever see me with a man ever again until I’m married with kids.” Kayla said that some might deem this to be “sneaky.” However, having already experienced one public relationship, she said it’s the best thing for everyone involved.

“In reality, I’m protecting me, and I’m protecting you,” she explained. “I don’t think that I ever want to publicly date another man until I am absolutely sure that they are my long-term person. I want to protect the things that mean the most to me, and sometimes when you’re a little too open and you’re a little too transparent, you open yourself up to a world of opinion, a world of entitlement.”

Getting honest about the public scrutiny she’s faced, Kayla added: “People want answers. People think that you owe them an explanation about every single thing in your relationship, every up and down and happy or sad moment. I want to be able to love without the pressure.”

Kayla said she is dating at the moment, and in order to keep things low-key, she’s mastered the art of private dates. “I am out here dating and hiding,” she joked. “I’m the queen of a private room in a back room in a corner closet. And I have no shame in it.”

During her stint on Special Forces last year, Kayla talked about the “constant and exhausting” scrutiny she’s faced since Travis started dating the world’s most famous pop star in 2023. “It doesn’t matter; I could post about the sky being blue, and people will have a response about an ex and their new situation,” she said. “It’s inadvertently affected me to the point where it makes me question my overall value as a person.”

Praising Taylor, she said: “I really like, like, her. I think she’s very talented.”