Happy Thursday everybody. Welcome back to the Gali dating one-on-one podcast. We have a special guest. The lady of the hour, I'm not sure if you know of her yet, but if you don't, you are going to know now Lady Kate warm-in. Thank you for joining me on this podcast.

Tavira's, woo-hoo, pumped to be here. I'm super salty. I kind of get stuff on to interview you. I know it's fun, you know, but we met. We met a should meet Kate last year. She gave us the opportunity to speak at her conference.

She has an awesome podcast. I definitely stole at least five ideas from her podcast. I never told her before. Now she knows.

We have to learn from each other. That's how we do it over here. You know.

So if you're a jerk, our podcast, you're definitely going to love part of dating.

Maybe you follow heart of dating and you didn't know that this was her all along. So Kate, thank you again for joining us. We have a bit of a heavy topic that we want to talk about.

And this is something soft and I stayed clear up because we didn't have too much experience on it, but we have someone that's willing to be vulnerable, open about her story.

So today we're going to be talking about abuse. Well, we're going to do too much details, but we'll give you enough for you to understand abuse, betrayal, and finding healing.

I know many people listening. You're in that season right now. You're probably trying to figure out if this relationship is worth it. You're trying to figure out why God may have allowed it.

We're going to be talking about a lot of those scenarios, but, uh, yeah, look before, look before, where my manners before we do that. Kate, do you have anything on stage of the people introduce yourself or quick testimony or something to show so we know who you are.

Yeah, Tavars, thanks for having me. I'm so excited and honored to speak on this topic. It's super tender. So yeah, I want to give that trigger warning to anybody too.

I'm out of my story. So just if that if you're really sensitive to that right now, anything to do with abuse, just want to let you know that before I start talking about it.

But I'm so thankful to be here. I mean, I will just I'm a dating coach, I run hard of dating as Tavara said, it's such an honor and a privilege to walk through single like walk with singles. And actually, I am also single. So it's kind of fun and interesting to be doing this alongside of everyone.

I'm a quick testimony. We will share more today, but my story has a lot to do with dating. I'm 31 right now. I started dating around the age of 14 dated for 10 years back to back. Don't know why honestly, my parents were like, let me date up 14.

I'm looking back and like, okay, first of all, wait, what? Anywho, so I was dating at the age of 14 to 24. And in those first 10 years of like dating, I dated nonstop back to back all sorts of relationships. When I was between the ages of 15 and 16, I had quote on quote using air quotes here 16 boyfriends.

That was, you know, we just flew through them that year. And I went into like, boyfriends quote unquote, right. And then I was in a long relationship. Most of it was long distance. I've been set up. I've gone on blind dates. I've dated non Christians. This is a there was a whole slew of things. And the end of that 10 year stint actually ended in me and a two and a half year relationship that was incredibly abusive.

I had never been in an abusive relationship before. And so I've been lots of relationships never dealt with that. And so it was really eye opening for me. And so that was two and a half years of abuse ranging from emotional abuse to sexual abuse to physical abuse.

All of the kinds of abuse and plenty of betrayal in that two and a half years. And you may ask why I stayed for two and a half years. Well, totally get into that. I'm sure, because that's a question a lot of people are wondering and it needs to be normalized why it's easy to stay in toxic relationships like that.

After that, I was in a very low place. I would venture to say I hated myself. Maybe I didn't say that out loud, but internally I hated all parts of myself. I thought I was ugly from the inside out. I didn't like the way I talked it in like the way I looked. I just berated myself and I felt really low.

And that also was compounded by my abuser gaslighting me telling me I was crazy telling me I was wrong never validating my feelings ever. And so I was left in a place where I just did not know who I was.

And it left me so heartbroken and so low that I had to take a look in the mirror and say, wait a second, last for the last 10 years, I've been dating nonstop literally and like I don't even know what life is like as a single. I don't even know who Kate is outside of dating.

I don't know who Kate is outside of needing a valid that validation from a man. And it was this big awakening for me where I realized I wanted to figure out who that person was who is Kate outside of validation outside of relationships outside of men. And so I went on a journey of healing, inter healing, counseling lots of therapy mentors.

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