Kayla Nicole has been open about the backlash she’s received amid her ex-boyfriend Travis Kelce’s romance with Taylor Swift, and she revealed her true thoughts about the pop star during her time on Special Forces: The World’s Toughest Test.

During the Wednesday, January 8, episode of the Fox series, Kayla, 33, revealed to fellow contestants Alana Blanchard and Kyla Pratt that she previously dated Travis, 35. She then added that he’s currently “dating Taylor Swift.”

“Going through a public breakup, just to be frank, it’s been overwhelming,” Kayla – who dated Travis for five years before their split in 2022 – explained. “I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

Despite admitting that the split was difficult to navigate in the public eye, Kayla insisted that she has no issues with Taylor, 35, who began dating the Kansas City Chiefs athlete in the summer of 2023.

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

Later on in the episode, Kayla addressed the “social media battlefield” she has faced in light of her ex’s current relationship.

“It’s pretty constant and exhausting,” the Los Angeles native said about the backlash. “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. It’s inadvertently affected me to the point where it makes me question my overall value as a person.”

Kayla continued through tears, “I think there’s just the comparison and it’s just like on loop. I think I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with it.”

The latest episode of Special Forces isn’t the first time that Kayla has discussed the backlash she’s received on social media due to her past romance with Travis.

The topic previously came up when she appeared on an October 2024 episode of the “Unapologetically Angel” podcast . “I would be lying if I said that that level of hate and just like online chaos doesn’t impact me. It does,” she told host and WNBA star Angel Reese. “You could go to my most recent post, and there will be people debating each other why I am worthless, and I’ll never be a talented person, and I have no career.”

Kayla continued, “I think that there’s something about that level of fame that attracts crazy people, and it’s unfortunate, because I’ve never done anything to warrant that kind of backlash.”

She has been trying to make the most of the situation, and previously revealed that the backlash helped prepare her for her stint on Special Forces.

“I would say I’m the opposite of being afraid of what people are going to see. I’m actually excited for people to see us stripped down, raw, vulnerable,” she told Page Six about competing on the show in December 2024. “I think people in general, the general public, need to be reminded that we’re all humans, right? We all have very real emotions. And I’m excited about that element [of] allowing us to be humans.”

She added that the negative response from fans “put things in full perspective” for her that “social media is literally just that.”

“Social media, words on the internet and experiences like this put life into perspective,” Kayla continued. “Like, there’s people in the real world that are doing this on a daily basis to save lives. So the little tweets and the headlines could mean nothing to me when you’re put in an environment like this.”