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Dating and Rejection: Why Author Kait Warman Says It's Good For You

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Kait Warman started the podcast “The Heart of Dating” after she says a heartbreak “redirected me to this season of being able to step into this calling and have space to build this fire in my heart.” Though admittedly “terrified,” Kait says she also felt confident in the new venture.

“God was really leading me to this…then people over six months started calling me a dating expert and I'm like, ‘I don't know if I accept that, but thanks!’

From the podcast, Kait began educating herself with fervor. While she says her life story is the best training, Kait spent time researching psychology to better help her listeners and also began date coaching one-on-one. She now offers courses and appears at conferences.

The title of her book, Thank You for Rejecting Me, definitely grabs your attention. It's not often we are thankful after being rejected.

“You know, I don't think you wake up and you're like, ‘I'm grateful for this rejection.’ But I think it's through a process of God revealing to you. If that hadn't have happened, I wouldn't have learned this. I wouldn't have discovered this about myself or about this other person.

“In rejection, we either actually heal through it or we compartmentalize it and push it down. That's what a lot of people do. Or maybe I would say there's a third option to be destroyed by it. But by doing the more noble journey, the hard journey – really pressing into the healing and feeling that pain, God will show you so much as you surrender the process to Him and bring Him into every second and step of the way.”

A few months before Thank You for Rejecting Me was released, Kait revealed she had endured what was possibly the last thing an author would expect after writing a book on relationships.

“I think I almost had a subconscious bargain going on with God, writing a book on rejection. I was like, ‘God, so I'm doing this, which means no more heartbreak, right?’ I have the desire for marriage and this is a great guy and I'm feeling like it's going in that direction. When that relationship ended, he ended it, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, Lord, are you kidding me?’ By then, I really saw that the timing was so perfect because – I don't want to say that in a cheesy way – but I believe it because if it had happened a few months later, right before my book launch, I would have been in the throes of major grief and trying to talk about rejection, which would just have been painfully hard.”

“The words of my book actually healed me. So it was this terrible but beautiful moment of realizing I also wrote this book for me. These reminders, rejection never stops in our life. External rejection will always happen. But we can build and create stronger tools and systems in our life to be able to deal with that. I remember getting to the last page, weeping, like ‘I do have a strength within me to face this season.’”

Thank You for Rejecting Me is not only for people who are actively dating. Kait believes her experiences and wisdom can be a source for everyone in all areas of life.

“I don't think rejection is just for dating. If [you] think of the word rejection, what does it conjure for you? It doesn't just conjure like the romantic rejection. It can conjure up abandonment or feeling like that friend didn't accept you or that you don't fit in. It can conjure up betrayal and different things that people just not accepting. We experience rejection in so many different areas. Not only do we experience external rejections, but I actually feel really passionate about the internal self-rejections we experience as well. No person, no matter what your relationship status is, is immune to rejection of any kind.”

“I know tons of married women, for example, or mothers who reject their bodies and body shame – comparing themselves to other moms and feeling rejected because they don't feel like they fit in with the rest of those ‘cool moms.’ We experience self-rejection all the time. When we reject ourselves, by the way we talk to ourselves, then it's really easier for external rejections to land and take us down.”

Kait does not see rejection as exclusive to women. She has partnered with male leaders in her industry who speak to men’s issues and has found quite a few similarities.

“I think men struggle with very similar issues as women do. Women struggle with a lot of body shame. It's our biggest shame trigger, but I think men also struggle with body shame and fear rejection just as much as women do. I think we have a bad stigma as women that we think ‘Why aren't the guys asking the girls out? They should just ‘man up.’ [But] he's a human who also fears rejection, just like you fear rejection. So let's get compassionately curious. We need to come alongside our brothers and encourage them and not put them down for not asking girls out enough.”

What sets Kait apart from other dating coaches is her faith. She grew up Catholic, but when her family moved to another state, she began attending an evangelical church where she was exposed to the Joshua Harris book and accompanying movement of I Kissed Dating Goodbye which affected her dating life and creatied a sense of sexual shame.

“I would say I knew Jesus and I was a believer, but I wasn't truly following God. I didn't have a deep relationship with God. It really wasn't until I actually unfortunately went through a really traumatic and abusive relationship [which] stripped away any ounce of love that I had for myself, any ounce of confidence, and made me crippled with insecurity and self-hatred.

“After two and a half years, when I finally got the strength and the courage to be fed up enough to leave that relationship, I faced a lot of things about myself and the way I saw God. I ended up going on a retreat called Hearing the Voice of God. And it was the first time I really started connecting with the Holy spirit and started intimately feeling and receiving God in my heart. It’s when I realized that God isn't a passive God and I don't have to perform to receive his love.

“He cares about the longings of my heart. He cares about my pains. He cares about me being abused. He doesn't see any fault in me for those things. And he wants to heal me and wants to love me.”

Using her unique faith perspective, Kait delves into what she says is the “sexual shame and the clear gap in evangelical culture between what's being taught and what's actually happening.”

“There is definitely a gap. There's a stat that states about 69% of evangelicals have said that they've slept with someone in the last year. Those are people that are aware of the purity culture teachings. They've been taught all of those things, and yet they aren't doing it. They're clearly not acting upon it.. Why is that? A part of that is because the culture of ‘shoulding’ – you should do this, you should do that, you shouldn't do this – is impacting us in negative ways. It's not deep rooted, especially as adults. Even as adolescents, we need a clear picture of a holistic understanding of how God created sex, how He designed us, that our sexual desire is good and beautiful.

“We should start asking God those questions and removing the shame layers of who told you that it should be done this way? And what did that make you feel? And how have you ever felt separated from your body or from your sexuality? Let's go under the layers there because what we need is we need to see what are the things that have stopped me from being truly the beautiful sexual being that I am. And again, I am for abstinence. I really believe in abstinence before marriage, but I just want to encourage people to come at it in a way where it is holistically grounded with compassion and grace and truth and love and knowledge that goes from your head to your heart, so that you're walking out your sexual ethic with confidence and with love for yourself and for other people.

“Then you're able to more easily stand up for your convictions and tempting scenarios. That's what I want to encourage for people. That's the journey that I've personally been on as well, which is difficult. I will not say, and sit here and say l do everything perfect or everything is easy for me. It's just not the case, you know? But I have better tools to be able to walk in my convictions when it comes to my sexual ethic and what I believe God is calling me to do in those areas.”

Ghosting, victim mentality, and the perils and triumphs of online dating (even during quarantine), are just a few of the topics Kait covers on her podcast and through coaching. But her focus, and perhaps her greatest passion, is helping others heal from rejection.

“I may seem joyous and happy. If you go on Instagram, you may think I have it all together. I just want to be honest, rejection hurts and it's not lost on me. I went through a breakup late last year in 2020, and the first few weeks after that was a lot of snotty, messy crying. It was on my hands and knees and asking God to be with me ‘cause my heart was hurting. There are moments where I'm still going through different grieving processes. But I've realized there's a way to grieve and hope at the same time.

“The reason I believe that and why I practice it is because I know the character of God. And I know that he didn't cause this rejection – he doesn't cause the pain to happen. He doesn't necessarily want me to feel the pain, but he allowed for it for some reason. And I'm going to see that reason through time. He's going to redeem this. He will make beauty from the ashes and I can hold fast to that truth. So just know I get your pain. Maybe I don't know all the things you've been through, but you are seen, you are loved, you are worthy. You don't have to prove that to anybody and rejection hurts, but you can have more tools in your life so that it doesn't take you down.”

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Kimberly
Carr