Bachelor in Paradise star Katherine "Kat" Izzo has revealed whether she was willing to get engaged again in Paradise.
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"I did not go in saying I was going to leave engaged," Kat revealed during an early July episode of the "Bachelor Happy Hour" podcast.
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Kat got engaged to John Henry Spurlock on Bachelor in Paradise's ninth-season finale, but only days after the finale aired in December 2023, the pair announced their split.
The Bachelorette alum eventually moved on with a man outside of Bachelor Nation, Zac Cooper, in Summer 2024, but their romance quickly fizzled out.
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Kat subsequently decided to look for love on TV again by joining Bachelor in Paradise's Season 10 cast, and the show's July 7 premiere showed her sparking a connection with The Bachelorette 16 alum Dale Moss.
But Kat said an engagement definitely wasn't on her radar this time around in Paradise.
"I was definitely not going in saying, 'I'm going to get engaged,' in any capacity," Kat reiterated during her conversation with Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt.
While Kat wasn't expecting a ring on her finger by the time filming ended in Costa Rica, she said she was still open to a serious relationship that would last in the real world.
"I went in with a lot more awareness on, like, what I needed to ask and things I needed to assess, and I needed to see how people handled certain situations than how I [handled things] in the past," Kat explained.
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"You can only really do that if you've already lived it, and so that's pretty much how I approached it. I wasn't blindly like, 'Oh, you're cute and you're funny and you're great -- let's see what happens.'"
On the contrary, Kat said her journey on Bachelor in Paradise "was very, very thought out" this year.
Kat said her second stint on Paradise was entirely different from her first. Kat said the people, the environment, the creative, and how she showed up were opposite from Season 9.
"It was just fun! I had a really good time," Kat noted.
"But it definitely still came with some ups and downs. It's an environment where you are putting yourself out there to potentially get hurt, and you don't know how it's going to end."
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Kat shared how she was looking for a man who's lived enough life to be a supportive partner and take life seriously with her.
"[I wanted] someone I could trust will be there for me through the ups and downs, and mostly just qualities of compassion and kindness to everybody -- and truly authentic to who they are... no people pleasing," Kat explained.
Kat also said she hoped to find a fun partner who thinks she's funny and can laugh with her all the time.
"But mostly somebody who was at least over the age of 30... so they're a little tired," Kat quipped.
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"I need someone to be a little tired who does not want to go out every weekend and has his priorities in check."
On Bachelor in Paradise's Season 10 premiere, Kat had some flirtation going on with Jonathon Johnson, but then 36-year-old Dale Moss arrived and asked the blonde beauty out on a date.
"He's a man!" Kat quipped as Dale approached the cast. "He is definitely a lot of man!"
And Dale gushed of Kat: "I'm definitely attracted to her. I think she's beautiful and there are definitely layers she has that she hasn't shown me."
For their date, Dale and Kat sailed on a catamaran, and Kat seemed taken by -- and smitten with -- Dale.
Dale and Kat kissed on their first date, and then Kat gave Dale her rose at the first Rose Ceremony of the season.
Kat appeared to have healed from her prior two serious relationships.
John Henry had spoken out about his breakup with Kat during an April 2024 appearance on "The Ben & Ashley I: Almost Famous Podcast."
"I started thinking to myself, 'Is this really it? Is this really what I want?' Once I started thinking that, it just kind of started spiraling for me, and then everything else just started getting more stressful," John Henry explained at the time.
"And then, I started to see our differences a lot more. So, things just really got hard for me."
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John Henry said he was also struggling with depression at that point and he "wasn't there" for Kat like he "should've been" or wanted to be.
"It got to a point where it was just extremely hard for the both of us," he recalled. "And then basically, I called it quits. I said, 'This doesn't feel right. I think this should be a lot easier than what it is,' and it just, it wasn't the case."
John Henry revealed that Kat was "shocked" by his decision to break up with her and the situation "wasn't really fair" to her.
"Because at the time, I was her fiance and I was supposed to be her rock... I think the hardest thing for her was the fact I'm supposed to be her guy and I'm supposed to be there for her, and I was struggling with that because of all the issues I was dealing with myself," John Henry shared.
John Henry, however, claimed that he and Kat were able to remain friends.
The Bachelor in Paradise alum concluded, "I'm happy with my experience, and I wouldn't change it for anything... Someone is going to be very lucky to have [Kat]."
Prior to testing her luck on Bachelor in Paradise, Kat had competed on Zach Shallcross' season of The Bachelor.
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