Kris Jenner on cheating on Robert Kardashian with Caitlyn Jenner: ‘It’s my life’s biggest regret’
The mother and manager of the famous Los Angeles family says that she was “really young and dumb,” and that she is not “proud” of what happened, but that the relationship led to her two youngest daughters, Kendall and Kylie
Over the 17 years in which they have been dominating television screens and billboards, the Kardashian family has learned how to become the center of attention. What began as a reality show about three good girls selling clothes in a shopping center on the outskirts of Los Angeles has become an immense empire that feeds over half a dozen of families very well; the unexpected ramifications and figures of the successful show are impossible to process. They know how to place themselves at the center of attention, along with their relationships, their children, their fights and their jobs. They know how to make sure that each week there is a plot twist that becomes news. And this week the news focused on Kris Jenner, the momager (mother and manager) of the family, who seems to have made an authentic confession; that’s unusual for her because usually allows her daughters to take the spotlight.
Jenner, 67, has talked more about herself and her relationships in the third season of the reality show in its new iteration at Disney-Hulu (prior to that, there had already been 20 seasons). Specifically, the momager explained what she called the worst mistake of her life: cheating on her first husband and the father of four of her children, now-deceased attorney Robert Kardashian, with her now second ex-husband, Caitlyn Jenner (then Bruce), who ended up becoming the father of her two—now multimillionaire—youngest daughters.
The confession took place during the most recent episode of the show, when her daughter Khloé (the third of the four children she had with Robert Kardashian, who has also experienced several public infidelities on the part of her ex-partner, basketball player Tristan Thompson) asked why Kris was unfaithful to her father. “What was your mindset when you cheated?” Khloé, 39, asked Kris: “When you did that with my dad, and you had four kids and you had a family? Yes, I know you were really young…” Khloé asked her mother, who was 35 years old at the time.
Jenner, who had spoken about her infidelities before but never in such detail, explained that “I think being really young and dumb is something that plays into it, because you don’t really understand the consequences of your actions.” “But what was my dad not doing that made you want to look elsewhere?” Khloé asks. “He was such a great husband and such a great dad, and I think that I fell into a situation where I thought that the grass was greener somewhere else,” In fact, Kris confesses that that was a mistake: “And I made a huge mistake. That’s like my life’s biggest regret.”
“I’m not proud of how I behaved at that time, but you know what? Everything happens for a reason,” said Kris Jenner during the talk with her daughter. “I really do live my life by thinking God has a plan, and without that whole thing happening, there never would’ve been Kendall and Kylie [Jenner],” she says of her two youngest daughters, the products of her relationship with her then-lover, who soon became her husband.
After the couple separated, Kris continued to have a very close relationship with Robert Kardashian. She says that they became “best friends,” which continued until the lawyer’s 2003 death from esophageal cancer. “We talked on the phone all day long, helped each other through things all the time,” she said. “And I did have regrets. I thought, ‘Wow, what was I thinking?’” she admits. That’s why she recommends that Khloé think long and hard about whether she wants to cut off all relations with her ex-partner and the father of her two children, True, 5, and Tatum, who was born through a surrogate 15 months ago.
Robert, a descendant of Armenian grandparents, and Kris married in July 1978. He was 34 and she was 22, and they went on to have four children: Kourtney, Kim, Khloé and Rob. The couple divorced in March 1991; just a month later, in April of that same year, Kris remarried, wedding Caitlyn Jenner, then Bruce, a former medalist at the 1976 Olympic Games. She helped him revive his career, making him in motivational coach. They had two daughters together, the aforementioned Kendall, in 1995, and Kylie, in 1997. The couple separated in September 2014. In early 2015, Bruce came out as Caitlyn, announcing that she was a woman. Since 2014, Kris Jenner has been dating Corey Gamble, who maintains a much lower profile than his girlfriend and her daughters.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
