There’s a reason that Lamar Odom has had such a lasting effect on Khloé Kardashian’s life nearly a decade after their split.
Khloé, 40, kicked off the latest season of The Kardashians with a surprise reunion with her ex-husband, who she hadn’t seen in more than nine years following their 2016 divorce. On the March 6 episode of the reality series, she reflected on how she felt several weeks after meeting Odom at her friend Malika Haqq’s house for an emotional conversation.
“I think I’m still processing what this meeting meant to me,” she said in a confessional as she began to expand on the larger role that Odom, 45, had on her whole family.
“Because our Dad died so young, Lamar was the first man that ever came in our lives that was like, the head of the household. For all of us,” she said. “Lamar was everyone’s protector. Everyone — even if someone was older — looked up to Lamar.”
Khloé’s dad, Robert Kardashian Sr. — with whom Kris Jenner also shared daughters Kim and Kourtney Kardashian as well as son Rob Kardashian — died in 2003. Khloé met Odom six years later.
Khloé said the former NBA player was on a “pedestal” among her family, but “deservingly,” which explains her complicated feelings.
“It made me sad because the demise of Lamar hurt and affected every single one of my family [members]. We still love him and cherish him, but that man is just not there,” she continued. “Seeing him at Malika’s, I was just like, I can’t help you anymore. You’ll never be the person that we all idolized.”
In the season 6 premiere episode, Khloé said she wanted to see her ex-husband to help her “shed” some baggage as she approached her 40th birthday.
Opening up about their relationship, she said she “had to break contact with him” after his 2015 overdose left him in a coma, which prompted her to take care of him for months. She officially cut ties around that time when she discovered he was “repeating some of the same behaviors that I just couldn’t stand for.”
“I was very upset. I said to him, ‘I’m going to Vegas. You need to be out by Monday. That’s it, I’m done.’ And I haven’t seen Lamar since that day,” Khloé said.
When Odom arrived, Khloé said he was “visibly uncomfortable,” but she didn’t “have a lot of emotion.”
“I have dealt with so much trauma in this relationship for years and this was such the love of my life that to learn how to unlove someone — to have to go through all that — it’s almost like a death,” she said in a confessional. “[It’s] so familiar and so uncharted, all at the same time. I don’t know this person anymore. It’s just a mind f—.”
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New episodes of The Kardashians premiere Thursdays at 12 a.m. ET on Hulu.
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