Why Khloé Kardashian and Lamar Odom Would Often Call Each Other and Start ‘Crying, Yelling, and Cussing’

Khloé Kardashian and Lamar Odom shared their lives from 2009 until 2016. From their one-week engagement to their star-studded wedding, most of the couple’s marriage took place on reality television. With Keeping Up With the Kardashians and their spinoff show, Khloé and Lamar, the pair were seemingly as transparent about their relationship as possible. However, Odom shared in his memoir, Darkness To Light, that the couple had significant problems in their marriage that fans didn’t get to see. 

Lamar Odom ‘hated’ and ‘loved’ Khloé Kardashian

In 2009, Kardashian and Odom instantly connected at a party in Los Angeles. At the time, the Revenge Body host was 25, and the former Lakers player was 30. Nonetheless, the couple decided to get married 30 days after they met.

While they were deeply in love, both Kardashian and Odom have admitted that they didn’t know each other much before their marriage. In Darkness To Light, the Rich Soil CEO said he kept his crack/cocaine addiction away from his wife during the early times of their relationship. Once Kardashian found out about his substance misuse, though, she tried to support her husband. However, Odom continued to cheat on his ex-wife until she filed for divorce in 2013. Before their split, the author wrote that he and Kardashian were barely getting along. 

“I hated her and loved her all at once,” Odom wrote, adding that he “could kiss her and curse her in the same breath.”

Khloé Kardashian and Lamar Odom had ‘so much anger’ in the middle of their divorce

Even though Kardashian filed for divorce from Odom, their divorce took an additional three years to finalize. By Sept. 2015, the couple was still legally married but lived in separate houses. Odom’s drug addiction became more visible in the news, and his career was declining. 

Although Kardashian continued to work on KUWTK and its spinoff, Kourtney and Khloé Take the Hamptons, Odom shared that both of them were in a dark place. Soon, the pair only spoke on the phone to have intense conversations with each other. 

“Sometimes the conversation was civil; at others, it was tense,” Odom said in his memoir. “Then there were the calls where we just screamed at each other—crying, yelling, cussing. There was so much anger. We were looking for a love that had long passed and was never coming back.”

Why did Khloé and Lamar divorce? 

Amid their screaming matches, Kardashian and Odom tried to remain in each other’s lives as much as possible. However, the E! star began dating French Montana and James Harden during her separation from Odom. Nonetheless, Kardashian rushed to Odom’s side when he had an overdose in 2015. As his legal wife, she took care of Odom’s medical needs until he recovered. 

“He OD’ed during the divorce, and I was his next of kin, even though it was still, the divorce was still — it was on the judge’s desk,” Kardashian said on Divorce Sucks Podcast. “It was like two years, or like a year or two of us trying to get the divorce going, and then this happened.” 

“And then we paused the divorce, not for any romantic reasons, but I wanted to be able to help take care of him and make sure that he would be OK again.”

Shortly after his recovery in 2016, Odom and Kardashian officially divorced. The athlete has since blamed his sex and drug addictions for the split. Kardashian shared the same sentiments when she discussed Odom’s infidelity on The Howard Stern Show. 

How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.