Radical Forgiveness
Last weekend Khloe Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and mom Kris Jenner publicly and affectionately wished Khloe’s ‘baby daddy’ Tristan Thompson a happy 30th birthday. This was extremely shocking given that not very long ago, in 2019, Tristan cheated on Khloe (for what we know to have been a second time) with Jordyn Woods, younger sister Kylie Jenner’s then-BFF. Whew, that was a packed sentence.
Khloe’s, Kim’s, and Kris’s birthday shoutouts signaled a seemingly official acceptance of TT back into the family’s good graces...or at least three family members’ good graces — the remaining kin were mum on Tristan’s March 13th born day. Seeing not only Khloe’s, but the others’ outpouring of love for Tristan made me think twice about how I look at forgiving cheating men.
I’ve always pretty much considered it a deal breaker. But I realize that’s easy to say when I haven’t been in the position to decide whether to continue a relationship after a partner’s been unfaithful. I suppose there could be exceptions depending on factors like if it was a one-time instance or a full-blown affair, an ongoing lie or an immediate disclosure, and how old the relationship is and if the infidelity was during a rough patch.
But in Khloe’s and Tristan’s situation the cheating seemed like the most low-down, sleezy, unforgivable kind. It not only happened on more than one occasion, but it happened while Khloe was pregnant with Tristan’s seed; it happened publicly; both incidents took place in less than a year of each other; and he cheated with someone within the family’s immediate circle. How does a relationship come back from that?
Not only has Khloe forgiven Tristan, but she’s even planning to expand their family by having another child with him. On Thursday’s premiere of the final season of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” Khloe and Tristan sit side by side in an interview, look squarely into the camera, and discuss their plans to conceive via in vitro fertilization, as she notes they’re not “romantically” involved, or in other words, not having sex.
What we’re seeing here is radical forgiveness. Great term, right? I’d never heard it before but after a quick google search I learned there’s a book with that title that was published in 1997. I haven’t looked into the literary work but what I think of when referring to radical forgiveness is digging deep within oneself to accept and then let go of even the most horrendous transgressions, i.e. Tristan’s blatant blunders.
We have to keep in mind that we don’t know what kinds of conversations, therapy, and healing Tristan and Khloe have been doing behind the scenes in the time since the scandal made headlines. Part of Khlo’s birthday post caption says, “Thank you for showing me everything you said you would.” We can assume T’s displayed tangible acts of changed behavior…maybe? Who knows what kind of work the NBA star has been putting in to regain Khloe’s trust. It’s also important to be mindful that what we see on social media and a reality tv show are only snippets of everyday, real life.
I recently came across a clip of Oprah saying that, “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.” That makes the concept a bit easier to digest. While I find Khloe and her fam’s Instagram birthday posts to be jarring, I’m pretty impressed by their emotional capacity to let the past be the past and move forward with Tristan.
I like the idea that we can always recover from our past poor decisions to evolve into better people. For the Kardashians’ sake, I hope Tristan has done exactly that.
