No shortage of signs that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s marriage was in trouble
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Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s divorce is imminent, so they say, and we can’t deny there weren’t signs things were trending this way.
The couple known as Kimye has been plagued by divorce rumors since their over-the-top 2014 wedding, even while they went to great lengths to build their family, and renewed their wedding vows on their fifth anniversary. But that vow renewal — in Oct. 2019 — seems to have been a late attempt to steady their shaky relationship as things just proceeded downhill after that.
Let’s be honest — they have gone through it during their very high-profile though relatively short marriage. The rapper had a public breakdown, leading to a massive lawsuit over his abruptly canceled tour and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2017. While that clearly loomed over them, the reality star was advised she could die if she became pregnant again, which led to them turning to surrogacy for their last two pregnancies, and she had to undergo five operations in one year to fix the damage caused by her pregnancies. Then there was Kardashian being a victim of armed robbery. All of that while under the pressure of building their empires (worth over a billion dollars combined), spending years of their marriage living with her mother as well as sharing their lives non-stop on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, social media, in interviews and on red carpets.
They kept proving critics wrong though despite the bumps — banding together for magazine covers depicting a so-called “perfect” life in their $60 million home, backing each other in public feuds and controversies, having more kids and taking every opportunity to showcase their big love for each other.
But just months after West paid Kenny G to serenade his wife for Valentine’s Day in 2019 — a pivotal year of the pair — he plunked down $14 million on a ranch in Wyoming. That pricy purchase, in September 2019, seemed to completely go against L.A.-born and bred Kardashian’s lifestyle. Rustic photo shoots aside, it was very obvious that would never be her home base.
And yet West then seemed to double down on his move apart from his family, buying a second Wyoming ranch two months later — and they started living much of their lives apart from that point.
That same year, West had started his Sunday Services, with Kardashian showing support, and in Oct. 2019, he announced he converted to Christianity. He hasn’t been shy about that either — in his music, tweets and visits to superchurches — but Kardashian didn’t follow on the same spiritual path.
It seemed their paths had diverged a lot by then. While she focused on law — trying to pass the bar and taking on a legal internship — his interest in politics grew. He had already publicly supported Donald Trump, a rare celebrity to do so, declaring they were one and the same with their “dragon energy.” (Kardashian made her own visits to Washington, D.C., to chat up Trump about her prison reform crusade.)
West’s own political aspirations grew as well and he announced his own bid for the presidency (Birthday Party!) in July 2020. His first campaign event that month was a doozie, breaking any privacy pact between them by announcing that they had considered aborting their first child, North West.
Things went south from his explosive comments that day — making for a very turbulent 2020 — with subsequent Twitter rants claiming Kardashian was trying to “lock me up” and saying he was trying to divorce her. He even compared his mother-in-law to a dictator. He also dredged up Kardashian’s 2018 dinner with Meek Mill, which he wasn’t happy about. Kardashian, who was turned away from visiting him in Wyoming, made a public plea calling for “compassion and empathy,” saying he was in the midst of a bipolar episode.
While Kardashian eventually made it to Wyoming for face-to-face talks (teary ones!) and they went on a family trip, they never seemed to have fully worked things out. He dropped a pretty penny on her 40th birthday gift — a hologram of her late dad — but then missed nearly all of her controversial birthday extravaganza in October, arriving for the last day or two.
We can’t imagine her real, closed-door reaction to him seemingly urinating on his Grammy in September.
Us Weekly reports that the couple had a big blowup in early December. As a result, they have not “been together in weeks and didn’t spend the holidays together,” which was obvious from her family photo. They have been in counseling and want to reach a settlement before officially announcing a divorce.
Us Weekly also reported that Kardashian met with divorce attorneys in July — after the public abortion comments — “to explore and talk about divorce,” according to the source. At that time, she retained Laura Wasser, who a Kardashian source told the magazine has been “actively working for Kim since last summer.”
Kardashian is no stranger to divorce, this will be number three, and Wasser represented her in her messy 2012 divorce from Kris Humphries. The women have stayed tight enough that Wasser has been a guest at the infamous Kardashian Christmas party, posing in the photo booth with the reality star.
Last February, Kardashian was the first guest on Wasser’s podcast.
And Wasser — who has repped Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp and Britney Spears in divorces — is now advising Kardashian through the process with West.
Page Six was first to sound the alarm about Kimye on Tuesday with an insider saying, “They are keeping it low-key but they are done.” The source said Kardashian had tried to protect and help West during his mental health struggles, but she’s “grown up a lot” and just “had enough.”
And it seems amicable with a source saying West “is completely over the entire family… He wants nothing to do with them” — and he found their long-running E! reality show, now in its final season, “unbearable.”
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