by Jenner, Kris
I constantly lied to Robert. I had a breakfast, I was going to meet a friend, I was going shopping. I didn’t work. I was a housewife. I was raising my kids. I had a baby son at school who needed me. But I would drop Kourtney, Kimberly, and Khloé off at school and rush straight to Ryan. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Ryan. Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. I could not control myself. It was crazy, and every time I did it, I told myself it was the last time. Isn’t that what happens when someone is caught up in an affair? You keep getting sucked back in. I’m just going to go back this one more time, you tell yourself. That’s why they call it seduction. It’s like trying to quit smoking: you say, This is my last cigarette, and it’s never anyone’s last cigarette, unless they really get help. I wasn’t willing to get help, because I was having too much fun.
Robert wasn’t the only one I lied to. My girlfriends had always known where I was and how to find me. So when I began disappearing and had lost fifteen pounds and started tanning and getting bikini waxes every other day, they knew something was up. I would look my girlfriends in the eye—even Joyce Kraines and Shelli Azoff—and lie that I was going to the car wash. I figured the car wash took about an hour, and I would hightail it to Ryan’s house. Joyce finally asked, “How many times can you go to the car wash?”
As time went on, Robert obviously realized that I was changing. Everything about me was different, and he was panicking and angry. He was trying to figure out what was wrong with me. He tried harder to be a better husband. But the bond between us was broken because I had already slept with someone else and I was obsessed with the guy. I didn’t have that feeling for Robert—I hadn’t had that feeling for Robert for years, even before I met Ryan. Now that I had connected emotionally and physically with someone else, I had checked out of the marriage, and on some level he knew it.
Robert started paying more attention to my movements. When I would go downstairs at night to call Ryan, he’d follow me and try to listen to my conversation. It got ugly. “Who are you talking to?” he would demand. “Oh, just a friend,” I would lie.
I was out of control and selfish. Robert would leave town to go on a business trip, and I would have Ryan and a couple of his friends come over in the middle of the day or late at night for drinks. Nothing too crazy was going on, but he started coming around, and I would explain him away as a friend of a friend or just a guy coming by to play tennis—because I always had instructors or friends coming by to play tennis. I thought he might just blend into the woodwork. But Robert knew something was up, and I began making a lot of mistakes. I just didn’t care anymore. One morning I left the house early to meet Ryan, and Robert had me followed. He found out we were at a restaurant in Beverly Hills, Ryan and I alone in a booth, having breakfast.
I was sitting in the booth, facing out, when the door opened and Robert came walking toward me. My world started spinning. I thought I might faint.
“Well, I caught you, I caught you!” he said.
I was shell-shocked. Oh my God, oh my God.
He ran out of the restaurant. I ran after him. He jumped in his car and drove away. I got into my car and followed him. We went back to the house, where we had a huge fight. The worst part was, I cared more about how Ryan was feeling after that scene than I did about Robert. I met back up with Ryan later that afternoon at his apartment. When I walked out of his apartment an hour or two later, Robert was standing out front. I think he had had me followed by a private detective.
“Now I know where you spend your time,” he said.
One thing led to another. Robert kept catching me with Ryan. I kept thinking, Surely Robert won’t come back to Ryan’s apartment, but he did. Again and again and again. He caught us three different times. I just could not quit Ryan. It was like being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. I don’t know what happened to me; I just lost my mind. Those were the darkest days of my life, because I was slowly realizing the sadness of the situation and the grief and pain I was causing everyone else. And I couldn’t change it.
This went on for three months, at which point Robert filed for divorce. I was served with divorce papers at my house. I called my girlfriend Candace Garvey, crying my eyes out. “What do I do? What do I do?”
“We’re going to call Dennis Wasser,” she said. “He’s the best divorce attorney in town.” I called Dennis and he agreed to accept the case, but I didn’t know how to pay his retainer, because I didn’t have access to any money. I had never paid a bill. I didn’t even know how much we paid the gardener. I couldn’t tell you what we owed on the house. I had a credit card and even a Gelson’s charge card for buying groceries, but I never wrote a check, ever. My husband paid the bills, he wrote the checks, he handled the money. I had no money—not one dollar—to my name. He controlled everything. I had to take Candace Garvey’s offer to loan me $10,000 to pay the attorney’s retainer. It never occurred to me before that moment in this dark time that I had no power. Later in life, I would decide that was a situation I would never be in again.
My friends were so confused and devastated when they found out about the affair—especially O.J.
“I need to talk to you, Kris,” he said. “Get over here now.”
I drove over to Rockingham, where O.J. was waiting for me in the kitchen.
“I want this guy’s phone number,” he said, meaning Ryan’s. “I’m calling him now.”
I gave him the number, knowing he was going to scream at Ryan.
“You just fucked Snow White,” O.J. told Ryan. “You got that? You just fucked Snow White. Do you know what you’ve done to this entire universe, you asshole? You motherfucker. Now you’re going to have to deal with me.”
He slammed down the phone, and glared at me.
“What is the problem with you, Kris?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know why I don’t have the same feelings for Robert.”
He cut me off. “All you had to do is get a vibrator,” he said. “What’d you need this guy for?”
He was trying to make some sense of it. Of course, later I would realize that O.J. was the biggest player of them all, and here he was scolding me for my infidelity. Everybody had a talk with me eventually. Robert’s best friend from high school, Larry Kraines, even tried to talk some sense into me, as did all of my friends. Some of them were upset that I had lied to them about going to the car wash so many times. Others just couldn’t deal with it, and they just stopped talking to me because they were so upset. I totally understood, but it hurt.
“Snap out of it!” a lot of them said. “You’re being a bad girl. Now just cut it out!”
The only person who seemed to understand that I was really troubled and couldn’t control what I was feeling was Anka, the mother of one of my best friends, Lisa Miles. I have now known Lisa for thirty-five years; Anka is in her eighties and one of the dear loves of my life. One day she sat me down on the stairs of our house on Tower Lane.
“I understand what you are going through,” she told me. “Why can’t you just go through it? Get it out of your system and go back to your husband. Don’t get divorced. You will regret it one day.”
She was right, of course, but I couldn’t see it then.
Robert had moved out and I was living in the house on Tower Lane with the kids. We decided that every other weekend Robert would come stay at the house and I would leave and go to a friend’s house. That way, the kids would never have to be disrupted.
We decided that we would tell our kids about the divorce together. The kids were young: Kourtney, eleven; Kimberly, ten; Khloé, six; and Robert, two. We sat the girls down and said that we wanted to have a little family meeting, which they surely thought odd because we had never had a family meeting before.
“We’re getting a divorce,” I think I said.
I don’t even remember exactly what else we told them. I was completely in a fog; I was so devastated and shocked that this was actually happening that I don’t remember parts of it today at all.
I think I have blocked the things that are too crazy and painful to remember.
They stared at us, unbelieving at first, then the waterworks. They cried, cried, cried, cried, cried. It was horrible. Khloé didn’t really understand what it was all about, and of course Robert wasn’t in the family meeting because he was only two. But it was awful, and doing that to them is the single biggest regret of my life to this day. I know it was just devastating for them. I know Kourtney and Kimberly took it the hardest because they were the oldest. When I look back on it, they were really good kids for not being more rebellious, because I really spun their world out of control.
After Robert moved out, I stayed at Ryan’s place a few times on the weekends when Robert had the kids. By then I was well on my way to deciding that life with Ryan wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He lived in a tiny, dumpy apartment in the Valley, and I had just left my seven-thousand-square-foot mansion with gates and Dobermans and Rolls-Royces. I had thought there was this special connection and a future between Ryan and me, but now I know that the affair was more about running away from Robert than running to Ryan.
It was physically excruciating to even go through the motions of being a mom, the role I’ve always loved most. It was difficult to even wake up, pull myself out of bed, and take care of my kids. Even feeding them breakfast was tough. I would cry all day. I would get them to school or camp, then spend all day crying, struggling. It was an effort to tie my shoes.
Then I got some terrible news. My mother, my best friend and mentor, had cancer. I was going through a horrible divorce and my mother was very, very sick. I can’t remember ever feeling as devastated. My mom, who was a pillar of strength and energy, and certainly my support system, was diagnosed with colon cancer. She is one amazing woman who had already battled breast cancer. And now this. She didn’t deserve this. I felt helpless . . . and selfish. Selfish for what I was putting everyone through, and now my mom was sick. At a time when she needed me the most, I needed her the most.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it went from dark to black, and I wasn’t emotionally stable enough to handle it. I needed to get it together. I was supposed to be the strong one now. I was supposed to be there to get my dad and my kids and my family through this. And I was lost.
My dad Harry said, “Kris, you really need to come and see your mom.”
She was going through chemotherapy, and Harry asked me to drive down to San Diego because she was having radiation that day. It was such a WOW. It was a sign, somebody literally saying, SNAP THE FUCK OUT OF IT, KRIS!
I remember thinking, How am I going to drive to San Diego? I can’t even put my shoes on.
I asked Ryan to drive down with me. So there I was, driving down to San Diego with this guy, who had just helped me tear apart my family, and I was fighting with him all the way. I can’t even remember about what. I do remember thinking, My mom needs me. I don’t know if she’s going to make it. My marriage has fallen apart. My kids are angry because I’ve hurt their dad. My son is a toddler and he needs me. My house is falling apart because I’m emotionally vacant. My body is breaking down; all I want to do is sleep. I wasn’t present, emotionally or physically. Now here I was in this car, trying to absorb the fact that my mother had cancer. It was just a lightbulb moment, but the lightbulb didn’t turn on—not yet, anyway.
We pulled up to the hospital. I parked my car. And Ryan said, “What do you want me to do?”
“Just wait in the car,” I said, which was so odd. I had to hide my boyfriend in the car. I kept thinking, through the fog, What are you doing? Why is this guy even with you? Your mother has cancer.
I walked into the hospital lobby, where my dad Harry was waiting. I could tell he was very upset. My mother had just been through a round of radiation. I walked into her room completely numb. She didn’t look well at all, and it dawned on me: She’s so ill and suffering, and doesn’t know whether she is going to live or die, and I’ve got this kid sitting in my car, waiting for me. It was so wrong on so many levels. I thought: I may lose my mother, my best friend, and I have been so consumed with my own nonsense.
Wake up! Your mom needs you. I visited with her for a very long time and at long last began to take stock of what was happening around me. Several hours passed, all with Ryan still in my car. When I went back out to the car, I realized I needed to get it together. I was going to let everybody down. My mother went on to survive breast and colon cancer. She’s a survivor, and I knew I was too. I knew that I came from some damn strong stock. My mother taught me—both through her life and the illness she conquered—that we both have great strength and courage.
I would need my mother’s brand of courage for the journey that lay ahead.
One weekend when Robert had taken the kids to Palm Springs and I was alone, I couldn’t find Ryan. That’s really weird, I thought. So I drove to his apartment, even though it was midnight. I had a key. When I got there, I saw a strange car parked in his driveway. I thought that was weird, too, but I guessed that maybe he had a friend over. I walked upstairs and used my key to let myself in.
The minute I walked in, I felt something was wrong. I opened the bedroom door and stepped inside. Ryan leaped out of bed, naked.
“Hey, why aren’t you answering your phone?” I said.
Then, from behind him, a girl got out of the bed.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“You fucking son of a bitch!” I screamed.
The joke was on me. Suddenly it all came crashing down. I had just ruined my entire life and my whole family and given up everything I knew and loved for this guy, thinking I was going to be with him. I had thought this guy was in love with me. Part of me had thought I was going to marry Ryan.
What else did I expect? I was thirty-two by then, and Ryan was ten years younger than I was. I was devastated, and I didn’t know what to do. I screamed and cursed at Ryan, and the girl went flying into the bathroom and locked the door. I stormed out, slamming the door behind me, and Ryan threw on his pants and came running downstairs after me.
“Don’t ever call me again,” I said.
He was bawling. “Don’t leave me!” he cried. “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! She’s nothing! It was a one-night stand! I met her in a bar!”
I got in my car and squealed off, Ryan calling and calling and calling me all the way. When I was halfway home, I picked up the phone. After a long conversation, he eventually convinced me to turn around. I drove back and we sat there talking in my car.
“I just can’t do this anymore,” I said. “I have given up too much. It’s over.”
But it wasn’t over. Not yet.
That’s how crazy I was.
Soon after that, my dear friends Candace and Steve Garvey invited me to go on a ski vacation with them in Deer Valley. They were doing a television show around this ski event.
“Oh, you can invite your friend if you want,” Candace added, meaning Ryan.
I thought that was incredibly gracious and generous. Steve and Candace weren’t as much friends with Robert as they were with me, and Candace knew I was going through a horrible time. When you are in a situation like I was, your friends don’t know what to do, because they don’t want to take sides. Robert and I had the same friends. They were in a really uncomfortable position and didn’t want to upset Robert by siding with me. After all, I was the problem. It was really bad, but Candace was always there for me, and honestly, it meant the world to me. She was willing to show me love while I tried to figure my life out.
“C’mon, Kris, let’s go on vacation,” she told me.
I wanted Ryan to come along. It would be the make-or-break trip for our relationship. This was going to be the guy or I had to move on. But there were problems—and not just catching him in bed with someone else. As passionate as our relationship was when we were in bed, it was even more passionate in the opposite direction when we were trying to get along. He was difficult and moody, and I had f
our kids to worry about.
On the morning we were to leave for the ski trip, Ryan and I got into a fight, and he threatened to cancel. We were fighting about something stupid, but he was ready to bail, with only twenty minutes before we had to leave for the airport.
“I’m not going to go, I’m not going to go,” he kept repeating.
“Please go, please go,” I pleaded, hating myself for having to talk him into a ski trip. “I don’t have anybody to go with. We planned this trip together.”
Finally he relented and we headed to the airport. I should have known how awkward it was going to be.
We arrived in Deer Valley and stayed at one of the most beautiful resorts. We had a three-story town house to ourselves, complete with an outdoor Jacuzzi and a swimming pool. There was a fireplace in every room. It was heaven. We had the fireplaces crackling, the champagne poured, and the Jacuzzi hot.
The next day I watched Ryan gravitating toward the Hawaiian Tropic girls that were swarming around the resort. And I knew: When your boyfriend is paying more attention to the Hawaiian Tropic girls than you, you have a problem. At the end of the trip I thought, This guy is a lot of fun, and it’s definitely been a rollercoaster ride: fun, wild, exciting, and a little scary. But this is not the guy for me. I have to end it and I have to end it now. I felt like I always had to babysit him, not to mention worry about who he was sleeping with when I wasn’t around. The trip was a very sobering end to a very passionate relationship.
After we got home, I went over to Ryan’s house to pick up some things I had left there and to say good-bye. I was crying, but I tried to be calm.
“You know what? You have been really amazing to get to know, but I just can’t do this,” I told him. “You’re not ready.” Meaning he was so young and so not ready for the responsibility of someone like me and my four children. I mean, can you imagine?
I knew I had made a ginormous mistake, but it was too late.
