‘Behind the scenes, I put her through s—. Like, s— that y’all don’t know,’ Lamar Odom says of ex-wife Khloé Kardashian.
via: US Weekly
“I would just love to take Khloé out to dinner,” Odom, 43, says in Us Weekly’s exclusive sneak peek at TMZ Presents: Lamar Odom: Sex, Drugs & Kardashians special, which premieres on Monday, January 2.
Host Harvey Levin asks, “For what purpose?” to which the former basketball player responds, “Being her friend. That’s it.”
Odom explains that the reason he hasn’t reached out to his former spouse for a joint meal is that he’s “too shy.” He further reveals: “And I’m a Scorpio and I hate being told no and being denied. I’m afraid.”
The New York native fell quickly for the Keeping Up With the Kardashians alum, 38, in 2009. The pair tied the knot in September of that year after just one month of dating.
The fairy tale romance, however, began to unravel in 2013 after four years of marriage — and they split that December.
“The addiction had taken over their marriage,” a mutual friend exclusively told Us in August 2013 of Odom’s substance issues. “The problem is cocaine. He would be high for three or four days at a time.”
Kardashian, however, paused the divorce in 2015 after Odom suffered a near-fatal overdose in October. At the time, the retired NBA player was hospitalized in Nevada and suffered several strokes after being found unconscious at a legal brothel.
Once Odom was back on his feet in early 2016, the Strong Looks Better Naked author filed for divorce a second time. The former Khloé & Lamar stars settled the proceedings in December 2016.
“When I came out of the coma, she took care of me,” the former Los Angeles Lakers star exclusively told Us in February of how Kardashian cared for him. “I’m talking about a woman that wiped my backside when I couldn’t do it myself. So, I’m fond of her for that. She had a lot of dignity and pride as well as I did.”
The Good American founder moved on romantically with Tristan Thompson, and the twosome welcomed daughter True, 4, in April 2018. While the couple called it quits for good in 2021, they expanded their family in summer 2022, welcoming a son via surrogate.
Odom, meanwhile, has been vocal over the years about regretting how he and Kardashian ended things.
“I never thought about getting married again. I didn’t treat that good woman right,” the former professional athlete said during a February 2022 episode Celebrity Big Brother, adding that he hoped to get in touch with Khloé again. “I wish I was mature enough to handle [marriage] right, but I wasn’t. If given the opportunity again, now I know what to do. What to do and what not to do. Sometimes it’s hard for me to sleep at night thinking about her.”
Seven months later, the basketball guru revealed that he watches The Kardashians — but it isn’t always easy to see his ex-wife’s ups and downs. “It was hard for me to watch that,” Odom told E! News in September 2022, about tuning in for season 2. “It’s always going to be hard for me to watch someone I love so much sad like that.”
Odom, meanwhile, plans to tell it all when it comes to his relationship with Kardashian and her family in the upcoming TMZ Presents: Lamar Odom: Sex, Drugs & Kardashians documentary.
The “revealing” special will take viewers “on a deep dive of Lamar Odom’s troubled marriage to Khloé Kardashian, which was as memorable as his incredible basketball career,” according to the official synopsis.
The retired athlete will open up “like never before about his sex addiction and drug use and how it torpedoed his marriage to the love of his life and turned him into a shell of his former self,” per the description.
TMZ Presents: Lamar Odom: Sex, Drugs & Kardashians premieres on Fox Monday, January 2, at 9 p.m. ET.
