Kim Kardashian: Breaking Down All That Co-Parenting With An Abusive Ex-Partner Entails – And Asking Ourselves Whether One’s Disability Or Illness Can Excuse Abusive Behaviour

We’ve been talking a heck of a lot about toxic men for the past two blog entries – from Machine Gun Kelly to Tristian Thompson to Lamar Odom to Scott Disick. And I think we must continue the conversation by discussing Kanye West and the toxicity and harmful behaviour he’d shown from the very, very beginning of his relationship with Kim Kardashian. I specifically want to elaborate on his very specific treatment of women. Julia Fox, One of Kanye West’s exes, recently encouraged her female fans to be careful who they have children with after her ex-husband got their son baptized with her permission.

She was absolutely right. I just wish Kim Kardashian got that same advice back in 2012 when she started dating Kanye. His treatment and views of women became public, at least to me, back in 2009, when he infamously interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at that year’s VMA’s. The true essence and severity of his behaviour and demeaning treatment of women was only realized by the public once Kim divorced him and started dating Pete Davidson. Honestly, Kim and Pete were great together. And who knows, maybe the relationship would’ve lasted had it not been for Kanye.

They initially met in January 2019 at Kid Cudi’s birthday party. Kim even posted a photo of Pete, Kanye, and West, Timothée Chalamet, who’s now dating Kim’s sister, Kylie Jenner, from that night. All the men looked like they genuinely had the best time together. The duo reunited almost 3 years later, in October 2021, when Kim was on hosting duties on ‘Saturday Night Live’ Pete was still a cast member at the time. They did the very sweet Aladdin – Jasmin skit., and while making an appearance on the ‘Not Skinny But Not Fat’ podcast, Kim said, ‘When we kissed, I was just like, ‘Hmm!’ It was a stage kiss, but it was still like, a little zing. It wasn’t anything like a super-crazy feeling. I was just like, ‘Hmm,’ and then I was like, ‘Wow, I really haven’t kissed anyone else in 10 years, so maybe I’m just like being stupid and it’s just nothing and it’s just a stage kiss.’’

Following their first public appearance together on ‘SNL’, Kim and Pete were seen holding hands at Knott’s Scary Farm at the start of Halloween weekend at the end of the month, and that was when the rumours REALLY started to swirl of a blossoming relationship. By November of that year, Pete was celebrating his 28th birthday with Kim, her mom, Kris Jenner, and Flavor Flav, who posted photos of the casual festivities where the group wore matching SKIMS pajamas. A source told People at the time, ‘Even when they are on different coasts, Kim and Pete stay in touch. They are getting to know each other better and getting along great. Kim loves his spark. He is very funny, entertaining and makes Kim happy. They are still dating and enjoying it. He showers Kim with compliments and she loves it.’

For the following few months, we couldn’t get enough of the new couple. They were practically seen everywhere, and Kim was introducing her new boyfriend to more of her friends and family members, including Scott Disick, her sister Kourtney’s former boyfriend and father of her 3 kids. By February 2022, Pete called Kim his girlfriend for the first time publicly. During a chat with Kay Adams, host of ‘People (The TV Show!)’ the comedian and actor said, ‘Well, I don’t really have Instagram — I don’t have Instagram or Twitter or any of that stuff. So, most of my daily life is getting into cars and showing up to a set. Or, if I’m off, I just either hang with my friends or chill with my girlfriend inside. So I don’t do much.’ By March, Kim made her relationship Instagram official, and suddenly, just when we thought couldn’t get enough of the pair…

She later joked with Ellen DeGeneres on her show, ‘I guess it’s not official until you post. I have the cutest pictures of us and I want to be like, ‘Oh my God, we’re so cute.’ But then I’m like, ‘Don’t be so desperate. Don’t be posting so much, just give a glimpse.’ I don’t know what the right thing to do is, like, I haven’t dated in since before Instagram existed. Yeah, I don’t know what the rules are.’ The couple went on to make public appearances at events together. By April, Kim brought Pete to be her plus one at the premiere of her and her family’s reality show, ‘The Kardashians’. Later that month, they walked the red carpet together at  White House Correspondents’ Dinner. That May, they attended the MET Gala together, an event Kim attended for the very first time in 2013 as Kanye’s plus one. She was heavily pregnant with North at the time and was compared to Mrs’ Doubtfire, a character originated by the late, great Robin Williams.

Things to be going really well between the two, even with Kanye getting in the way of their happiness. But by August 2022, it was confirmed that they’d split after 10 months of dating. Nonetheless, Kim had nothing but kind words to say about her former beau. She told Interview magazine, ‘He’s a cutie. He’s literally such a good person, they don’t really make them like him anymore. I’m excited for what he has coming up.’ The official cause for the breakup, as told my sources at the time, was the distance between them as they had to travel a lot. But I beg to differ.

I truly believe that Kanye West had something to do with in meddling in Kim’s happiness and in her relationship with someone new. Throughout Kim’s relationship with Pete, Ye publicly mocked and threatened Pete through social media, songs, and music videos. A source claimed Kanye intentionally sabotaged the relationship, and it was successful, with Pete feeling unsafe and unable to sleep. The threats and negative public attention created a stressful and unsafe environment for Pete, leading him to prioritize his mental health and end the relationship. The public attacks and threats included a music video depicting Pete kidnapped and buried. Ye referred as ‘Skete’ on social media, and reposted a a debunked rumour that pushed the late rapper Mac Miller into suicide by texting Miller intimate details of his relationship with Ariana Grande. Pete dated and was engaged to Grande following her breakup with Miller. Kanye later released a song with The Game, with lyrics that read, ‘God saved me from that crash [referring to the car accident he survived in 2002] / Just so I can beat Pete Davidson’s ass.’ He then posted private messages between him and Kim, where Kim begged him to stop the attacks. On Valentine’s Day 2022, Kanye sent Kim customized the truck to say MY VISION IS KRYSTAL KLEAR’. He’d always been a man of grand gestures when it came to Kim (who could ever forget his proposal), and this was no different. He didn’t even care that she was in a new relationship.

Pete had remained quiet through Kanye’s attacks, until March 2022. His friend, Dave Sirus, a guest writer for ‘Saturday Night Live’, posted a text exchange between Pete and Kanye. In it, Pete wrote, ‘Yo it’s Skete. Can you please take a second and calm down. It’s 8am and it don’t gotta be like this. Kim is literally the best mother I’ve ever met. What she does for those kids is amazing and you are so f*cking lucky that she’s your kids mom. I’ve decided im not gonna let you treat us this way anymore and I’m done being quiet. Grow the f**k up.’ He then wrote, ‘I’m in LA for the day if you wanna stop being a little internet bitch boy and talk. You don’t scare me bro. Your actions are so p—y and embarrassing. It’s so sad to watch you ruin ur legacy on the daily. Let me help you man. I struggle with mental stuff too. It’s not an easy journey, you don’t have to feel this way anymore. There’s no shame in having a little help. You’ll be so happy and at peace. I have your back even though you treat me like that s–t because I want everything to be smooth. But if you continue to press me like you have for the past 6 months I’m gonna stop being so nice.’

Aside from Pete texting Kanye that he was ‘in bed with your wife’ when Kanye asked him where he was, he was absolutely right in his words to defend himself. Not only that, but he also showed that there should be absolutely NO SHAME in a man admitting that he struggles with a mental illness and that he should get help; whereas Kanye shamed him for it. Pete has been open about his struggles with drugs, as well as his mental health issues, including borderline personality disorder and severe post-traumatic stress disorder. He’d checked himself into treatment facilities numerous times over the past few years, with the latest being earlier this year. He’s also now going through the process of removing all of his tattoos. In 2016, Kanye was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He previously told Jimmy Kimmel on the importance of having open conversations about mental health, ‘I think it’s important for us to have… open conversations about mental health. Especially with me being black, because we never had therapists in the black community. We never approached taking medication.’ He reported feeling extreme paranoia, ‘When you’re in this state, you’re hyper-paranoid about everything… Everyone is now an actor. Everything’s a conspiracy.’ Kanye also stated that when he is experiencing manic episodes, comments simply shoot out without any control or thought, almost like Tourette’s. 

In February 2025, Kanye said he was actually misdiagnosed, and instead, has autism. He told Justin Laboy on his ‘The Download’ podcast, ‘I went to this doctor … My wife took me to do that because she said, ‘Something about your personality doesn’t feel like it’s bipolar, I’ve seen bipolar before.’ And I’ve come to find that it’s really a case of autism that I have. Autism takes you to a Rain Man thing. ‘I’ma wear this Trump hat because I like Trump in general.’ And then when people tell you to not do it, you just get on that one point. And that’s my problem. When fans tell me to do my album a certain way, I’ll do it the opposite way. It’s been so hard on him because he loves me. It’s so difficult for them, because this is like a grown man – you can’t take control of his bank account, you can’t control what I’m saying on Twitter. A lot of what was sending me into those episodes … the constant feeling of not being in control spun me out of control. I haven’t taken the medication since I found out that bipolar wasn’t the right diagnosis. It’s finding stuff that doesn’t block the creativity, obviously that’s what I bring to the world. It’s worth the ramp-up, as long as y’all get the creativity. I watch for it beforehand – but if you get to the point it goes, you’re going to stay in that position for a while. It might go for three days, four days, a week. Some people if they get into it, you’ve got to put them in a place that’s not in public.’

Before I met my husband, I was friends with this guy who, unbeknownst to me, courted me for an entire year. We’d go out on coffee dates, museum dates, park dates; you name it. I always had a great time with him. He treated me right; even sending me postcards from France when he stayed there with his family for two months. But we were friends, and there was no real conversation of us ever taking anything further. Once we did make things official between us and he declared himself to be my boyfriend, he invited me to a party hosted by his friends. While there, another man who courted me while my new boyfriend was away in France saw me from a mile away, came up to me, and randomly kissed me on the lips. I backed away. But my new boyfriend didn’t care. He was so mad that he yelled at me right in front of his friends and called me an alcoholic. He left me alone for the rest of the night. He called me thereafter to try to mend things between us, but I felt there was nothing to work out anymore. I broke up with him. I wasn’t going to be with someone who got so aggressive, embarrass me so publicly, call me horrible names, and accuse me of being an alcoholic.

A friend of mine, who was also friends with him, later told me that my ex, if you could even call him that since he was my boyfriend for probably 5 minutes, previously told him that he had autism and actually begged him not to tell me. That made things so much worse. This newfound information just told me that that even in me and him being so close with one another for an entire year, he still kept this very important part of him. Even if I did know that he was on the spectrum, it wouldn’t have changed how I handled the situation. Autism, or any other illness or disability for that matter, shouldn’t ever be used as an excuse for someone’s behaviour. And I never did thereafter. I still had to see him at least twice a year because we had mutual friends. I saw him at events such as birthdays and other special occasions. For years, he wouldn’t acknowledge me. He wouldn’t even look at me. Years passed by. I was already engaged to my husband, who I met year after he and I broke up. My ex and I, as well as my husband, were at our friend’s party, and suddenly, my ex looks at me and says, ‘You know I’m over what happened between us,’ to which I said, ‘Good for you, I don’t care.’

And Kanye’s behaviour shouldn’t be excused either in light of his new autism prognosis. I recently saw an Instagram post by @candy.courn which read, ‘are folks using their disability as an excuse for “bad” behavior? if those actions are needing or expressing reasonable accommodations as a disabled person, the answer is NO. if those actions are being racist, transphobic, misogynistic, abusive, etc…the answer is a resounding YES! There is no disability that excuses ignorance, and in fact not holding disabled folks accountable to their actions is ableist too!’ Amen to that! I honestly couldn’t have said it better myself.

No one can ever deny that Kanye is a creative genius – both in music and in business. His behaviour, however, has gotten the best of him. Kanye is a man who abuses women; and I’m not just talking about Kim. I’m also talking about his current wife, Bianca Censori, as well as his exes, like Amber Rose and Julia Fox. In yet another social media rant back in March, he claimed to beat women and called himself evil. He wrote on X, previously known as Twitter, ‘NO ONE LIVING CAN F— WITH ME BUT I DO LOVE SOME PEOPLE AND I GIVE THEM FAVOR. THIS N—- THAT WORKED FOR ME SAID HE WAS UNCOMFORTABLE WITH MY WIFES GRAMMY LOOK FIRED AND BLOCKED. ITS MORE PEOPLE LOOKING FOR WORK THEN THEY ARE PEOPLE GIVING WORK.’ Kanye is a man that said in an interview, in front of Black people might I add, that slavery was a choice.Kanye is a man that debunked the #MeToo movement. Kanye is a man that called himself a Nazi and said he loved Hitler. Kanye is a man that said these following 5 antisemitic remarks:

• I prefer my kids knew Hannukah from Kwanzaa. At least it will come with some financial engineering.
• I just think that’s what they’re (Jared Kushner and his Jewish family) about, is making money.
• Planned Parenthood was made by Margaret Sanger, a known eugenics, with the KKK to control the Jew population. When I say Jew, I mean the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the people known as the race Black really are. This is who our people are.
• This ain’t a game. Imma use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me. I told you this is war. Now gone get you some business.
• I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE. The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.

Following Kanye’s autism revelation, music journalist Ian Cohen was asked how he felt about Kanye’s erratic behaviour, as it turned more erratic in the past decade. Cohen said, ‘I also work in the field of mental health. I’m not going to diagnose anything that he’s going through, but there’s this sense that with him putting out the, “I’m bipolar,” “I’m autistic,” that it’s somehow plausible deniability, or that it excuses things. And I guess my response to that is that there are many people in this world with autism or bipolar one who don’t create websites exclusively to sell swastika-branded T-shirts. And so this just kind of brings to the fore the things that were perhaps underlying the whole way through it…. There’s no guardrails now. And so if he ever wanted to sell this merch or say these things, there are no repercussions to it. And I think there’s been circumstances where people have tried to help him or seek help for him, and he might end up suing them. So that would be how I would frame it.’

He’s absolutely right. Just as I clearly said previously, neither bipolar or autism, or any other other disability or illness, is ever an excuse for someone’s behaviour. I never make my cerebral palsy or seizure disorder or depression an excuse for my behaviour, and I never accept anyone else’s disability or illness an excuse either. When I know I did something wrong, or I mistreated someone, I’ll own up to that sh*t. I won’t make excuses for any of it. And I won’t accept it for anyone else in my life. I won’t accept it for any family member, a friend, a lover…NO ONE. I already spoke of my ex that I broke up with because of his mistreatment of me at the first sign of me not acting accordingly. And what I mean by ‘accordingly’ is me not behaving in a manner that’s acceptable to him. In him telling our mutual friend that he had autism, I felt that he was just making excuses for his egotistic behaviour.

I have an autistic cousin. She’s now 18 years old. I saw her last summer when she, her 10 year old sister, and their parents came here to celebrate my birthday with me. One day, my husband and I took our son out for a daily walk, and decided to take the two girls with us. At some point during our outing, my 10 year old cousin didn’t do as my 18 year old cousin told her to do, and the 18 year old started a whole fuss out of practically nothing. In hindsight, she reminded me of my ex and the fuss he made all those years ago. I wasn’t going to let that sh*t slide, and I told her exactly as it was. I told her that absolutely no one in her life, except maybe her parents, would ever tolerate such behaviour that she showcased towards her sister earlier in the evening. There was crying, screaming, agression, name calling; all because her younger sister didn’t want to do as she told her. I used my experiences with my ex as an example. It was eye-opening for her. She probably thought that her having autism would always be an excuse for every mistreatment of hers towards others. And let me be clear that I’d do the exact same with my son. I’ll raise him to be good to others, and if anyone in his life ever says to him that he’s mistreated them in any capacity, to never make excuses. If he understands that he’d done something wrong, apologize and do better in the future.

I most certainly believe that Kanye revealing his autism diagnosis, whether it be true or not, was him making excuses for his erratic behaviour. His diagnosis, whether it be bipolar or autism, gives a reason for his behaviour, but not an excuse for it. There’s a drastic difference between the two. Explanations give us information and context that are necessary for us to understand the needed action steps to remedy the situation, whereas excuses are often exaggerations of the truth that allows one to deny responsibility and avoid vulnerability. Explanations, on the other hand, require vulnerability. That’s the biggest difference between Kanye and Pete. Kanye makes excuses in their struggles with their respective struggles. Pete gives explanations. Kanye makes excuses. Unlike Kanye, Pete has always owned up to his mistakes when made public, and has absolutely no shame in getting help and checking himself into rehab, no matter how many times. He’s treated his exes with the outmost respect publicly, especially Ariana Grande. Pete doesn’t have Instagram or any other social media platform, and even when he did, he NEVER made such crude comments as Kanye – not towards an ex, minority group, or other. He understood that social media was a trigger and deleted all of his platforms. Kanye made the excuse for his mistreatment and abuse of women on the death of his mother, Donna, who passed away in 2007 following a plastic surgery. Pete’s father was a firefighter who risked his life in the events of 9/11. He’d never used his father’s death as an excuse for his behaviour.

The fact that Kanye romantically linked and eventually married Bianca Censori following his divorce from Kim didn’t surprise me one bit. He’s 47 years old. She’s 31. There’s a sense of power and control in the relationship dynamic. Their public appearance at the 2025 Grammys was unforgettable. While Kanye wore a black t-shirt and trousers, Bianca was, effectively, naked. An unnerving clip of the couple appears to show Kanye directing his wife to remove her fur coat on the Grammys red carpet. Under the coat, which she removes, Bianca is only wearing a flesh-coloured slip with no undergarments. This sparked concerns in Bianca’s welfare. One X, previously known as Twitter, user wrote, ‘How much longer can she be paraded around like this before someone realises it’s just too much? Someone needs to step up and save her from Kanye’s chaos.’ The couple married in January 2023, which was when Kanye’s public abuse and stalking of Kim had stopped too, and it was the latest out of many controversial looks Bianca had shown the world.

Bianca finally filed for divorce this April after yet another series of Kanye’s social media rants. In the latest turn of events, Kanye has sued his dentist for medical malpractice by supplying him with nitrous oxide and the intravenous anesthetic and sedative propofol, fraudulent billing, and multiple other alleged crime. In a formal notice of intent, Kanye wrote to the dentist, ‘Evidence shows that during the time Ye was under your care, you engaged in numerous inappropriate and dangerous practices that were far outside the bounds of any legitimate medical purpose or standard of care. These actions were not isolated incidents but rather part of a pattern of improper conduct by you from 2024 through 2025 while Ye was your patient. Ms. Censori, as Ye’s spouse, was a witness to and impacted by many of these events (some of which took place at their shared residence).’

All I could do was laugh at the mere sight of the wording of the complaint. If Kanye is blaming his behaviour on the dentist for his erratic behaviour between 2024 and 2025, then what about the years prior to that, as well as what’s happened since the complaint was made? Just in the past few days, he stormed out of his interview with Piers Morgan after Morgan got his number of followers on social media wrong. Beforehand, he publicly stated that he should’ve had children with Paris Hilton instead of Kim. I just can’t fathom being Kim at that moment and know that the father of my children said such a thing; and not even that, but publicly too. The 4 kids WILL see all of this when they get older, and this just hurts my heart. Just as Kim said herself to her mom Kris, all of Kanye’s public rants will hurt the kids way more than her sex tape, which he’d previously shamed her for. And through all of this, Kim has publicly stayed mum on the matter. Privately, she’s still been his biggest cheerleader for the sake of their 4 children.

Kanye isn’t the first man that showed Kim such nauseating disrespect. Remember Kris Humphries, the man she was married to for 72 days in 2011? There were SO many red flags about him that honestly should’ve been good enough reasons for Kim to run for the hills, like when he said no one would care for her in 15 years. It’s now almost been this amount of time, and I think it’s pretty safe to say that she proved him wrong. There were signs of abuse and control in Kanye as well when they were together, like when he flew to Paris last minute to change Kim’s wardrobe because he didn’t like hers. But the abuse Kim has endured at the hands of Kanye has gotten so much worse, and it only stopped once Kanye ‘replaced’ her with Bianca. He found a new, younger target to take advantage of. Now that Bianca showed her strength and ‘retaliated’ against him, Kanye is now back at it again.

Kanye’s treatment of Kim isn’t anything funny. It’s a trigger for domestic violence survivors, like myself. His behavior represents post-separation abuse, with tactics often used by perpetrators to maintain control. Stalking and harassment are strategies perpetrators employ to remind victims who is in control, or to ‘get back at’ exes for leaving them. I’d experienced it with not one, but with TWO exes. The first would show up at my door when he knew I hosted a party without him days after our breakup. He’d text me 60 times a day and call me 20 times a day. He’d show up at every party he knew I’d attend. This lasted for months until I lost all control and yelled at him to ‘GET THE F*CK OUT OF MY EYESIGHT’ in front of 60 people. The second ex seemed to be supportive following me breaking up with him to be with my now-husband. He said he wanted to be friends, but it was obviously, and I see it now, to mask a darker side of him. He wanted to stalk me in case I became available to him again. Once my husband proposed, I never saw or spoke to him ever again. These two exes aren’t even the ex that hid his autism diagnosis from me.

Post-separation abuse is often invisible in the eyes of the law, leaving victims feeling isolated. I consider myself to be very fortunate that I got out of the two abusive relationships, as well as the post-separation abuse I experience at the hands of my exes. Many women don’t come out of it alive. Kim has children with her abusive ex-husband, which makes things THAT much worse. She’s bound to him for the rest of her life. The exes now have 50/50 custody of their 4 children, but Kim is reportedly considering filing for full custody after she found out Kanye had a sex offender in his home when their children were there, and as she should. Yet again, Kanye went on a rant. In a video posted on social media, he said, ‘Akademiks put that battery in my back, bro. I was in the airport by myself… I’mma go get these kids, man! F**k all these fa**ot ni**as. I’mma go get these kids, bro. I’m talking to the lawyers… it gets to the point where I don’t lose my f**kin’ mind where I got to get used to not seeing my kids.’ And last month, he publicly compared their custody agreement to visitation rights in jail. He wrote on X, ‘I DON’T WANT TO JUST ‘SEE’ MY KIDS. I NEED TO RAISE THEM. ALL THESE RIGHTS HAVE BEEN TAKEN FROM ME BY THE KARDASHIAN MOB HULU AND DISNEY AND THE BIGGER AGENDA TO USE THE SELECTIVELY BRED BLACK CHILDREN TO BE PLATFORMS TO INFLUENCE BLACK PEOPLE.’

There was a sweet side to Kanye when Kim was giving him exactly what he wanted in their marriage; like when he encouraged her to go to school to become a lawyer when she questioned whether she could do it or not because she was already so busy. The way he told that she could do anything was absolutely touching. I just wish we got that side of Kanye in all parts of their relationship – when they were friends, when they were partners, when they were divorcing, and when they became co-parents. And Kanye isn’t the only Kardashian-Jenner partner, or ex-partner, that’s shown such abusive behaviour. We’ll talk about Kylie Jenner’s exes next…