In revisiting Keeping Up With The Kardashians for my previous blog entry on Kylie Jenner, I stumbled upon YouTube clips from the reality television series where Kourtney Kardashian began to set boundaries when it came down to how much of herself she showed on TV. Kim and Khloe were particularly frustrated with their eldest sister because her setting such boundaries meant that there was more weight on them to show their lives more than they’d initially signed up for.
Kourtney significantly reduced her filming time on Keeping Up with the Kardashians (KUWTK) and established strict boundaries regarding what aspects of her personal life were shown on camera, a decision driven by her desire for privacy, prioritizing motherhood, and mental well-being. This was a major source of tension with her sisters, Kim and Khloé. To break it down more thoroughly:
Key Reasons for Kourtney’s Boundaries
- Prioritizing Motherhood: Kourtney repeatedly stated her primary focus was being a present and connected mother to her three children. She wanted control over her schedule to be available for school drop-offs, family dinners, and days off without a set schedule, which clashed with the show’s demanding filming requirements.
- Mental Well-being and Environment Toxicity: She described the filming environment of the later seasons of KUWTK as “toxic” and “unfulfilling”. Kourtney mentioned she often had to give herself pep talks before filming and that the constant judgment from her family regarding her lifestyle made it an unhealthy place for her to be every day.
- Value of Privacy: After filming her life non-stop for 14 years, Kourtney developed a strong appreciation for privacy. She became protective of her personal life and relationships, choosing not to share details on camera, which frustrated her sisters, who felt she wasn’t contributing equally to the show’s content.
- Creative Control: In the new Hulu show, The Kardashians, Kourtney has more control over what she films. Instead of a rigid Monday-to-Friday schedule, she now invites the cameras to film specific events or activities she is happy to share, which has made the experience more “fun and enjoyable” for her.
These new boundaries led to several on-screen arguments, including a physical altercation with Kim during the season 18 premiere. Kim and Khloé expressed frustration, feeling they had to “pick up the slack” when Kourtney was unwilling to film or be open about her life, arguing that sharing everything was their “job”. Despite the tension, the family eventually came to respect her need for boundaries, with Kris Jenner noting it was the “healthiest choice” for Kourtney.
From protecting her time and energy to setting limits on who gets to have access to her kids, Kourtney has shown that she’s not afraid to make her family mad. Of course, all siblings fight. It’s just a natural instinct that comes with the territory. The Kardashians, however, had taken their fights to a whole other level of madness. Maybe it was all staged for TV dramatization, but nevertheless, their fights had been something else entirely.
In watching the entirety of the Kardashian sisters’ fights, I found Kourtney particularly annoying. But then, I realized that she was actually right about everything all along. Kourtney had been honest about going to therapy, and it was those therapy sessions that inspired her to set new rules as for how much of herself she’d be willing to show to the public. She loved therapy so much that, at one point, she got her sisters to sit down together with a therapist and to set the record straight about her boundaries: She wanted time and support to do the things that mattered to her (like travel) and voiced that the show would never be her top priority. Sadly, Kim still seemed to think that Kourtney needed to “be accountable” for being on the show more.
While I could certainly understand Kim’s frustration regarding the situation she was handed that she didn’t choose herself, especially from a professional perspective, I couldn’t help but empathize with Kourtney. But to fully acknowledge it the same way I did, one has to look back at Kourtney’s personal life throughout the years, starting in 2006. That was when she met Scott Disick. The two were in a tumultuous on-and-off relationship for 9 years, which resulted in 3 children. Since their 2015 breakup, Kourtney married drummer Travis Barker and had a fourth child, her first with Barker. Both she and Scott had previously opened up about the hardships of co-parenting following their split, and it was clear that no matter what their feelings might be, they make the kids their top priority. The Kardashian-Jenner clan has also been very vocal throughout the years about having Kourtney’s ex be a part of their family never changing even after their breakup, which was just wonderful to hear considering they’re now the ONLY family he has in his life. His parents passed away suddenly a decade ago only months apart, and he was an only child.
The relationship itself between Kourtney and Scott was marked by frequent separations and reconciliations, often stemming from Disick’s struggles with alcohol and partying. Their final breakup happened in 2015 due to a variety of reasons, including Scott’s substance abuse and infidelity as deal-breakers, though his grief over his parents’ deaths also played a role. In the decade following their split, Disick had often spoken about the difficulty of losing Kourtney as both a romantic partner and a best friend and admitted to struggling when she moved on with Barker, finding it painful to feel left out, while Kourtney labeled her and Scott as being each other’s “soulmates” in a sense and acknowledged their forever connection as parents, even through their romantic splits and new partners.
Despite the fact that Scott had proposed several times throughout their decade-long relationship, Kourtney never legally married him. She initially accepted a proposal in 2007, but was talked out of it by her mother, Kris Jenner. Scott then planned another proposal in 2011, but Kourtney’s hesitation led him to call it off. Funnily enough, in 2014, in an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Kris attempted to get Kourtney to want to marry Scott. The two got into a huge fight where Kourtney told her mother to butt out of her personal business. Things escalated when Kris said she wouldn’t do that because she was her mother and it was her job to be in her personal business.
Admittedly, Kourtney faced a “commitment-phobe,” making her hesitant to take the final step. She often expressed happiness with their existing family life and didn’t want to change what was already working. Scott’s issues with drugs, alcohol, and partying were significant factors, with Kourtney linking his behavior to why she never married him. Her refusal to get married to Scott also had to do with her own trauma in witnessing her parents’ divorce, as well her having felt that Scott wasn’t ready for that type of commitment.
After a string of relationships following her split with Scott, including a 4 year romance with model Younes Bendjima, who was 14 years younger than her, Kourtney started dating Travis Barker in 2020. The two met years before when they became neighbours. Their connection blossomed into something more during the pandemic. Their relationship united Kourtney’s three children (Mason, Penelope, Reign with Scott) and Travis’s three (Atiana, Landon, Alabama with Shanna Moakler).
The relationship between the twins moved quickly from dating (Jan 2021) to engagement (Oct 2021) and marriage within a year. They had a spontaneous Las Vegas ceremony in April 2022, a legal wedding in Santa Barbara in May 2022, and a lavish Italian ceremony later that month. After Kourtney went through IVF treatments, she gave birth to her and Travis’ son, Rocky, in November 2023. And while m they’re often featured on The Kardashians and known for their intense PDA, they also keep some aspects of their family life private, focusing on blending their children.
Their relationship itself is often seen as a joyful, intense, and successful merging of two families, with both Kourtney and Travis expressing deep love and commitment, fulfilling a desire for genuine connection after previous relationships. These last few years are the period in Kourtney’s life that we’ve seen her the happiest and most at peace with herself. It was almost like this shift in her; a side of her that was never seen before. At least not when she was in a relationship with Scott.
While one could say that Travis was the one who made the shift in her happen, it’s just not true. It was all her doing and the hard work she’d done on herself following her breakup with Scott. Had she done that same work earlier, she probably wouldn’t have been with Scott, or even someone remotely like him, to begin with. Her trauma, as she herself put it, stemmed from a generational struggle, starting with her grandmother, Mary Jo Campbell (Kris’s mother) and passed down through Kris. She believed that patterns like choosing “bad partners” had been passed down from them. She connected this to patterns like women in her family choosing partners they try to change, a cycle she aims to break. Starting therapy after a toxic relationship led her to understand these inherited patterns and how they affected her life. Her focus on self-awareness and generational trauma marked a significant personal growth period, influencing her approach to relationships and boundaries, especially during the later seasons of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and The Kardashians.
Kourtney’s firm decision not to marry Scott stemmed from his unreliable behavior, substance issues, and partying lifestyle, which she found detrimental to her family and didn’t want to model for her children, contrasting sharply with Travis’s stable, supportive partnership, deep friendship, and shared goals for blending their families, ultimately offering her the commitment and happiness she sought after a decade of on-and-off drama with Scott. To break it down more thoroughly:
Reasons Kourtney Didn’t Marry Scott:
- Unreliability & Instability: She felt she couldn’t rely on him for anything significant, describing his behavior as a major issue.
- Substance Abuse & Partying: Scott’s struggles with substance abuse and excessive partying were a constant source of conflict, as noted by insiders and Kourtney herself.
- Poor Role Model: Kourtney didn’t want her children to see that kind of unstable partnership as acceptable behavior.
- Commitment Issues (from Scott): Despite multiple proposals, Kourtney felt Scott wasn’t ready for marriage, and she had her own commitment issues partly stemming from her parents’ divorce.
- Incompatibility: Many felt they lacked true romantic chemistry and were simply incompatible long-term, despite their history and children.
Why Kourtney Chose Travis:
- Deep Friendship: They were friends and neighbors for years, providing a strong foundation.
- Supportive & Present Partner: Travis offered stability, emotional support, and a “fairy tale” romance, making her feel happier and more like a better mom.
- Shared Vision: Both wanted to blend their families and build a future together, something she struggled to achieve with Scott.
- Emotional Readiness: With Travis, Kourtney felt emotionally ready for marriage, a shift from her past hesitations.
In essence, Kourtney found the stable, loving partnership she couldn’t get with Scott in Travis, prioritizing her own happiness and her children’s well-being over a troubled, on-again, off-again dynamic.
The aftermath of Kourtney’s 2015 breakup with Scott was captured on Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Kourtney had a heart-to-heart with Kim. She tearfully expressed that the breakup was for the best. In her own words, Scott wasn’t a good partner. She could never rely on him. She could never depend on him for a single thing. As she told Kim, she didn’t want to show her kids that such behaviour was okay to tolerate and withstand.
Truthfully, Kourtney tried her very best to make the relationship between her and Scott work. She did everything she could to make it work, but Scott wasn’t giving her anything in return. He was only taking. In a relationship between two people, one person can only give so much. As seen on Keeping Up With The Kardashians, as well as the multiple spin-offs, Scott treated his relationship with Kourtney as a given; like she’d never breakup with him, and if she did, she’d always want to get back together with him no matter what, even if he continued treating her and their relationship like trash. He never truly appreciated her for who she was and her efforts.
Only after Kourtney and Scott’s final breakup did Scott become fully committed to working towards his healing and well-being. It seemed as though he was only doing that in hopes for Kourtney to want to get back together with him. But this was mostly not necessarily because he wanted to be in a relationship with her in particular, but more so for him not to lose the Kardashian-Jenner clan as a family, because he was afraid that if she found someone new, they’d forget about him entirely and abandon him. This in itself would the absolute wrong reason to get back together…for both of them. There’s a big difference between being in love with someone and having love for them. What Kourtney and Scott have at this moment is a lot of love for one another. They have a strong family dynamic as friends and co-parents, but they’re not IN love with one another. Having love for one another after a breakup isn’t ever a good enough reason for a former couple to get back together.
To go back to the discussion of marriage, though, generally speaking, a strong marriage is built on several key factors, and the choice of partner is critical as it determines the potential for these elements to flourish to break it down more thoroughly:
Key Pillars of a Strong Marriage Foundation
The strength of a marriage typically rests on the following pillars:
- Communication: Open, honest, and respectful communication is paramount. It involves active listening, expressing needs and concerns clearly, and effectively resolving conflicts.
- Trust and Honesty: A foundation of unwavering trust is essential. Partners must feel secure and rely on each other for support and fidelity.
- Mutual Respect: Valuing each other’s opinions, feelings, and individuality, even during disagreements, forms the bedrock of a strong, healthy partnership.
- Shared Values and Goals: Compatibility in core beliefs about life, family, finances, and the future aligns the couple and provides a common direction.
- Support and Partnership: A strong marriage is a true partnership where both individuals feel supported in their personal and professional lives, acting as each other’s biggest champions.
- Intimacy and Affection: This includes emotional, physical, and intellectual intimacy. Maintaining a connection and expressing affection regularly helps sustain the bond.
- Commitment: The dedication to making the marriage work through good times and bad is a vital ingredient for long-term stability.
Why the Choice of Partner Matters
The person you choose to marry fundamentally impacts your ability to build and maintain these pillars, shaping nearly every aspect of your life.
- Foundation for Growth: A good partner facilitates personal growth and encourages you to be your best self.
- Emotional Well-being: The right partner provides emotional security and stability, contributing significantly to your overall happiness and mental health.
- Shared Life Journey: Marriage is a lifelong journey. Choosing someone with whom you can comfortably navigate life’s challenges, celebrate successes, and grow old with makes the journey more fulfilling.
- Compatibility in Core Areas: A well-chosen partner will be compatible in essential areas like communication styles, conflict resolution, and life values, making it easier to build a unified life.
Ultimately, the choice of a spouse is one of the most significant decisions one can make, influencing daily life, emotional health, and future stability. A strong marriage provides a safe harbor from life’s stresses and a supportive environment in which both individuals can thrive.
When Kourtney was with Scott, she was adamant that she didn’t want to get married. Her reasons were that she was content in the family dynamic they already had and didn’t want to ruin it by getting married. No matter how much her entire family attempted to pressure her to marry Scott she refused to do it. On the flip side, she was fully ready to marry Travis less than a year after they started dating. So what REALLY happened? What changed in her?
It’s true that Kourtney did a lot of work on herself between her respective relationships with Scott and Travis. But the real, fundamental reason for her change of heart was that she found the right partner in Travis. She found someone who made her feed safe. She found someone who made her feel secure. The found someone who made her feel like she didn’t have to question every single thing. For years, Kourtney was largely against marriage during her long-term, on-again, off-again relationship with Scott, even though they share three children. Her reason for her refusal to marry Scott was having witnessed her parents’ divorce and the subsequent “trauma” made her wary of marriage and the potential for it to fail, as well as Scott’s demons and lack of commitment to her.
Soon after she started dating Travis, things changed. Kourtney was 100% ready to make that commitment. In her own words, l the sudden change in heart was a result of feeling she had found the right person in Travis, which she never felt with Scott. The relationship with Travis offered a different, calmer dynamic that Kourtney wanted for her family life, which something she never found in her relationship with Scott. Her idea of family suddenly changed in her relationship with Travis. While Kourtney and Travis have different paces of life (she prefers a slower, laid-back lifestyle while he is more “impulsive”), they both focus on making each other happy and blending their families.
Essentially, Kourtney’s change of heart was less about marriage itself and more about being with a partner with whom she felt secure and confident enough to take that step. If there’s anything we can takeaway from her decision, it’s that it’s best to trust your gut and never settle when it comes to choosing the right life partner for you – no matter how much pressure others put on you to do so. Marriage isn’t a guarantee. Marriage is hard work. It’s a commitment. It’s a partnership. It’s not just a game. Marriage is only good when you choose the right partner; a partner that’s loyal, supportive, caring, loving, and stable. A partner that’s willing to put as much effort into the marriage as you do.
Chaos was all Kourtney knew when she was with Scott. Now that she found a sense of peace following their breakup and in her marriage with Travis, it’s really no surprise that she wants more privacy. She wants peace not only in her personal life, but career as well.
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