The Setup
After Kourtney’s babydaddy Scott punches his fist through a mirror right after a fight with Kourtney, Kourtney decides it’s time to put up some boundaries and move on… ish.
What Kourtney Says
I’ll let Kourtney speak for herself.
Back Up And Tell It Right
Here’s the game. There are two video clips, each of which contains moments of pure, unadulterated codependency. Can you spot them? Click the down arrow () below each video to see the ones I spotted.
- Clip Setup: A day or so later, Scott tells Kourtney that he’s going to need surgery for his mirror-punching hand and that he’s all alone in Miami and would really like her to be there when he wakes up from surgery – not that he’s trying to guilt her into it or anything (heh heh) because, he says, he knows he’s totally blown it with her, that their relationship is over, and that he has no right to expect anything. After lots of assertive conversations about how she won’t be seeing Scott until he’s gotten help for himself (meaning rehab) because she has to put her baby, Mason, first, Kourtney flip-flops the morning of Scott’s surgery and heads out the door to visit him, telling sis Kim that she doesn’t want to hear any arguments about it, that this what she’s doing. Kim says fine but insists on coming along:
The real issue here has nothing to do with whether or not Kourtney should forgive Scott or how she should treat him. Rather, it has to do with the fact that managing Scott’s feelings is the way she manages her own, as if she can’t feel good about herself in absence of making him feel good about himself. Her need to resolve Scott’s issues for him, in this case healing their rift rather than leaving it for him to heal, is, basically, the reason she got a spinoff.
- Clip Setup: Though perhaps Kourtney’s codependency issues are more forgiveable in light of seeing their monstrous one-codpendency-to-rule-them-all source, momager Kris Kardashian. Kim flies home to LA and tells Kris bits and pieces of what went down with Kourtney and Scott, at which point Kris wings out to Miami, tells Kourtney how upset she is and all the things Kourtney needs to do (without actually bothering to ask Kourtney how she feels or what decisions she’s made), and then, behind Kourtney’s back, does the following in stripes and with men’s jacket button epaulets on her shoulders:
Non-codependent behavior would be, oh, expressing support for her daughter and letting her daughter feel her own feelings instead of joining in and subsuming them.
If you find yourself taking care of (read: controlling) the emotional issues of an adult in your life, if you can’t feel okay unless you’ve taken action to “make them feel” okay, you are likely in a codependent relationship with that person. The process from codependent to independent is ceasing taking action on behalf of that person’s bad feelings (Kourtney) and feeling good about yourself regardless of how that other person feels (Kris).
And to think, people have accused the Kardashians of being vapid time-wasters who offered nothing to the universe…
