My faith in marriage is being tested like never before. It took 72 days for "forever" to become "forget it." Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries have called it quits. Wow. They seemed like the perfect couple. After all, both of their first names begin with the letter "K" (an apparent prerequisite for most of Kim's famous family members).
If you were a guest at their wedding, let's hope you didn't send a gift just yet. If you did, I'd ask for it back (unless of course you bought them monogrammed towels, in which case, let them split them in the settlement)
If Kim is crushed (krushed?), it has been hard to tell from her tweets to her nearly 11 million followers (yes, I am among them). In the the hours before the announced split, Kim was tweeting her excitement over her trip to Sydney, Australia and the taping of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Even as news of the divorce was breaking, Kim was gushing about the opening of her family's latest store.
She did release a statement, which read in part, "I had hoped this marriage was forever but sometimes things don't work out as planned." What? Work out as planned? I had not really expected Kim and Kris to grow old together, but I did think they'd at least last until next season.
People are already asking the inevitable question, "Was their wedding nothing more than a sham, a mere plot point for the Kardashian clan's reality show empire?" We already know about the resulting financial windfall. Following the highly publicized nuptials, reports claimed Kim earned up to $18 million from the event. That works out to a cool $250,000 for each day they were married. (I would even consider marrying Kim for that kind of money and my wife would probably encourage me.) No wonder folks are cynical. The affair itself cost an estimated $10 million which Kim (and her mom-ager, Kris) were apparently able to produce for free.
One can only imagine how she will be able to monetize the divorce. I suspect there is another two-part television special and numerous magazine covers already in the works. Kris Humphries' statement may give us a clue about what is coming next. He said, "I love my wife and am devastated to learn she filed for divorce." (You mean he wasn't the first to know?) But it's what Humphries says next that is most telling, "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make it work."
Call me a hopeless romantic, but I can almost see the season-long quest toward reconciliation called, "Kris Kourts Kim."