Humiliation Kink? Khloé Kardashian and Tristan Thompson Reportedly Having Second Child Together

Well, I hope you’re sitting down for this: Khloé Kardashian and Tristan Thompson, parents to 4-year-old True Thompson, are having a second child together via surrogate, TMZ reports. According to the tabloid, the baby is expected to come any day now.

Following this timeline of events, it seems the co-parents decided to have another child together some time just before new cheating allegations against Thompson last year prompted the couple to split yet again. It’s unclear how many times the two, who allegedly first got together in 2016 while Thompson was in a relationship with another woman, have broken up and subsequently reconciled after Thompson’s cheating. (Surely you recall such headlines as “Kondomless Klown King Tristan Thompson Kries Krocodile Tears To Khloé Over Infant Indiscretion, Apologizes For Rampant Raw Doggery” from just earlier this year??)

Last year, Thompson impregnated his then-personal trainer Maralee Nichols, who gave birth to their son last December. Prior to the birth of his son, Thompson repeatedly tried to deny he was the father until a paternity test promptly shut that down. The highly public nature of his he-said-she-said with Nichols subjected Kardashian to new levels of humiliation, which is truly saying something—whilst subjecting the rest of us to equally unbearable (or enjoyable??) second-hand embarrassment. (The English language hasn’t come up with a single word for it yet, but the Germans call it “Schadenfreude.”)

Ahead of what TMZ has characterized as the “imminent” birth of their second child, it’s unclear whether Kardashian and Thompson have reconciled again or will simply co-parent. But they’ve apparently “been seen together as of late at family function,” per TMZ, so there’s that. Given Kardashian’s record of forgiving her part-time NBA player, full-time cheater of an ex, I wouldn’t put it past her to succumb again.

News about baby no. 2 comes just weeks after the season finale of Hulu’s The Kardashians, which finally addressed Thompson’s affair with Nichols. Shortly after the episode, Kardashian addressed the storyline with the same song-and-dance about forgiveness and healing: “Life is full of lessons, teachable moments. We should handle them with grace/love. Even if we are hurt by them,” she tweeted.

But as Jezebel’s Ezinne Ukoha put it, it’s not even clear “which teachable moment she’s talking about” at this point: “The massive amounts of public humiliation she has suffered—and the fact that she keeps going back for more—make it seem like she’s not really up for learning anything. The rest of the world figured out, quite a while ago, that Tristan is maybe not the best dude.”

I’d be shocked if Kardashian didn’t privately have some sort of humiliation kink, but even if she doesn’t, as author Zeba Blay has put it in a column for Jezebel, she certainly has a knack for it:

“If Khloé Kardashian has a talent, now, it’s simply riding the storm of constant public embarrassment. Like a pie to the face, every time Khloé takes another L, it generates some sympathy, but mostly a kind of glee, similar to the act of hate-watching a show you don’t like just so you can talk shit about it.”

To Blay’s point, there’s simply nothing the KarJenners can’t commodify and leverage into profitable currency in the attention economy—even humiliation. And, right on cue, as the (?) couple prepares for the birth of their impending second child, after everything they’ve been through, we’re all here “hate-watching” and “talking shit” about it.