REBOUND ROMANCE Dating a new younger man, Kourtney Kardashian is fed up with her ex Scott Disick.
Dating a new younger man, the star is fed up with her ex
After taking Cannes in head-turning style that was heavy on pink sequins and PDA with her buff new beau, 23-year-old model Younes Bendjima, Kourtney Kardashian checked out of the dream destination on May 27 with a serene Instagram post. “Au revoir,” the reality star captioned the snap of herself looking pensive on a yacht. Her goodbye wasn’t just referring to the Riviera. “Scott [Disick] and I were very co-dependent and I just would always bounce every idea off of him,” Kardashian, 38, told sisters Kim and Khloé on the May 28 episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. “I’m living a different life now where doing more for myself is, like, an option, and now that I
am able to make my own decisions, I want to make the best decisions.”
That may not be a priority for her former partner Disick, 34. After a drama-filled split in 2015 and a turbulent two years trying to get along with one another, the exes seemed to have finally made peace. In recent months, the pair made a go of co-parenting Mason, 7, Penelope, 4, and Reign, 2, and had even holidayed together. All that came to a screeching halt when Disick—jealous that his ex was flaunting her new lover in Cannes—flew to the south of France himself and proceeded to get cosy with a different beauty every day (see box, p. 27). Among the hook-ups: Disney alumna Bella Thorne, 19, and stylist Chloe Bartoli. Kardashian reacted with disgust. “Scott hasn’t seen the kids for weeks,” says a Keeping Up with the Kardashians source. “Up until recently, it was his own choice. But now Kourtney won’t let him see them unless he shapes up.”
Disick’s antics are a case of déjà vu. Just before he split with Kardashian, he flaunted a fling with Bartoli in—where else?—cannes. (His hard partying also landed him in rehab multiple times that year.) “Kourtney can’t believe they are going down the same road again,” says the KUWTK source. “She used to worry about Scott, but not anymore. Now she just finds him absolutely pathetic.”
Why is Disick making a spectacle of himself? “Scott’s trying to stick it to Kourtney,” says an insider. “He’s spinning out of control because he thinks she’s rubbing her new relationship in his face.” But Kardashian is hardly an amateur in turning her domestic woes into public drama. “They’re both playing this game with each other,” says another family source. Adds the insider: “She knows exactly what she’s doing.”
And having a fabulous time doing it, judging by Kardashian’s smiles when she’s with Bendjima. First snapped in Paris in December a couple of months after they reportedly met at Paris Fashion Week, Kardashian and Bendjima made no attempt to hide their romance in Cannes, where they turned heads at Gotha nightclub and snuggled on a yacht, Kardashian in a thong bikini. (Her children stayed home in LA; see below). “Younes is young, but very responsible,” says a close source of the Algerian-born former boxer, who is the same age as Kardashian’s former fling Justin Bieber. “He doesn’t really party. He is very sweet to Kourtney.”
Enjoyable as it is, the source says their romance “will probably never turn into more than a fling,” but “it serves a purpose—for now.” The single mum “is having fun and he makes her happy,” says the source. “After all the drama with Scott, Younes is a great distraction.”
Meanwhile, Disick knows he’s on the edge, but doesn’t care. “Scott can be very selfabsorbed and goes through this spiral where it’s all about him,” says the insider. “His wild behaviour is going to cost him his family.”
“They’re both playing this game with each other”