While she remains a strong presence in Kylie and Kendall Jenner’s lives, their half brother Brandon says his relationship with dad Caitlyn has been wobbly.
WATCH: Brandon Jenner easter egg hunts with his 4-year-old daughter Eva
Speaking about their fractured connection in his new book titled, To Me, He Was Just Dad: Stories of Growing Up with Famous Fathers, the musician shockingly revealed he saw the Olympic gold medalist just “half a dozen times” between the ages of eight and 25.
“The infrequent exchanges felt more like staged photo opportunities than real bonding. In fact, they were [staged] photo ops for ‘family’ Christmas cards,” he explained in the work of essays.
According to Brandon, after his father, now 70, tied the knot with Kris Jenner in 1991, their dynamic shifted and they eventually drifted apart.
“After Dad met and married Kris, family became a business for him, and I stayed away for most of my teenage years. I didn’t want to be a part of their dynamic. I know now, though, that Dad was pretty unhappy in that house and felt like he wasn’t treated well,” Brandon wrote.
While these revelations are no doubt explosive, the former athlete— who shares sons Bradon and Brody with her ex-wife, Linda Thompson— has admitted to being absent in her children’s lives before transitioning, claiming her personal issues were extremely difficult to manage.
“The big formative years for them, I was really struggling with these issues,” Caitlyn told Diane Sawyer in a 20/20 interview in 2015.
“I talked to all the boys about this after the fact, that, yeah, I didn’t do a good job. And I apologised to my kids for that.”
Brandon echoed a similar sentiment in his body of work, writing: “My father spent the first 65 years of her life trying to avoid answering the question, ‘How are you doing?’ and because of that, she didn’t ask it often, either. And though I understand that she avoided the question because the answer would have laid bare too many struggles, it made my relationship with her challenging.”
The 38-year-old continued: “People connect with each other through vulnerability, and you can only get someone to open up to you if you are willing to be vulnerable yourself. Because she was shielding something so important from herself, Dad remained distant for much of my life.”
Thankfully, after Caitlyn transitioned from male to female in late 2015, Brandon said “my dad and I began to reestablish a relationship”.
“Once Dad decided to go through with the transition, I was the first of her children she confided in…As soon as Dad said it herself, I was so happy for her. It was as if she were truly stepping into who she was,” Brandon wrote.
“As her son, I wish my dad had been able to transition sooner, not only because I think she would have been much happier, but because I think we could have built a stronger relationship earlier. Now I’m making up for lost time. I speak to my dad almost every day, and every time, she asks me, ‘How are you doing?'”
Sadly, Brandon isn’t the only child who has had ongoing relationship issues with Caitlyn.
During her time on the UK version of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, she said that coming out as trans to Khloe Kardashian was most difficult because she was “pissed off about something.“
“I went through every kid and Khloe for some reason was pissed-off about something through this whole process, it’s been five or six years and I’ve really haven’t talked to her since,” she said in November 2019.
“We were really close, I raised her since she was five years old, I really don’t know what her issues are.”
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