Even though Tristan Thompson’s betrayals did not break Khloe Kardashian, they certainly hurt her. He certainly hurt her.

But fans remain puzzled as they watch members of her family, especially Kim, act all buddy-buddy with the guy.

What’s up with that?

On this week’s The Kardashians, Kim tried to explain why the man who turned her sister’s life upside down is still a close friend.

After countless cheating incidents, Tristan Thompson finally found out what was — at least for now — too much for Khloe to forgive.

He didn’t just cheat. He impregnated one of his side pieces. After fighting paternity in court, the truth came out.

But Tristan had to have known. Instead, he went through with a surrogacy journey with Khloe to have little Tatum.

Tristan devastated Khloe. And she spoke about it on the show.

“Everything is a lie, everything is manipulation. It’s deceit…” she noted in earlier episodes. “Did Tristan have every opportunity to tell me? Yes.”

Khloe continued: “Was Tristan going to tell me if there wasn’t a baby involved? Absolutely not, and that shows a lot about his character. The entire thing is despicable.”

As we have previously covered, Khloe decided to not excise Tristan from her life entirely.

Instead, she vowed to remain amicable with him. It’s not for her sake, but for the sake of the two children that they now share.

On this week’s episode, she addressed the “strict boundaries” that she employs. She knows that he’s wormed his way back into her heart before, and she doesn’t want that to happen again.

Weirdly, though, Kim has been surprisingly close with Tristan.

Late last year, Kim spoke about attending an “inspiring Friendsgiving dinner” at a juvenile detention camp. Tristan was also there.

We get what she’s going for (Kim has been a proponent of restorative justice), but juvenile detention camps are simply things that should not exist.

It was only a few months later that Kim began publicly attending a bunch of Tristan’s games.

Instead of watching from afar, she and North sat courtside and held up signs to cheer on Tristan. It was not subtle.

Kim went out to eat with the guy. Tristan even went out and about with some of her kids — notably, with Saint.

So, on the October 5 episode of The Kardashians, a producer asked Kim to clarify: “Where is your relationship with Tristan?”

“Ugh, I know you guys are gonna hate me for this, and you’re gonna hate us, and you’re gonna think Khloe’s whatever,” she predicted.

However, Kim insisted that Tristan is “such a good friend.”

“It’s so crazy because he’s such a good friend and he’s such a good dad,” Kim described to the camera.

“But he just couldn’t get it together in that area of, like, being a faithful boyfriend,” she added.

That is one hell of a way of phrasing it. That’s newspaper-headlines-when-police-murder-someone levels of denying accountability and coddling someone who did real harm.

“You wanna obviously hate him for that,” Kim noted.

Just for the record, a cheater is a cheater. That’s a personal problem, a relationship problem. Tristan’s behaviors towards Khloe included so many lies that it’s more like psychological warfare.

“Yeah, of course his actions and who he was, like, so f–ked up,” Kim admitted. “I can’t deny that.”

“We’ve had our talks about it, and we’ve had our fights about it, and we’ve had our arguments about it,” Kim described.

“But he’s also shown so many decent things,” she claimed. “And just has been a really good person and friend.”

According to Kim, Tristan really “stepped up” to help her when she was “struggling” with her four children amidst the split from her disgraced ex-husband, Kanye West.

“He started showing up to the games,” Kim said of Tristan acting as an uncle to her eldest son.

“He picks Saint up, takes him to dinner,” she described.

That is genuinely very sweet.

“And [he] will always come to my defense — especially if it’s stuff with me and my ex,” Kim pointed out.

And I just never forgot that,” she added. “So it’s like, I’ll never really throw someone away and act like I don’t feel like they can grow and evolve.”

That is … understandable. At the end of the day, Khloe is the hurt party. She gets to set the boundary. And she chose to keep Tristan in her life, albeit no longer as her partner.

Kim Kardashian Explains Why She’s Still Friends with Tristan Thompson: Look, … was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.