Kristin Cavallari Cut Her Dad Out of Her Life After Incident With Her Kids

Kristin Cavallari doesn't mess around when it comes to protecting her kids. The Laguna Beach alum, 36, revealed in a clip of her Let's Be Honest podcast that she cut off her father, Dennis Cavallari, two years ago after he crossed a line with her kids – a decision she said has been the "best thing [she's] ever done."

"I cut my dad out of my life about two years ago, which has honestly been the best thing I've ever done," Cavallari explained. "I actually didn't even realize that my dad was a narcissist until I was an adult." The MTV alum continued that she knew she didn't like being around her father when she was younger and that he always made her feel like she "wasn't good enough."

@kristincavallari

New episode of Let’s Be Honest with Dr. Sherrie Campbell. One of the episodes i was most excited for when i decided to launch this podcast. Eveything narcissists on today’s episode #narcissist #letsbehonest #podcast

♬ original sound – Kristin Cavallari

"But then the flip side of that is, sometimes he would put me on this pedestal and talk me up," she explained. "Now as an adult looking back, it was when it benefitted you and made you look good." Cavallari's relationship with her dad had been strained for years, but the breaking point for the Very Cavallari star came when her dad was involved in some kind of incident with her three kids, daughter Saylor, 8, sons Camden, 11, and Jaxon, 9, all of whom she shares with ex-husband Jay Cutler.

"How I got my dad out of my life was something happened with my kids and it crossed the line. And I was like, 'You know what? I'm f—ing done.' And he blamed me for it, like threw everything back in my face," she said. "I was always like, I can take it. You know. I can take the abuse. I have my whole life. But it's like when you start now messing with my kids, I'm not doing it."

Cavallari has struggled in her relationship with her father for years. The Uncommon James founder's mother, Judith Eifrig, divorced Kristin's father when she was young, and Dennis would go on to marry Nicole King in 2003. Their marriage was troubled, however, and King filed for divorce in 2013 after a woman claimed that she had been involved in a years-long affair with Dennis. 

Cavallari previously shared tough details about her relationship with her dad in a 2020 episode of her E! reality show, saying that she and her dad grew apart after her brother, Michael Cavallari, died in 2015 after crashing his car in a rural part of Utah and succumbed to hypothermia. "My dad and my brother were close, and, because of that, I think our relationship is very surface. It puts a little bit of a void between us," she said in the episode.