Travis Barker is flying excessive in love — and within the skies, apparently due to his relationship with Kourtney Kardashian.
The longtime associates, who solely started relationship early this year, got engaged this past weekend in Montecito, Calif. — after Barker, 45, obtained down on one knee in the course of a show of crimson roses and white candles and requested Kardashian, 42, to marry him.
Despite their whirlwind romance, they’ve collectively overcome a seemingly inconceivable activity: tackling the Blink-182 drummer’s worry of flying that erupted after he survived a horrifying plane crash that killed 4 individuals greater than a decade in the past.
“With you anything is possible,” Barker captioned an Instagram submit in August, displaying him holding up Kardashian in an embrace in entrance of the pink-striped plane that took them to Mexico — which marked his first flight in 13 years.
Since that summer time journey, the couple have jetted to locations together with Italy for the Venice Film Festival and France.
These journeys are not any small feat given what Barker lived by means of.
On Sept. 19, 2008, after a efficiency, Barker boarded a non-public plane in Columbia, South Carolina. With him had been his assistant Chris Baker, 29, his safety guard Charles “Che” Still, 25, and Barker’s onetime collaborator DJ AM, born Adam Goldstein, 35 on the time. During takeoff, one of many plane’s tires blew, inflicting the plane to careen off the runway, smash into an embankment and burst into flames. The two pilots, Sarah Lemmon and James Bland, had been killed — as had been Baker and Still.
Barker, in keeping with a May profile in Men’s Health, was coated in jet gasoline and engulfed in flames — which Goldstein put out together with his personal shirt.
Barker had third-degree burns throughout 65 % of his physique; he spent three months within the hospital present process no fewer than 26 surgical procedures. Nearly a year following the crash, Goldstein died of a drug overdose — making Barker the only survivor of the tragedy.
Barker has since struggled with post-traumatic stress dysfunction and the guilt of surviving.
“I couldn’t walk down the street,” Barker instructed the magazine. “If I saw a plane [in the sky], I was determined it was going to crash, and I just didn’t want to see it.”
In that very same interview, Barker vowed to fly once more.
“I have to,” he instructed the publication. “I want to make the choice to try and overcome it.”
The couple’s jet-setting is all due to a deal Barker struck with Kardashian.
“I didn’t even know I was going,” he told Nylon in regards to the Mexico journey.
“I made a deal with her … She had just said to me, ‘I would love to do so much traveling with you,’” he added. “‘I want to go to Italy with you. I want to go to Cabo with you. I want to go to Paris with you. I want to go to Bora Bora with you.’”
He added, “And I said, ‘Well, when the day comes you want to fly, I’m telling you, I’ll do it with you. I would do anything with you. And just give me 24 hours’ notice.’ And that’s what she did.”
Beyond training “breathwork” workouts to “go deeper” into his unconscious earlier than flying, he additionally had Kardashian’s assist — one thing that Jessica Stern, Ph.D., a scientific psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at NYU Langone Health, finds important.
“Starting a conversation with them about their needs is already the first way to be really collaborative with them in their process of recovering from a traumatic event,” she stated of serving to a beloved one in recovery, including that the accomplice who initiates the change ought to ask what the opposite wants to maneuver ahead with the understanding they may not know.
Also, stated Stern, the accomplice ought to make room for the opposite to speak in regards to the problem once they really feel prepared.
“Recognizing there might be times in which they can’t speak about something and giving them the space that they might need in order to process whatever they need internally [is importnat],” she stated.
“Definitely be patient,” added Stern of the method.
And for the couple, all of it grew to become attainable with one thing as seemingly cute as a deal —one thing that Stern additionally finds efficient.
“You can find ways that are endearing or heartwarming, or maybe even flirtatious if it’s a romantic relationship, to have difficult conversations if it allows you to have those conversations,” she stated.
For Barker and Kardashian, the rewards of that deal have been nice.
“It’s still something very new to me, but having something that gives me the strength and hope to be able to overcome things that were so traumatic in my life, it just says a ton,” Barker instructed Nylon.
“She’s definitely that for me. I’m invincible when I’m with her.”
