Jordan Strauss/WireImage
Kim Kardashian is still fighting hard against rumors that her 72-day marriage to Kris Humphries was all for show. While guest-cohosting LIVE! With Kelly on Monday morning, the reality star told Kelly Ripa that, from a purely business and image standpoint, she would have profited more if she'd stayed in her bad marriage longer. Watch the clip below (talk turns to Kim's marriage around the 5:00 mark).
"If you think I really made all that money that everyone claimed we made on the wedding and that it was fake and just for TV... I'm a smart businesswoman, I would have stayed married longer!" Kardashian, 31, told Ripa. "This was a bad business decision. I really didn't think following my heart would create this much backlash."
The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star told Ripa that she tied the knot because "being a hopeless romantic, I wanted to believe in something so badly." And though she claims she "definitely tried everything I could" to save the marriage, it sounds like she got out of there the moment she realized it wasn't the fairy tale she'd wanted.
"I heard stories of people who had kids and stayed married for years and it didn't end up working out," she explained. "I want babies and that forever love, and if I felt in my heart that this wasn't right, why wait years for the same result?"
Following the divorce filing, Kim says she moved back in with mother Kris Jenner, packing only "two pairs of sweatpants and a pair of pajamas." She says that she took strength from Jenner, who went through her own divorce from Kim's father Robert Kardashian Sr. in 1990.
"Thinking of myself in that situation, if my mom had four kids and she was able to get out of a situation that she felt like didn't fit her, I think anybody could," Kardashian told Ripa.
Viewers, meanwhile, have been following the breakup drama as it plays out on Kourtney & Kim Take New York. The season 2 finale, in which we'll presumably see the final moments of Kris and Kim's relationship, airs this Sunday, Jan. 29.
Even so, don't expect Kardashian to give up on her happily-ever-after. As she told Ripa, "I just need to rewrite my own fairy tale."