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Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade may be a power couple now, but back in 2013 things weren’t so positive for the pair. Wade and Union were taking a break from the relationship when Wade conceived a child with another woman, and in her new book You Got Anything Stronger?, the Bring It On star shared the emotional impact that the admission had on her.
The pair began dating in 2008, and in 2013 they took a short break due to distance and timing. However, after they were reunited, Wade revealed to Union that he had fathered a son named Xavier with another woman. “To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience. There are people — strangers who I will never meet — who have been upset that I have not previously talked about that trauma,” she wrote.
“I have not had words, and even after untold amounts of therapy I am not sure I have them now. But truth matters,” Union continued, writing that she and Wade were “not in a good place” when her partner conceived the baby, but they entered into a “much better one” once the truth was revealed.
Wade fathering a child with another woman was particularly difficult as Union went on to struggle with a number of miscarriages as the couple tried for a child of their own in later years. “The experience of Dwyane having a baby so easily while I was unable to left my soul not just broken into pieces, but shattered into fine dust scattering in the wind,” she wrote. “With desperate hands, we gathered what we could to slowly remake me into something new.”
Union even added that trying for a child affected her mental health, writing, “This woman is such a failure. And she has the nerve to be old. And she has the nerve to have a younger husband. And she has the nerve to stick with a guy who had a kid with somebody else.”
However, the couple welcomed their first child together, a girl named Kaavia James via surrogate in 2018 and recently celebrated 7 years of marriage after their wedding in 2014. Wade also has children Zaire, 19, and Zaya, 14 from a previous marriage. The basketball player also became guardian to his nephew Dahveon, 19.
