Gabrielle Union Was "Broken" When Dwyane Wade Had a Child With Another Woman

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Gabrielle Union has long been open about her struggles with infertility, from revealing she's experienced multiple miscarriages, to her diagnosis of adenomyosis after years of being misdiagnosed.

Now, the actress and activist is sharing more of her story with her second memoir, You Got Anything Stronger? In an excerpt from the book shared with Time magazine, Union opens up about learning her husband, Dwyane Wade, was expecting a baby with another woman while she was trying to conceive herself.

The former NBA star began seeing Union in 2009, but their relationship was on a hiatus when he was dating Basketball Wives star, Aja Metoyer, in 2013. Metoyer became pregnant with Wade's third child, Xavier, now 7.

"It should go without saying that we were not in a good place at the time that child was conceived," Union wrote. "But we were doing much better when he finally told me about the pregnancy. To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience. There are people—strangers I will never meet—who have been upset that I have not previously talked about that trauma. I have not had words, and even after untold amounts of therapy I am not sure I have them now."

She continued, "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. We gathered what we could to slowly remake me into something new. There was no way to disguise where I’d been glued back together."

Later in a 2020 ESPN documentary, Wade called the moment the "hardest thing I’ve ever had to do."

"I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t eating," he added. "When you hold something in that you know is going to come out and you have this information and you know it’s gonna f**k somebody’s life up that you care about, that you love, if it don’t hurt you, then you’re not human."

However, the two were able to come out of the experience stronger. They were married in 2014. And in addition to Wade's kids he shares with his first wife—Zaire, 19, and Zaya, 14—he and Union welcomed daughter Kaavia James via surrogate in 2018.

The 48-year-old star also detailed her surrogacy journey in the Time excerpt. She explains she was cautious about the process, and battled with feeling "worthless" and dealing with "grief" as she reflected on her miscarriages—becoming accustomed to the fact she would not be carrying her child.

"Of course I was grateful, it would be impossible not to be," Union said. "But what I was grateful for was that this life might be spared. That this heartbeat might continue, beat strong for decades, long after my own stopped. So many had stopped inside me."

Now, they seem to be on steadier ground, as the two celebrated their seven-year wedding anniversary at the end of August with a throwback video of their nuptials. And they are clearly delighted with their youngest daughter, who has her own Instagram account, @kaaviajames, with 1.8 million followers.

"Each day, he had worked to be forgiven, and I had chosen to do so," Union wrote about Wade. "And part of this journey of making peace with our love is also making peace with ourselves. I had come to accept that without that awful collision in our lives—this Big Bang moment in our relationship that set our galaxy as we knew it—we wouldn’t have become the individuals we wanted to be."

You Got Anything Stronger? is available in-store and online today.


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