Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade met back in 2007 when they were both hired to hang out at the same Super Bowl party. Dwyane was married to Siohvaughn Funches at the time, but he quickly filed for divorce. The divorce got ugly, and in the end Dwyane was awarded sole custody of their two children.
Since then, Gabrielle and Dwyane have weathered their own ups and downs. Gabrielle has just released her third book, Have You Got Anything Stronger?, in which she opens up about a particularly painful time: finding out Dwyane was having a baby with another woman.
Gabrielle and Dwyane took a break in their relationship from January to April 2013. The two haven't spoken much about the time, but it was clear that by the summer, things were back to normal as Gabrielle began showing up at NBA playoff games and the pair attended events together.
After the two got back together, Dwyane had devastating news: A woman he'd been with during the pair's break was pregnant. As Gabrielle explains in her book, "It should go without saying that we were not in a good place at the time that child was conceived."
However, what hurt was that Dwyane knew about the pregnancy for quite some time but didn't tell Gabrielle right away. "But we were doing much better when he finally told me about the pregnancy," she writes. "To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience."
She also explains why it has taken her so long to unpack the situation publicly: "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."
Gabrielle also opens up about her own struggle with infertility and reveals she has experienced at least eight miscarriages. Knowing her husband had a baby with someone else when she wasn't able to do the same was very challenging: "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 even felt like not being able to carry a pregnancy to term was a failure on her part. "Clearly, my feelings weren't originating from a healthy place," she explains. "So much of what made the decision so difficult was that if I didn't submit to a surrogacy, then I was convinced I needed to let Dwyane go. Even if he didn't want to, I had to let him find someone who could give him what he wanted."
However, the two decided to hire a surrogate to carry their pregnancy to term, and their daughter Kaavia James Union Wade was born in 2018. Gabrielle writes that during the ultrasound, "Dwyane took my hand, and there was so much happiness on his face, I lost it. My cry was a choke stopped up in my throat, tears streaming down."
Gabrielle explains that the tears were due to grief: "I'd had so many miscarriages … looking at the screen, I understood how many potential babies I had lost. That's why I was crying."
