Gabrielle Union Opens up About Dwyane Wade Having a Child With Another Woman Before They Got Married

Gabrielle Union is opening up for the first time publicly about being “devastated” upon learning husband Dwyane Wade had a baby with another woman in 2013 while they were on a break in their relationship. The actress writes about the difficult time in her life in her new memoir You Got Anything Stronger, revealing how she was “broken into pieces” when the athlete fathered his 7-year-old son Xavier. (Wade is also dad to Zaire, 19 and Zaya, 14 and guardian to his nephew, Dahveon, 19.)

“It should go without saying that we were not in a good place in our relationship at the time that child was conceived. But we were in a much better place when he finally told me about the pregnancy,” Union wrote, as per Entertainment Tonight. “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. I have not had words, and even after untold amounts of therapy I am not sure I have them now. But truth matters.”

Union and Wade would marry in 2014, later attempting to have their own kids. After Union experienced a number of miscarriages, the two would go on to welcome daughter Kaavia through a surrogate, an idea that first filled the Bring It On actress with “instantaneous white-hot rage” when her husband suggested it. “He looked me in the eye. ‘As much as we want this baby, I want you,’ he said slowly. ‘We’ve lost too much in our relationship for me to be okay with encouraging you to do one more thing to your body and your soul,’” Union recalled.

At the time, Union felt her husband’s words were “an acknowledgment of failure” instead of coming from a place of love. “Because at that point I would have sold my soul for a win. To get out of the endless cycle of loss. What was the going rate for souls? What was mine worth, anyway?” she asked. “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.”

The couple has since made their way back to a good place with the whole family, celebrating their seventh wedding anniversary just last month. “Each day, he had worked to be forgiven, and I had chosen to love him and forgive him,” Union shared. “And part of this journey of making peace with our love is also making peace with ourselves.”