MY SOUL WAS SHATTERED’
THE ACTRESS OPENS UP ABOUT THE HEARTBREAKING BETRAYAL FROM HUSBAND DWYANE WADE DURING THEIR FERTILITY STRUGGLES
She’s endured heartbreak that no person should ever have to go through, with more miscarriages than she “could confidently count” and numerous IVF cycles and losses. But Gabrielle Union says the pain of learning her now-husband Dwyane Wade, 39, had fathered a child with another woman is almost indescribable.
The 48-year-old opened up about the betrayal in her recently released book You Got Anything Stronger?, revealing in a raw account that the experience left her “shattered”. “To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience,” she wrote. “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.”
Union and Wade began dating in 2008 but were on a break when he and “long-time friend” Aja Metoyer conceived Xavier, now 7, in 2013. “It should go without saying that we were not in a good place at the time that child was conceived,” Union explained. “But we were doing much better when he finally told me about the pregnancy.”
Having reconciled and trying to start a family of their own, the news was a massive blow to the star. “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 divulged.
Though the pair were ready to pick up the pieces and married in 2014, Union admitted that her “feelings weren’t originating from a healthy place”, largely because of her own infertility struggles. The former Bring It On star was diagnosed with adenomyosis, which affected her ability to carry a child. She was told that surrogacy was her best option, but persisted with another year of gruelling IVF treatments.
“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,” Union shared. “Even if he didn’t want to, I had to let him find someone who could give him what he wanted.”
Thankfully the pair stuck by each other. “We gathered what we could to slowly remake me into something new,” she admitted. “[But] there was no way to disguise where I’d been glued back together.”
Making a decision to pursue surrogacy, Union and Wade then welcomed their daughter Kaavia James in November 2018.
“Every route to parenthood is perfect,” Union told the US Today show the following year.
Their little one joins Wade’s other children: Xavier, Zaire, 19, and Zaya, 14 – with Union often sharing snaps of their blended brood on Instagram.
However, while the actress says she loves their “beautiful and real” family, she admitted that the way in which it all came to fruition has left her with “another riddle that has no answer”. “I can never know if my failure to carry a child put a ceiling on the love my husband has for me,” she added.
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