Dwyane Wade credits Gabrielle Union with “showing up” for him when he fathered a baby in 2013 — but it wasn’t easy telling her the truth.
“You’re thinking about it all. It’s all scary,” Wade, 41, recalled of the hard conversation he had with Union, 50, during an appearance on the “Club Shay Shay” podcast on Wednesday, September 20. “One, the whole situation is scary enough, you’re a public figure. But you know that this is going to hurt someone that you’ve been building a relationship with and a life with.”
Wade fathered son Xavier, now 9, with Aja Metoyer while he and Union were on a break in early 2013. He told the Bring It On star about the pregnancy once they rekindled their romance in summer 2013 — and while the two were struggling to conceive their own child. (Wade and Union met in 2007. They briefly split in early 2013 but got engaged that December. The couple tied the knot in August 2014 and welcomed daughter Kaavia in November 2018 via surrogate.)
“I tried to pussyfoot around it, I tried to break up with her,” the retired NBA star recalled, noting he tried to tell Union, “‘Hey, things have been bad lately,’ ‘Hey, we’ve been having a little distance in our relationship anyway,’ I tried all of that.”
Union, however, didn’t let Wade push her away. “She kept showing up,” he said. “I couldn’t have gotten through that moment without her sticking with me. We were in the playoffs. That was a rough time for me. You got a lot on your mind. You’re keeping something from people you love. It’s heavy.”
Wade — who also shares Zaire, 21, and Zaya, 16, with ex-wife Siovaughn Funches — told Union about his son before it made headlines, which gave them a chance to move past it. “Ultimately, you gotta sit with you and you gotta sit with this person if this is who you’re going to be with,” he remembered. “I had to sit with my wife and have this conversation.”
Union described the moment in her 2021 memoir, You Got Anything Stronger, writing that she was “devastated” Wade could have “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 actress noted that in time “he had worked to be forgiven, and I had chosen to love him and forgive him.”
Wade confessed on Wednesday that his and Union’s relationship “hasn’t been perfect.” However, he explained that with therapy and continual talks, they are happily married.
“It’s been something that is going to continue to be something I have to work at and work on. It doesn’t go away,” the athlete continued. “When it comes to my wife and I, yeah, that’s hard. It’s always there.”
Wade noted that he’s equally as concerned about how the headline-making story has affected his son. “That’s hard on him. This is going to always be there. He’s done nothing,” he said. “This is a young kid, who already has a negative impact next to his name. I think about that.”
Ultimately, Wade said, “This is my family. This is my story. We gonna get through this how we gonna get through it. But we’re gonna to get through it. Time, distance, space, it doesn’t help it but it makes it — it allows me to see things differently.”
The former Miami Heat shooting guard is “continuing to grow” and work on himself but his dedication to being a good parent has never wavered. “[I] love my kids. This my story. I didn’t ask for it to all be this way. I don’t know what’s coming in the future. Right now, this is all mine,” he concluded. “So as good as it looks, or as bad as it seems, it’s mine. And I’m thankful.”
