Gabrielle Union's soul was 'shattered' when she learned Dwyane Wade got another woman pregnant

Gabrielle Union says her soul was ‘shattered’ when she learned now-husband Dwyane Wade got another woman pregnant while Union was going through IVF treatments to try and struggling to conceive.

The actress, 48, shares a raw account of the betrayal in her new book You Got Something Stronger, which Time published an excerpt of on Friday.

In the piece, Gabrielle explains: ‘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.’

Union and Wade would go on to welcome daughter Kaavia via surrogate in 2018.

Devastated: Gabrielle Union says her soul was ‘shattered’ when she learned now-husband Dwyane Wade got another woman pregnant while Union was going through IVF treatments to try and conceive 

The piece began: ‘In 2013, before we were married, Dwyane had a baby with another woman. It should go without saying that we were not in a good place at the time that child was conceived.’

Gabi and Dwyane began dating in 2008 but according to the athlete’s own 2020 documentary, the pair were on a break when son Zaire, now seven, was concieved. 

Though the couple was ‘doing much better’ when he revealed his secret to her, she was heartbroken.  

‘To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience,’ The actress explained. ‘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.’

Gabi was particularly hurt given how hard she was trying to have a baby with Dwyane.

‘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 wrote.

‘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.’

Though the pair were ready to pick up the pieces, Union admitted that her ‘feelings weren’t originating from a healthy place,’ largely because of her own struggles getting pregnant.

‘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,’ she confessed. ‘Even if he didn’t want to, I had to let him find someone who could give him what he wanted.’

She made the decision to forgive him a make ‘peace’ with the past.

‘But I loved him,’ she wrote. ‘Each day, he had worked to be forgiven, and I had chosen to do so. 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. 

Reflecting on how she’d deal with Wade’s cheating if it happened today, Union said that: ‘The me of today would not have stayed with him, but would I be who I am now without that pain? 

‘I remember a small voice in my heart telling myself to leave, but my fear of public humiliation was so great that I didn’t take my own advice.’