For the first time since having a baby with another woman, NBA all-star Dwyane Wade is opening up about how fathering a child during a split with actress Gabrielle Union has affected their marriage.
“It hasn’t been perfect. It will never be perfect, but that was nine years ago,” Wade said during an episode of the Club Shay Shay podcast. “We go to therapy. We’ve been to therapy. We’ve had shouts about it. We’ve had regular conversations about it, and so it’s going to continue to be something that I have to work at and work on. It doesn’t go away because years come or because I say, ‘Sorry.'”
The Hall-of-Famer recalled when it all went down: “It was all scary,” adding that he knew the story would be a mainstay in the press, but more importantly, would hurt the woman he loved – Union.
“You know that this is going to hurt someone that you’ve been building a relationship with and a life with,” Wade said.
The 41-year-old further added that his relations with Aja Metoyer (the woman he fathered the child with) were kept under wraps for quite some time before the news became public. Metoyer welcomed their son Xavier in November 2013.
“You got a lot on your mind. You’re keeping something from people you love, and it’s heavy,” Wade said. “At night, when it gets quiet, when it’s just you and your thoughts, them thoughts is loud.”
He continued: “I tried to pussyfoot around it. I tried to break up with her. ‘Hey, things have been bad lately. Hey we’ve been having a little distance in our relationship.’ I tried all that. She kept showing up.”
The Chicago native said he also feels for his son, who has “done nothing. It’s a stain that’s on him for no reason. And I think about that.”
“Ultimately, what I do know is, at the end of the day this is my family. This is my story,” Wade said. “We gon’ get through this however we’re gon’ get through it. But we gon’ get through it. Time, distance, space, it doesn’t help it, but it allows you to see things differently when you have time away from it.”
Meanwhile, Union addressed the scandal in her 2021 memoir: You Got Anything Stronger?, writing that she was “broken” after finding out Wade had gotten a woman pregnant while she faced infertility issues.
“To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience,” she wrote. “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.”
Wade and Union would eventually have a daughter named Kaavia James in 2018.
