Dwyane Wade Reflects on Moment That Nearly Destroyed His Relationship

Dwyane Wade reflected on a “rough” moment in his life, getting frank about fathering a child with another woman in an interview with Shannon Sharpe.

Wade first appeared on Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay podcast several months ago, but a clip of the interview has been circulating online over the past 24 hours. During the conversation, the NBA Hall of Famer described the difficult process of informing his then-girlfriend (now wife) Gabrielle Union about fathering son Xavier with another woman while they were temporarily separated. Wade admitted that he initially thought it would be easier to end their relationship than admit to Union what he’d done.

“You try to think of everything possible [to say],” the former Miami Heat point guard explained. “One, the whole situation is scary enough [because] 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. I tried to pussyfoot around it. I tried to break up with her. I tried all that.”

Wade says Union “kept showing up,” despite everything. She even supported him through that particularly “rough” period of time in which the team was embroiled in a losing battle in the NBA Finals. 

“I couldn’t have gotten through that moment without her sticking with me. That was a rough time for me, bro. You’re keeping something from people you love and that’s heavy. At night, when it’s just you and your thoughts, it gets loud up here in this mind.”

The couple was able to move through the revelations, marrying in August 2014 and welcoming their own child, via surrogate, in 2018. “It hasn’t been perfect. It will never be perfect, but that was nine years ago,” Wade reflected. “We go to therapy, we’ve had shouts about it, we’ve had regular conversations about it. It’s been something that I have to work at and work on."

He added that it takes more than time to fix things. “It doesn’t go away because years come or because I say ‘sorry,'" he said.

Wade seems completely at peace with the turns his life took, telling Sharpe: “This is my story. I don’t know what’s coming in the future, but right now this is all mine. I’m thankful to have the things that’s a little uncomfortable to talk about and deal with and experience, because that makes you live a full life. That’s all I’m trying to do, figure out how to live a full life together.”