Gabrielle Union’s Career Took a Hit After Dating Dwyane Wade Because of His Ex-Wife
Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade have successfully maintained the spark in their marriage for the ten years they’ve been wife and husband. So far, Wade is having better luck in his relationship with Union than he had with his first wife Siohvaughn Funches. Funches and Wade had a bitter divorce that spilled over to Union, who was accused of breaking up Wade’s first marriage. Although Union tried taking the high road at first, eventually she couldn’t ignore the attack on her character.
Siohvaughn Funches was becoming a threat to Gabrielle Union’s brand
Funches took a lot of her frustrations about her and Wade’s divorce out on Union. After she called out the movie star for being a homewrecker, Union felt silence was her best response. But this backfired by making Union look guiltier to the uninformed.
“I think people mistook me taking the high road as an admission of guilt,” Union once told JET (via BET). “Dwyane and I made a decision very early to not react to the negativity. And I kept feeling like the truth would come out. The problem is, when it did, nobody cared. What I discovered on social media is that people don’t read the entire story.”
She delved a little further into her experiences in an interview with iPower92 (via Vibe). There, Union touched on how the effects of her rival’s claims even impacted her professional life.
“It’s hard because, aside from loving him, I want to protect myself. I’ve built my life. I built my own brand. I built my career and my career took a hit from that madness because some people refuse to see the truth, even when it’s presented to them time and time again. I love him but at some point it’s about self preservation,” she said.
But Union received a bit of vindication. Funches once drafted a lawsuit asserting that the Bring It On star was causing emotional distress to her and Wade’s two children. But Union beat the lawsuit by proving to the courts that a few key points in the lawsuit didn’t add up.
“I fought it,” Union said. “My life is just too easy to track. So, we were submitting plenty of proof for the times she said I was in Miami. So, it was like, obviously you’re not telling the truth. And then the courts dismissed the case.”
Siohvaughn Funches once explained why she felt Gabrielle Union helped ruin her marriage with Dwyane Wade
A lot happened in Wade’s first marriage with Funches that caused their relationship to implode. But because of their history, it took many years for the couple to reach that point of no return. Funches and Wade were more than high school sweethearts, having met each other when they were nine years old. They started dating when they were 16, and married when they were 20.
But Funches asserted that the cracks in their relationship appeared when Wade’s NBA career took off. Although she claimed to support her ex’s dream, his success allegedly turned their romance into a nightmare in no time at all.
“It started to get really bad the summer right after he’d been drafted,” Funche once said according to Madame Noire. “I was over the phone with him and he had said something to me very, very angrily, and I said something to him about speaking to me and being disrespectful and he told me, ‘Do you wanna go and live in your mother’s house? ‘Cause that’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna end up back living in your mother’s house.’ I was very shocked. It was a very, very awful feeling. We stayed together but now that I can look back, from that moment it went downhill.”
The two officially divorced in 2007, which Funches felt Union was responsible for. Funches admitted that her and Wade’s relationship weren’t in a good place when Union came into the basketball player’s life. However, since they weren’t officially divorced, Funches believed that the Breaking In star still crossed a line when charming her ex. Especially when Funches maintained intimacy with Wade.
“Separated and divorced are two different things. I’m not certain when it happened or when she happened but I know that I was very married. I know that me and Dwyane at that time had talked about reconciliation. I was still even intimate sometimes with my then husband. So, does that constitute sleeping or having an affair with somebody’s husband? Yes. To me, divorce and separation are always two different things,” she said.
