Gabrielle Union is walking back her comments about going 50/50 with her former NBA husband Dwyane Wade. And what she said just might spark a necessary conversation between couples.
If you’ll remember, as we told you back in May 2023, the “Riff Raff” star said she and DWade split “everything 50/50.” In the immediate aftermath, the couple faced backlash as folks noted that the Miami Heat player made significantly more than the actress and were appalled at the thought of them equally paying the bills.
Now, in a new interview with Les Alfred on the “Balanced Black Girl” podcast released on Thursday, Union said that she’s since re-thinked her stance and realized that her position was a “trauma response.”
“There’s just a lot of days where I have 10% and I need him to be 90%. There’s days I don’t have sh*t and I need him to be 100%. It’s a trauma response,” she said. “And 50/50 is ‘I’m not going to be vulnerable enough to trust you with 100% of anything. Not my heart, not my cash.’”
Union went on to say that after doing the the inner work to address her feelings and thoughts, she asked her famous hubby if he wanted to be responsible for paying their entire mortgage without her help. Describing how she felt like she was going to “die,” the “Bring It On” star said that they eventually came to a decision to have him pay all of the mortgage after having the uncomfortable conversation.
“I had such anxiety. Like, I was crying, I was shaking. And he was like ‘you insisted on that.’ He’s like ‘I thought it made you feel better.’ I was like ‘it did and right now I want to take it back,’” she explained.
She concluded: “Now it sounds crazy to be like, ‘you Mr. NBA superstar who made a bazillion more amount of money than I do can pay the mortgage.’ Because I hate the feeling of releasing that to someone.”