Why Are Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union Even Married?
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So it's a big question, and I'm wondering just why are people getting married anymore?
It seems that we are slowly chipping away at what marriage is supposed to represent as an institution, and people are sort of engaging in these progressive-like marriages, people that get married and say, as just one example, I want to keep my last name.
I'm a woman. I've always been known as this.
this, I want to keep my last name. I find that to be weird.
I was so excited to take my husband's last name. Another element of this is we're
getting married, but we don't want kids. We don't want kids to disrupt how we live. We
love our financial security because we don't have children. We want to be able to travel the
world. Okay. Typically, people think when you get married, it's because you want to
establish your own family. But for some people, it's enough just to have one another.
Now we're starting to see this phenomenon of people talking about not wanting to blend their finances, which brings me to the topic of Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade, who I don't think anybody would disagree with the statement.
They are definitively not in a traditional marriage.
They do everything a little bit different.
a couple of examples here. She did not want to lose her last name, so she hyphenated it.
They are raising their son, born Zaire, as a daughter that they are now calling Zaya,
despite the fact that Zaya's mother says, no, that's my son, and has been fighting them
in court. They're championing that. Okay. They did not go the traditional route of having
They decided to use surrogacy.
So things are very different in this marriage.
But then sort of the cherry on top of all of it was this interview where Gabrielle Union sat down with Bloomberg to say that everything in her household is split 50-50.
Take a listen.
It's weird to say I'm head of household, because in this household, we split everything 50-50.
But in the other households that each of us have to support, it puts this, there's always this, like, gorilla on your back that is like, you better work, you better work.
You know, you gonna sleep in?
You know, somebody might not eat.
Come on, come on, you better work. And it's hard.
It's hard to let that go.
So to be clear, Gabrielle Union is worth about $50 million.
It doesn't mean that she doesn't have a ton of people that she needs to take care of.
But what is really compelling about this interview and why it went so viral is because her husband, Dwayne Wade, is worth $175 million.
So it's bizarre to hear her say that she feels this gorilla on her back because she has to worry about other people that she has to support when her husband is quite literally worth $175 million.
People weighed into this on Twitter, said how bizarre it was.
This is not how it should be.
People are realizing this is not feeling like it's a marriage per se.
So somebody questioned Dwayne Wade on the podcast Club Shay Shay about what his wife had said.
Is it real? Are they actually splitting things 50-50 when he has a net worth of $175 million?
Take a listen. Because I think I said one time when he was in Miami, I said something about it being my house.
That I paid for. Uh-oh!
My wife looked at me, she was like, you will never say that to me again when it's something that we share.
And so my wife was like, when we moved to L.A., I got half on it.
You will never say my house again.
Wow! She said, you can say that in the arena.
And so in our life, our home, 50-50.
We purchase it together. Right.
Our daughter. Anything that goes on with our daughter, 50-50.
We share it together. Okay.
I know that it has become very common for people to say, let's normalize.
Let's normalize things that are so very clearly abnormal.
But can we all just address the fact that this is not something that should be normalized?
The idea...
That you are paying for your child as if you've had a divorce and it's a custody split 50-50, and so you have to contribute 50% of everything you pay for them.
When you have a child, this is not the way that a married couple should think.
You should not be thinking, okay, I'm going to enroll my child into this private school, so I'm going to pay 50% of the semester, and my husband's going to pay 50% out of the semester, and we're going to take this money from our two separate accounts.
This is what he is alleging is happening in their relationship.
He's confessing it, and he's saying it Ha, ha, ha.
That's how they do it on podcasts. Make it seem like it's cool, like it's chic, like it's forward.
And it's not forward, it's not cool, and it's not chic.
It's flat out bizarre. So I'll ask the question, what is the purpose of this marriage?
What is the purpose of marriage?
I thought marriage was when two people become one.
And now we are slowly chipping away at every single aspect of what it means to become one.
I don't want I don't want our finances to become one.
I don't want our name to become one.
I don't even want to think of our child as something that we created and is one.
Rather, let's separate that.
Let's separate the goodness and the wholeness of that by thinking of our child as people
who are divorced think about their children, which are what are the requirements?
What are my financial contributions?
What are those contributions supposed to look like so I can feel accomplished?
And by the way, when you're looking at that clip, even though he's ha-hi of Gabrielle
Union, does that seem comfortable when she's saying that she feels this stress because
she knows that she has other people that she needs to take care of?
And to be clear, we're only allowed to show you 30 seconds of the Dwayne Wade clip, but
he goes on to stipulate that there are people in their lives, let's say, and I'm giving
an example here, her mother gets sick while he's saying that she pays for 100% of that.
If she wants to help out her sister with a bill, then Gabrielle Union pays for 100% of
that.
This is not a rational way to think in marriage.
That is, as I said, not two people becoming one, but people that have agreed that they're comfortable being roommates for a very long time.
And that's what I would say to them.
I would cast Dwayne Wade and Gabrielle Union as roommates.
And that is what we are going to be left with in this circumstance if we don't start adding the severity back to what marriage is supposed to entail.
So I thought about that this morning.
I thought, what is the reason that I think people are getting married today?
Well, what are the reasons that people are getting divorced?
Because they're not viewing marriage as a partnership.
They're not viewing it as family.
They're not viewing it as two people becoming one.
Rather, they're viewing it as Instagram moments.
I think a lot of people get married because they want to have a wedding.
I hate to say it, but I think it's true.
I think you'll admit it. You've been to couples.
You've been to those weddings where you go, I don't know that these people should have gotten married, but what else were they going to do?
They've been together for seven years.
She's getting the itch. She wants a ring.
She wants to post the shots, the notorious hand shots that we all see on Instagram after you get engaged.
The, oh my God, she said yes.
They want to have a wedding. She wants to wear a white dress.
It is becoming about aspects of social media.
Another undercurrent that I see happening when it comes to marriage is it's about resolving insecurities.
In reality, people don't want to be alone.
That is something that doesn't go away.
Maybe you've not had the best relationships in the past.
Maybe you've had a horrific breakup of some description and you feel that at least you
are safe in a marriage.
It's a safer harbor for you to be into because it requires more commitment, which is to say
that it would take a lot more to just break up a marriage, right?
You really want to get lawyers and go through all this or you're going to try to fight through
everything.
You're marrying, again, out of a tremendous insecurity.
And then of course there's the no-brainer and it's tax incentives.
It makes more sense to be married because you will get a tax break for being married rather than just going ahead and agreeing to be roommates, which I think is probably the best way to look at Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union's relationship.
Anyways, I thought that the conversation is worth opening up because I do believe that as we talk about the corrosion of family values in society— We also need to note and understand that people aren't even aspiring to family anymore.
Even when they are entering a union, so to speak, that is supposed to represent family, they are bringing in corrosive elements, which displays it as being anything but about God, anything but about faith, and anything but about the core institution of family.
And that's all that I'm going to say about that.
All right, guys, if you like this video, you're going to like the full episode even better.