Gabrielle Union is opening up about her first marriage to football player Chris Howard.
via JJ:
During her appearance on Dax Shepard‘s Armchair Expert podcast, the 50-year-old actress revealed that there was infidelity on both sides, and why therapy just did not work for them at the time.
Gabrielle was bold enough to say that her and Chris‘ marriage was “dysfunctional from day one.”
“In our first marriage, neither one of us felt like the marriage should get in the way of our dating,” she shared. “A part of it was like keeping up with his activities, like, ‘Oh, that’s what you’re doing? You’re going to feel this one,’ and I just felt entitled to it as well. I was paying all the bills, I was working my a** off, and I felt like that’s what comes, the spoils of riches.”
Gabrielle added that she grew up thinking that “whoever has the most gets to do whatever the hell they want”, before saying that the relationship was “just dysfunctional from day one.”
She also said that they tried couples counseling, but it was no help for their relationship that shouldn’t have “made it out of the dating phase.”
“[The therapist said] we should probably look for a way to amicably dissolve… because you have not one thing in common, no morals, no values,” Gabrielle shared. “The only thing you have in common is other people, so why don’t you just go be with other people?”
Looking back, Gabrielle admits that she “absolutely needed something from them that I was not providing for myself, and neither was my marriage, but I think I provided something for them too. Guys can be just as big as groupies – if not more – than women, so it was a trade off… We were both crappy people going through s— and clearly not going to enough therapy.”
Gabrielle and Chris, who was a running back for the Jacksonville Jaguars, met in 1999 before tying the knot in 2001. The couple went their separate ways in 2005 after four years of marriage.
She is currently married to former basketball star Dwyane Wade.
We forgot Gabrielle Union was even married before.
