Melinda French Gates has revealed how she dealt with what she called ‘betrayals’ in her marriage to Bill Gates.
27 years after saying ‘I do’ in Lanai, Hawaii, Melinda, 60, and Microsoft founder Bill, 69, announced their marriage was over in 2021.
Three months after releasing a joint statement, claiming they could ‘no longer grow together as a couple’, the duo finalized their divorce.
Despite alleging they’d continue working together at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the latter resigned from the charity three years later.
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The businesswoman is now speaking out about how she knew her relationship with the billionaire was on the rocks in her new memoir, The Next Day: Transitions, Change and Moving Forward.
According to the philanthropist, the book is not designed to ‘give advice to anybody’ but to instead serve as a ‘helpful’ guide for ‘someone else’ going through a similar marriage breakdown.
“It was important for me to be real,” the mother-of-three told People before the autobiography’s release on April 15.
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Between the pages, Melinda gives fans an insight into how she apparently knew she was on a sinking ship.
One of these reveals comes in the form of a recurring nightmare she suffered in late 2019.
The dream saw a beautiful house collapsing around her. This later manifested into a vision where Melinda ‘plummeted’ into a void as her ex-husband and three children watched on.
“As dramatic as it sounds,” she wrote. “I knew, in that moment, that I was going to have to make a decision - and that I was going to have to make it by myself.”
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Initially ignoring her concerns, Melinda decided to invite Bill on a solo trip she was taking to New Mexico in February 2020.
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The vacation was initially treated like ‘any other trip’. However, it was then that Melinda revealed she wanted to start living her own life.
“It was one of the scariest conversations I’d have had,” she reflected in The Next Day.
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The author claims that Bill was ‘sad and upset’ that his wife wanted a split, yet ‘understanding and respectful’ of her decision.
Melinda, who has since called the divorce process ‘gruelling’, recalled how she began having panic attacks, remarking how her ex has a reputation for ‘being one of the toughest negotiators in the world’.
She has also credited therapy for making it possible to ‘respond to the betrayals in [her] marriage without betraying myself in return’.
“Bill has publicly acknowledged that he wasn’t always faithful to me,” she wrote.
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When asked about how she’d learned from the ‘betrayal’, she issued a nine-word statement to People.
“You have to stay true to yourself always, right?” she claimed.
Discussing why she finally decided to leave her ex-spouse, Melinda revealed: “It takes courage forging a different life. When you change paths, you realize, oh, it’s a big opening.”
After resigning as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, now named the Gates Foundation, the Texan continues to work with her own charity, Pivotal Venture.
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The Next Day: Transitions, Change and Moving Forward by Melinda French Gates is available to pre-order now.
UNILAD has contacted representatives for Bill Gates for comment.
Topics: Celebrity, Bill Gates, Microsoft, Sex and Relationships, Business, Charity
Ella Scott