Melinda reveals that secret divorce from Bill Gates happened amid nightmares and panic attacks

Philanthropist revealed how she asked the father of her three children for a divorce

Melinda French Gates, who is about to release her autobiography, opened up about the divorce process from Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder, with whom she lived for 27 years. The separation was announced in May 2021, but the entire process had been happening secretly for over a year. “It was important for me to be real,” Melinda says in a cover interview with People magazine. Melinda and Bill Gates got married in 1994 and had three children: Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe Adele Gates.

Melinda was asked how she responded to “infidelities” in her marriage. At that moment, the philanthropist pauses for a long time. “You have to always be true to yourself, right?” This is one of the experiences she shares in the book *The Next Day*, a mix of memoir and insights, which will be released on April 15.

The 60-year-old philanthropist also states that she is “not trying to give anyone advice.” However, she hopes her experience “might be helpful to someone else.”

Even though she had lived through “difficult times” with Bill before, Melinda reveals in her biography that at the end of 2019, she was having nightmares about a beautiful house collapsing around her. She would wake up in a panic every night.

“Bill publicly acknowledged that he hadn’t always been faithful to me,” she writes in the book, referencing a “deeply disturbing” article published that fall, as reports continued to grow about Bill’s past encounters with sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.

At the time, the businessman called those meetings “a mistake” and recently said it was “foolish to spend time” with Epstein, claiming he was seeking philanthropic support.

Melinda also writes that eventually, her dreams turned into a vision of herself, Bill, and their three children standing on the edge of a cliff as she “fell” into the void. “As dramatic as it sounds, I knew at that moment that I had to make a decision – and that I had to make it alone.”

She then invited her husband on a trip to New Mexico in February 2020. When they arrived at the rental home, she realized the property was available because the couple who lived there had separated. It was there, on the last night, that she found the courage to say she wanted to start living without Bill. Melinda said she would stay in their home with their youngest daughter, Phoebe, who was in her senior year of high school.

“It was one of the scariest conversations I’ve ever had,” she writes, recalling that Bill was “sad and upset,” but also “understanding and respectful.”

Back in Seattle, the two continued working together at their global Gates Foundation. The former couple continued making public appearances together. Almost no one knew about the separation.

Until one day, Melinda decided it was time to leave. It was summer when she told Bill she wanted a divorce. “Bill has a reputation for being one of the toughest negotiators in the world,” she writes, adding that she “began having panic attacks.”

She mentions other panic attacks in her book: in 2006, when she thought her son Rory, now 25, was about to fall from the edge of a hot air balloon; and again, around New Year’s 2014, while celebrating her 20th wedding anniversary with Bill in Mexico.

Melinda says her inner voice had disappeared “in the decade or more before my marriage fell apart,” and that therapy “made it possible for me to respond to the betrayals in my marriage without betraying myself in return.”

The separation process was long, she writes, but once the agreement was finalized, things moved quickly. On May 3, 2021, they released a joint statement announcing their separation to the world.

The real reason she filed for divorce? Her response remains the same: it’s up to Bill, alone, to tell the world. “It takes courage to forge a different life,” Melinda tells *People* about her next chapter, which includes donating billions through *Pivotal Ventures*. “When you change paths, you realize – it’s a great opening.”

Source and images: UsaToday / Disclosure. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.