Melinda French Gates has opened up about her divorce from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, with the philanthropist revealing that the process of moving forward has been difficult.
Melinda, 57, reflected on her divorce from Bill, 66, after 27 years of marriage during a new interview with CBS Mornings’ anchor Gayle King.
In a preview clip from the wide-ranging interview, which will air on 3 March, the billionaire philanthropist revealed that the divorce came after she got to a point in the marriage where she couldn’t “trust what we had”.
Melinda’s admission came in response to a question from King about Bill’s admitted infidelity, to which she said: “I certainly believe in forgiveness, so I thought we had worked through some of that.
“It wasn’t one moment or one specific thing that happened. There just came a point in time where there was enough there that I realised it just wasn’t healthy and I couldn’t trust what we had.”
During the interview, Melinda also claimed that her ex-husband’s friendship with child sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein contributed to their divorce.
“I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffery Epstein. I made that clear to him. I also met Jeffrey Epstein exactly one time. I wanted to see who this man was and I regretted it from the second I stepped in the door,” she told King, adding that meeting Epstein caused her to have “nightmares”.
Melinda did note, however, that the friendship was just one factor in the couple’s decision to end their marriage, and that “any of the questions remaining about what Bill’s relationship with him was... those are for Bill to answer. I made it very clear how I felt about him”.
While opening up the divorce, Melinda also revealed that she had “a lot of tears for many days” and that there were days where she was “literally lying on the floor” and “thinking: ‘How can this be? How can I get up? How am I gonna move forward?’”
According to Melinda, there were also days where she was angry, which she acknowledged is part of the “grieving process”.
“You’re grieving a loss of something you thought you had and thought you had for your lifetime. I mean, this is painful stuff,” she said. “At the end of the day though, I started on this journey of healing and I feel like I’m starting to get to the other side.”
However, as she looks forward, Melinda said that she is excited about what the future holds. “I’m actually really excited about what’s to come and life ahead for me,” she added.
Melinda’s comments come after Bill also addressed their divorce in December while reflecting on the “most unusual and difficult year” of his life.
The Microsoft founder opened up about the separation in a year-in-review blog post published to his GatesNotes blog, where he said that he had spent much of the year online and had gone “stretches of time without any face-to-face social interaction”.
“It’s been a strange and disorienting experience. My personal world has never felt smaller than it did over the last twelve months,” he wrote.
Bill also said that he couldn’t “deny that it’s been a year of great personal sadness for me,” before noting that he was impressed by how “resilient” the couple’s children Jennifer, 25, Rory, 22, and Phoebe, 19, had been.
The former couple finalised their divorce in August.
