Melinda Gates Opens Up About Divorce From Business Magnate Bill Gates – “It’s Unbelievably Painful”

Bill and Melinda Gates shocked the world last year when they announced their divorce after 27 years of marriage. Melinda is now opening up about how “unbelievably painful” this split from her husband really was for her.

Melinda Reveals All About Divorce

As per a report from the Daily Mail, Melinda, 58, said,“I had some reasons I just couldn’t stay in that marriage anymore. But the odd thing about COVID is that it gave me the privacy to do what I needed to do.”

“It’s unbelievably painful, in innumerable ways, but I had the privacy to get through it,” she told Fortune Magazine. 

Bill, the 66 year-old billionaire founder of Microsoft, and Melinda got married in 1994 and went on to have three children together: Jennifer, 25, Rory, 23, and Phoebe, 19. Melinda said that their kids were always her “main concern” during the divorce proceedings.

The former couple launched the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation back in 2000, and they made the difficult decision to continue running it together after their separation. Melinda explained that this ultimately helped her to better process her emotions.

“I kept working with the person I was moving away from, and I needed to show up and be my best self every single day,” she said. “So even though I might be crying at 9 a.m. and then have to be on a video conference at 10 a.m. with the person I’m leaving, I have to show up and be my best.

“I learned as a leader that I could do it,” she continued. “It reminded me that the foundation calls me to be my best.” 

Related: Bill Gates’ Ex-Wife Melinda Slams Him For Meeting With Jeffrey Epstein – ‘He Was Evil Personified’

Melinda then said that working with people who were going through their own hard times during the global pandemic helped her to continue doing her best work, even amidst her divorce. 

“We work with unbelievable partners around the world who were also struggling during COVID,” she said. “I was on a video call with a woman who had lost her father, and a week later she’s on a call with me, right?”

With her divorce now behind her, Melinda is thankful that she and Bill have “gotten to the other side.”

Find out more about this in the video below.

Melinda’s Previous Comments On Divorce

This comes after Melinda told Good Morning America back in August that her and Bill’s “philanthropy” helped them get through their split because it “held them together, allowed more grace” and “smoothed” things over during some of the most “difficult” aspects of the breakup.

“Our philanthropy actually called us to be our best selves, even during the most difficult times behind-the-scenes,” she said at the time. “We were working through the specifics of the divorce and there was sadness, but we were still both showing up for the foundation.”

“I think that held us together and allowed more grace during that period, and since then, it’s kind of smoothed things over on the back end,” she continued. 

Throughout their marriage Bill had been rumored to be unfaithful, but Melinda said that this had nothing to do with the reason behind their split.

“I certainly believe in forgiveness, so I thought we had worked through some of that,” she told CBS Mornings in March. “I gave every single piece of myself to this marriage. I was committed from the day we got engaged to the day I got out of it.”

“It wasn’t one moment or one specific thing that happened,” she declared. “There just came a point in time where there was enough there that I realized it just wasn’t healthy, and I couldn’t trust what we had.”

Related: Bill Gates Throws Massive Wedding For Daughter

Bill Addresses Divorce

Bill addressed the divorce in an interview with Today back in May.

“The divorce is definitely a sad thing. It was a tough year. I feel good that all of us are moving forward now,” he said at the time.

The business magnate added, “Melinda and I are continuing to work together. It was sad and tragic, but now we’re moving together.”

Watch him talk more about this in the video below.

It’s never fun to see a couple get divorced, particularly when they were married as long as the Gates were. We can only hope that they can each find happiness now that they have put this difficult experience behind them.