Melinda French Gates has spoken about the end of her 27-year marriage to Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, calling their split "unbelievably painful" in a recent interview.
The 58-year-old sat down with Fortune magazine to discuss her plans to invest $1 billion for women in the US, including for issues such as reproductive rights and caregiving.
French Gates' divorce from her ex-husband was finalized in August 2021, three months after first filing for divorce.
"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," the Texan native stated.
"It's unbelievably painful, in innumerable ways, but I had the privacy to get through it," she added.
The former spouses share three children together - Jennifer, 26, Rory, 23, and Phoebe, 20. French Gates maintained that her children took priority during the divorce proceedings, saying: "My main concern, of course, was trying to protect my kids through it. And we got to the other side."
Earlier this year, the mom-of-three had spoken to CBS Mornings' Gayle King about her separation from the American business magnate, admitting: "On the day I got married, I never thought I would end up being divorced. Unfortunately, I felt like I needed to take a different path."
The philanthropist was asked about the New York Times report that exposed Gates' affair with a Microsoft staffer 20 years ago - but which Gates admitted to in 2021. French Gates answered that she believe in "forgiveness" and had thought that they had "worked through some of that."
"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," she confessed.
During that interview, French Gates stated that her and her ex-husband were on "friendly" terms and have a working relationship (the pair co-founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000) but that there was "still healing that needs to happen."
French Gates detailed the raw emotions she had felt after the split, saying: "I had a lot of tears for many days — days where I'm literally laying on the floor, the carpet this close to me, thinking, 'How can this be? How can I get up? How am I gonna move forward?' Days where I certainly was angry; this is painful stuff."
The bestselling author then declared that she didn't regret her decision to end the marriage, adding: "I gave every single piece of myself to this marriage. I was committed to this marriage on the day we got engaged until the day we got out of it.
"Society used to put things on women, like it was our fault - no. I did nothing wrong, so I hold my head high."
