Melinda French Gates, a philanthropist and Businesswoman, stepped down from Gates Foundation as co-chair earlier this year

Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda French Gates divorced each other after 27 years of marriage in 2021. In a podcast with Jay Shetty, Melinda French Gates opened up about her marriage to the tech mogul and spoke about what made them go their separate ways. She described it as “the hardest thing” she had to go through. She revealed that there wasn’t “enough trust” in their relationship.

She said, “I had thought I was going to be married for life. I thought I’d be married for 50-plus years. So all of a sudden, you see that even despite very much work and counselling what you had doesn’t actually exist. And that for me, I couldn’t go forward. There wasn’t enough trust any longer. So it wasn’t something I wished for, I certainly didn’t think I would be in my late 50s and be divorced.”

She also spoke about her insecurities and added that she never thought that it was going to be her. She said, “And it was incredibly challenging. I’ve never cried so much in my whole life. And I prayed a lot for grace…for grace for myself for grace for my children for grace for the situation that we would somehow get through this as a family behind the scenes.”

Melinda French Gates, a philanthropist and Businesswoman, stepped down from Gates Foundation as co-chair earlier this year. She added that one of the reasons that scared her about the divorce of the news getting out before the formalities were over.

She noted, “Because I knew that would be a whole other thing and I think sometimes the only way I got through was because I do have faith. And thank God I had close friends who I could talk to on the hardest days and a good therapist but it is not something I would wish on any family. It is a very very difficult thing to go through because you’re pulling apart something that has been tightly woven together and that you believed in.”

In an interview with TIME Magazine, she stated, “It gave us the privacy to do what needed to be done in private. You know, I separated first before I made the full decision about a divorce. And to be able to do that in private while I’m still trying to take care of the kids, while still making certain decisions about how you’re going to disentangle your life – thank God.”