Melinda French Gates on divorce with Bill Gates: 'There wasn't enough trust any longer'

Billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates had parted ways with the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in May 2021 after 27 years of marriage.

Melinda French Gates has recently opened up about her divorce from billionaire Bill Gates, calling it the "hardest thing" she has been through. The American philanthropist had parted ways with the Microsoft co-founder in May 2021. They had been married for 27 years.

During a podcast with Jay Shetty, she said, "That was the hardest thing I had ever been through in my life."

French Gates also said that she decided to separate from Bill Gates as there wasn't "enough trust" in the relationship. "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 counseling 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 said in the podcast.

The philanthropist added that she didn't have a problem getting divorced, but "I didn't know that was going to be me". "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, who exited the Gates Foundation earlier this year with $12.5 billion for her own charity work, said that another aspect of the separation that scared her was the news getting public before the formalities were over. "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," she said.

In an interview with Time Magazine last month, French Gates said that going through the divorce during the pandemic helped the couple get the privacy they needed.

“It gave us the privacy to do what needed to be done in private," she said. “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."