Melinda French gates: panic attacks while marriage to Bill Gates

At the end of January, Microsoft founder Bill Gates (69) spoke about his divorce from ex-wife Melinda French Gates (60). He sees the separation in the British newspaper “The Times” as “the mistake I regret the most”. In her new book “The Next Day”, which will be released on April 15, the 60-year-old also reviewed and put her life lessons on paper. For this she already ventilated a few pages with the biggest changes in her life, such as the divorce of Bill Gates after 27 years of marriage.

Although there were “difficult phases” with Gates before, the businesswoman wrote in her book, at the end of 2019 she suffered from a beautiful house that collapsed around her. At night after night, she was awakened in panic.

In her memoirs, Melinda describes that her dreams finally turn into a vision of her and Bill and her three children on the edge of a cliff while she “plunged into nothing”. “As dramatic it sounds,” she writes. “At that moment I knew that I had to make a decision – and that I had to meet her alone.”

First of all, French gates tried to suppress their concerns, but it didn’t work. On a vacation in New Mexico in February 2020, the native Texan informed her husband on the last evening that she wanted to live separately from now on – and that she would stay in her house with her youngest daughter Phoebe (22). “It was one of the scary conversations I’ve ever had,” she writes in the book and remembers that Bill was “sad and upgraded”, but also “understanding and respectful”.

At home in Seattle, they continued to work together on their global Gates Foundation and even performed together. But in the summer, Melinda explained to the billionaire that she wanted divorce. She knew that the coming months would be hard. “Bill has the reputation of being one of the toughest negotiators in the world,” she revealed in the book and adds that she was “received panic attacks”. Therapy helped her.

The process of the final separation was “grueling” and surprisingly lengthy, writes the philanthropin, but when the couple agreed, everything went quickly. On May 3, 2021, the Gates submitted a separation declaration. “It requires courage to live a different life,” she says in a summary of “People”.

In the current issue of the magazine, the American also reveals that the Gates-Ex is in a relationship. She was “very, very happy”, but would rather not name the name of her partner. Around five months ago she was seen in New York City with the tech entrepreneur Philip Vaughn (48).

In February 2023, Bill Gates announced that he was lined up with Paula Hurd, the widow of the former Oracle manager Mark Hurd (1957-2021).