Melinda Gates opens up about painful divorce from Bill in new book The Next Day

Melinda French Gates has revealed more about her painful divorce from Microsoft founder Bill Gates, saying she suffered panic attacks throughout the split.

Melinda, 60, has described events leading up to the end of her 27-year marriage in a interview with PEOPLE ahead of the release of her new book The Next Day, out on April 15.

The billionaire philanthropist said she hopes sharing her story “might be helpful to someone else”.

READ MORE: Actor’s coy response to romance rumours

Melinda said there had been “difficult periods” in her marriage to Bill, but matters came to a head at the end of 2019.

“Bill has publicly acknowledged that he wasn’t always faithful to me,” she writes in the book, as per PEOPLE.

READ MORE: Meghan’s new product range sells out in less than an hour

She added that a “deeply disturbing” article published about Bill’s past meeting with deceased convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein added to tensions.

She described suffering nightmares about a beautiful house collapsing around her, knowing the meaning was “a bit obvious”.

“As dramatic as it sounds,” she wrote. “I knew, in that moment, that I was going to have to make a decision – and that I was going to have to make it by myself.”

It was during a trip to New Mexico in February 2020 that Melinda told Bill she wanted to separate.

She also wanted to stay in their home with their youngest daughter Phoebe who at the time was completing high school.

“It was one of the scariest conversations I’d have had,” she writes, recalling that Bill was “sad and upset” but also “understanding and respectful.”

They returned home and despite the split continued to work together on projects for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

They even made some joint appearances with nobody the wiser about their marriage falling apart behind closed doors.

Soon she decided she wanted a divorce, describing her conversation with Bill as “tender” at times.

Melinda filed a petition for divorce in King County, Washington, in May 2021, asking a judge to dissolve the marriage based on the couple’s separation contract.

The 10 most expensive celebrity divorces ever

But Melinda was no fool, and she knew what divorce negotiations would be like with her former husband.

“Bill has a reputation for being one of the toughest negotiators in the world,” she wrote in the book, adding that she started experiencing “panic attacks”.

Though no financial details were included in the publicly available documents at the time, the divorce was eventually settled in August, with Bill transferring at least $US6.3 billion (approx. $9.25 billion) worth of stock in various companies to Melinda, according to Forbes.

For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.

Melinda would later resign from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2024 to set up her own venture called Pivotal Ventures, with a focus on helping women and girls around the world.

Melinda spoke about losing her voice “in the decade or so before my marriage fell apart”, citing therapy as making it “possible for me to respond to the betrayals in my marriage without betraying myself in return”.

READ MORE: I gave in to the Hoka hype, and these are my honest thoughts

Melinda said her goal in releasing the book isn’t to “give advice to anybody” although she does hope it will prove helpful to readers.

“You have to stay true to yourself always, right?” Melinda told PEOPLE.

Bill and Melinda Gates are now grandparents, with both expressing their joy at they expanding family on their separate Instagram accounts.

The couple’s daughter Jennifer and and husband Nayel Nassar are parents to Leila, 21 months, and Mia, five months.

In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Melinda said her granddaughter calls her “Nonna”, which is Italian for grandmother.

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.