Melinda French Gates handled her divorce like a boss. She got all of her ducks in order, she hired competent professionals at every step of the way, and she walked away with her pro-woman humanitarian image intact, as well as a reasonable divorce settlement. She also managed to out Bill Gates as a serial sexual harasser, an unfaithful piece of sh-t and someone enamored with Jeffrey Epstein. Melinda has now written a book called The Next Day – it’s part memoir and part advice for women considering divorce. Melinda covers this week’s People Mag and they also have some excerpts from her book. Some highlights:

Why she wrote about her divorce: “It was important for me to be real. Hopefully, it might be helpful to someone else.”

She was having nightmares at the end of 2019: “Bill has publicly acknowledged that he wasn’t always faithful to me,” she writes, going on to mention a “deeply disturbing” article published that fall, when reports continued to grow about Bill’s past meetings with sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein. Melinda writes that, eventually, her dreams transformed into a vision of her and Bill and their three children on the edge of a cliff as she “plummeted” into the void. “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.”

She told Bill she wanted a separation in February 2020: Although Melinda and Bill tried to treat it “like any other vacation,” on the last night, she told him she wanted to start living separately — and that she would stay in their home with their youngest daughter, Phoebe, who was a senior in 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.”

She told him she wanted a divorce that summer: Melinda knew the months ahead were going to be tough. “Bill has a reputation for being one of the toughest negotiators in the world,” she writes, adding that she “started having panic attacks.” The process of finalizing their split was “grueling” and suprisingly lengthy, she writes, but once the agreement was reached, things moved quickly. They took the weekend to tell some people close to their foundation, and the following day, May 3, 2021, they put out their joint statement.

Why she left: As for what, exactly, prompted her decision to leave, her answer has remained the same: that is for Bill, alone, to tell the world. “It takes courage forging a different life,” Melinda tells PEOPLE of her next chapter, including giving away billions through Pivotal Ventures. “When you change paths, you realize, oh, it’s a big opening.”

[From People]

I’m not surprised by Melinda’s descriptions of Bill basically sitting quietly and absorbing how unhappy she was in the marriage. He’s indicated as much in interviews in the past year, that Melinda’s unhappiness surprised him and that he now regrets how he treated her and how he took her for granted. I would hope that he also regrets cheating on her. And he does regret the Epstein sh-t too. Anyway, Melinda reportedly walked out of the marriage with $76 billion, but she also stepped away from their foundation, which I honestly think hurt Bill most of all, that she wouldn’t even help him with their charitable work anymore. I can totally understand why Mel needed to get away for her own peace and health and I doubt she has any regrets.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of People.