BUSINESS INSIDER – Bill Gates spoke about “messing up” during his marriage to Melinda French Gates at Allen & Co.’s billionaire-packed Sun Valley conference last week, sources told the New York Post on Monday.
In an “off the record” Q&A session, CNBC host Becky Quick asked the Microsoft founder about his divorce from French Gates, which the couple announced in May, one attendee said.
“He fessed up to messing up,” the attendee said. “He basically referred to the fact that [the divorce] was his fault.”
“He did seem a bit emotional about it,” the attendee said. “He might have been on the verge of tears.”
A second attendee told the Post that the private Q&A session was “very moving.”
Gates didn’t mention the word “affair” during the discussion, the first attendee said.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft had investigated Gates over 2019 claims that he engaged in a sexual relationship with a staffer …
Divorce is Down, But Will it Last? Four recently divorced people talk about how Covid impacted their marriages.
By Katie Heaney
THE CUT – According to the most recently available statistics, divorce is at a historic low. Anecdotally, however — it’s a miracle anyone stayed married through 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented many couples with an unprecedented challenge. Beyond the often-lethal impact of the disease itself, many couples also experienced job loss (particularly women), immense stress as a result of parenting kids through remote learning, and a correspondingly diminished sex drive.
Any of these factors alone might deepen an already cracked marriage, but it feels as though there’s also something deeper and more philosophical, happening in the divorces taking place this year.
According to Matt Lundquist, clinical director of Tribeca Therapy, the pandemic created an existential maelstrom which, in most cases, exacerbated issues couples might have previously ignored (or tried to ignore). Alongside that enormous stress, many people in long-term marriages have found themselves at a crossroads.
“I think this has been a forced moment of profound reflection,” he says. “People are thinking a lot about what matters to them, what they want in the world, what they tolerated living without that they don’t want to tolerate living without anymore.”
