TOXIC EX

Melinda Gates Details the Relationship That Triggered Her Body Image Issues

The billionaire philanthropist shared how a toxic college relationship left her with decades-long insecurities about her body.

Melinda Gates revealed that a toxic boyfriend she met while studying at Duke University left her with lasting body image issues. “He cared a lot about how I looked and said a lot of things about it to me, and that really is not OK. It really is not,” the billionaire philanthropist said in Monday’s episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show. “I eventually got out of that relationship, but it took me too long, and I inculcated too many of those messages.” Gates, who is now 60, said she carried those insecurities into her 20s and 30s, taking decades to overcome them. “It wasn’t, probably, until I got to 40 that I got more okay with who I was.” Now, she said, after working with nutritionists and through therapy, staying fit is about her health, rather than hyper-focusing on her weight: “It’s still there in the back of my head a little bit, but it just isn’t a big call anymore.” Gates, who is active in women’s advocacy, cited the daughters she shares with Bill Gates as a key motivation for working to improve her body image issues. Shortly after graduating from Duke in 1986, she began working at Microsoft, where she met Bill, the company’s co-founder and CEO at the time. The pair married in 1993 and had three children but announced their divorce in 2021.