Bill Gates and Melinda Gates End Their Marriage After 27 Years 257
The two said in a joint statement that they will continue to work together at the foundation, through which they spend about $5 billion a year around the world.
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"I'm a mean green mother from outer space" -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors
Microsoft Bob (Score:5, Funny)
I guess Bill finally figured who was the person responsible for Microsoft Bob
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Re:Microsoft Bob (Score:5, Interesting)
When I worked at Microsoft as a contractor I mentioned Bob once and only once... I was told it was one of the few things we were better off never mentioning on campus. We were also instructed not to speak to Gates if we passed him in the halls unless spoken to, though a polite nod or morning/afternoon was "acceptable".
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Fuck that noise. You are an employee not a peon or slave. Did you advert your eyes as well?
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Was that pussy worth it? Was it worth THAT much money in the end?
Okay Eddie [youtube.com].
Re:Microsoft Bob (Score:4, Interesting)
Eddie Murphy is in a class by himself, but to be fair, he was talking about these things in a era when it wasn't frowned upon to the degree it is today.
Young Bill (36) was already a billionaire when he married young Melinda (29)... she worked for Microsoft. There is a prenup. Nonetheless, when you are splitting that many billions, both sides are likely to come out pretty favorably, compared to our retirement lifestyles.
The real question is why? They could've easily remained married for show at their age, and barely dealt with each other... no, there must be a significant other for one or both of them that's tired of meeting in secret.
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The real question is why? They could've easily remained married for show at their age, and barely dealt with each other... no, there must be a significant other for one or both of them that's tired of meeting in secret.
That's a very odd way of looking at it. Why would they remain married for show? "They don't want to live together anymore" seems like it is enough justification for splitting up. What is the upside of remaining married if they both want to split up, and don't have any issues dividing up the money?
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Hmm... that seems both arbitrary and plausibly resembling a personal experience.
Forever's an exaggeration, for certain, but for a surprising number of marriages, until death do us part is an honest vow.
Plus. Why fucking go 27 years to end in failure? You had no clue at year thirteen it might not end before death? Stayed in a toxic one for the children? Pretty sure they're not the better for it.
Re:Microsoft Bob (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is why?
Here is how Bill described their relationship [cnbc.com]:
“In the case of Melinda, it is a truly equal partner,” Bill Gates said in the 2019 Netflix documentary “Inside Bill’s Brain.” “She’s a lot like me in that she is optimistic and she is interested in science. She is better with people than I am. She’s a tiny bit less hardcore about knowing, you know, immunology, than I am.”
"She's a tiny bit less hardcore about knowing" is a very passive aggressive way to describe your mate, and conversations like this were almost certainly going on inside the marriage [imgur.com]. After a few years, Melinda got tired of trying to compete with him intellectually.
Also, he recently posted this [instagram.com], saying "I couldn’t ask for a better partner on this journey. Happy Valentine’s Day" which isn't the kind of thing you say when you're planning to break up, it's the kind of thing you say when you want your lover to stay with you.
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Whether consciously or unconsciously, I strongly suspect the Bezos' experience had an effect on their marriage as well. Melinda saw MacKenzie Scott (Bezos) make off with half of Jeff's fortune, instantly become one of the wealthiest women in the world, and have breathless media coverage that practically treats her as a feminist icon. It's hard to resist that kind of temptation knowing you could have the same thing.
That and the past year+ Bill's public behavior has changed, becoming far more political and at
Re:Microsoft Bob (Score:4)
there's scale here - 1/2 of more than you could ever enjoy becomes a question of how much do you need?
i mean seriously - if you have 100 million - then loosing 50 million doesn't hurt as much as having 100k and loosing 50k....
If your unhappy your unhappy - and having more excess money isn't a reason to remain unhappy.
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For Giving Pledge signatories - and they both are - it really doesn't make much of a difference. It's just a question of who's in charge of making the decisions for their share of the money.
They still do spend quite a lot of money on themselves - but compared to the total....
Re:Microsoft Bob (Score:4, Interesting)
One truth remains inarguable: marriage is temporary.
Earlier generations had a notion that a marriage was a lifelong relationship. "Till death do we part." Well, those days are gone. Young people who still think that getting married means gaining a partner for life, have a rude awakening headed their way.
When one is "in love" it is so easy to expect that the relationship will never end. The hormones associated with love have that effect on the brain. But it wears off. Nobody wants it to, and the ill-educated insist it won't. But it does. And once the euphoria of love is gone all that is left are the inconveniences of biology and the need to share your autonomy with someone else. ONLY then do you learn whether or not your partnership has serious long-term potential.
Some marriages last until death. But the "strength" of your love at the beginning is no indicator of the likelihood of this. When considering marriage, the only rational approach is to assume it is temporary, and plan for that. Especially, financially. This may not be romantic, but "romance" is exactly what has lead nearly half of young couples to painful divorces.
Re:Microsoft Bob (Score:5, Insightful)
Young people need to stop thinking of marriage as a 'feelings based commitment'
I was determined NOT to be 'in love' when I married. The relationship had to be based on shared values knowing the 'love' part would grow over time.
20 years of marriage later and things are are going great guns and we really enjoy life together.
Re:Microsoft Bob (Score:5, Insightful)
Earlier generations had a notion that when something breaks, they fix it. Rather than throwing it away and getting a new one.
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Earlier generations had a notion that when something breaks, they fix it. Rather than throwing it away and getting a new one.
Earlier generations had to deal with massive social stigma if they didn't stay together and make the best of a shit situation, which meant that a lot of abusive relationships were enshrined as correct.
Sometimes the best answer is to start over. Not doing that only leads to piling mistakes upon mistakes in that case.
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and the same applies to the couple with 10$ split in 5, or maybe a negative net worth and the fear of taking on the dept themselves
You completely missed my point - that there is a "point" in which trying to stay together for the sake of not loosing money to the other is just someone's greed - and the impact is never good.
Reality is if your unhappy - get out - life is not a game, there are no play throughs - do what makes you happy and enjoy your life.
Also counting blessings is adding a frugal view to someth
Re:Microsoft Bob (Score:5, Funny)
there's scale here - 1/2 of more than you could ever enjoy becomes a question of how much do you need?
i mean seriously - if you have 100 million - then loosing 50 million doesn't hurt as much as having 100k and loosing 50k....
If your unhappy your unhappy - and having more excess money isn't a reason to remain unhappy.
It's even worse when you don't know the difference between lose and loose.
Your right.
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I have a friend who was getting divorced after the company he founded had IPOed. I asked how he felt about her getting half (they and the company were in California, a community property state). He replied, "Half of $800M is still a lot of money." AFAIK he's still happily married to the 2nd wife, 20 years later, and the first wife is happy, too.
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Well, I"m wondering what Bill gonna be thinking with Melinda getting HALF....
Was that pussy worth it? Was it worth THAT much money in the end?
Remember guys....in some form or fashion, you always pay for it.
I remember when he got married someone asked him about this.
He said something like "Melinda is smart enough to know she isn't getting my money".
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Does anybody think Bill didn't have the best prenup anybody in the world could buy?
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Imagine yourself on your death bed. You look back on your life and you realize you could have had a lot more of one or the other if you'd only more effort in that directions. Which would it be for you?
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If you really think in terms of women as "pussy" to be "paid for", you can just opt to pay for prostitutes. A lot of people posting here had mothers and fathers who had healthy relationships, and built up a family and a household together.
In my guise as an AC, I welcome your derogatory comments about my parents. Have at it.
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Maybe Microsoft Bob could have been upgraded to provide partner-friendly interface advice for happy marriages? Yeah, nothing could help Windows, but there are proof-of-concept examples of successful marriages.
Enough with the terrible humor, eh? I've already proven that I can't write Funny. I'm always thinking on the unfunny side. In this case, three primary reactions:
(1) People should get married young because there is a special value in the long-term relationships, even if they are rare.
(2) Critics are goi
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Re: Microsoft Bob (Score:3, Funny)
Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has been married/divorced/married-
I hope they can work together and keep things good between them, and for the kids. Divorce sucks. Being in a marriage you hate is even worse.
God speed Bill and Melinda!
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen to that. I wish them happier times going forward.
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and for the kids.
The kids are grown up. They'll be fine.
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure how snarky this comment was intended to be, but my parents divorced when I was in my mid 20s, and it's still unpleasant. Surely in a different way than if you're a little kid, but still not good. Seeing your parents' 30+ year marriage dissolve at a time in life when you are beginning to consider marriage yourself can have an impact.
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Of course this mostly being a personal matter, but having a possible impact on a large organization, I figure we are only going to get enough information on the state of their relationship and not any of the details on why.
Which probably is a good thing, we don't need to know all the details of every public figure.
But Divorces happen for a lot of different reasons, and a lot of the time it isn't for any juicy gossipy reasons, and they just grew apart.
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It's not really a big thing. It's just business, no doubt about taxes
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Bill promised everything to charity. Now they are splitting. What happens when Melinda asks for half?
Has Bill managed to put everything into untouchable trusts?
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I hope they can work together and keep things good between them, and for the kids. Divorce sucks. Being in a marriage you hate is even worse.
There certainly hasn't been enough information disclosed about the state of their marriage, but who knows whether or not they hate their marriage. They could simply see their lives going in different directions and don't have the time to devote to their relationship anymore. They both have all the money anyone could ever need and have nearly unlimited options on how to spend their time. If they simply want to spend that time differently, their marriage may just not be a priority anymore.
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That's a shame. Bill is 65 and Melinda is 56. A lot of divorces are driven by money or sex, but in this case, maybe they just don't want to live together any more.
I hope their foundation continues its good work unaffected.
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel like there is some almost double entendre here that just does not quite work, but would be really funny if properly tuned.
That said Melinda was well paid executive who would be retired and living comfortably by now all on her own. Granted not living the wealth beyond reason life style being on Bill's arm has afforded her but its not like she'd be mentally debating if she can really afford to be paying someone else to cut the lawn, with our without Bill's fortune.
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Re:Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
In a choice between happiness in your marriage, and dividing your 100 billion dollar fortune in half...
I would choose the happy marriage.
Because money can't buy you love. And once you have a few billion dollars, I can't imagine more money is really going to do much for you at all.
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Because money can't buy you love.
It's worse than that - why are most of the stars married to other stars? Why are so many super-rich married to people they knew before they became rich?
Because once you're that rich, you never know if that nice girl loves you - or your money. For a nice share from a regular person's wealth, you won't play pretend for a few years, including fucking him and all that. For a couple billions, you and your whole family never having to work again, for the next few generations - yeah, lots of people would go to gre
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
What's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Gates is like 60something isn't he? Why not just stay married instead of making a big deal out of it? Or do that polyamory/non-monogamous thing, or whatever. To get divorced in your 60s, I feel like there is a fairly high probability that you must really not like each other .. not grow separately BS .. you are 60something, what growth crap do you need?
maybe melinda (Score:2)
Maybe Melinda had MacKenzie-envy.
Re:maybe melinda (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe Melinda had MacKenzie-envy.
MacKenzie helped Jeff build Amazon up from nothing.
Melinda married Bill when he was already a billionaire.
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Sure, that's one way of looking at it. Another way is that she married him at the height of his power, and he really had nowhere to go but down. At some point adding to personal wealth is just numbers on a spreadsheet changing; like Andrew Carnegie Gates decided to leave his mark in other ways, and Melinda was part of that transition.
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MacKenzie helped Jeff build Amazon up from nothing.
I bet amazon would be 10 times the company if JB was never married.
Why?
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That was my first thought as well. Probably one of the two has had enough of whatever. In the end I do not really care. Dissent on the side of evil is always a good thing.
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Why not? Particularly if both parties are willing to an amicable split - they just pay the lawyers enough to get everything together and handle the details. Its not as if either one of them is going to walk away from the end result as a non-billionaire, let alone poor, so it doesn't make any sense to stay together.
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Yeah, an amicable split isn’t even that expensive. I am surprised they did it, but I can appreciate that wanting to go in different directions is sometimes easier without having responsibility to the other person. Guessing they had been separated for a while, but just a guess.
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Well Bill has said some odd things about inheritence before so maybe he really does not care. However there is a school of thinking that says you don't split the estate if you really want to build generational wealth.
Concentrated capital tends to grow more than dispersed capital. Its why it used to be very common the oldest son inherited, and the others just go an allowance.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Keeping together that level of wealth takes a combination of intelligence, hard work, savvy, knowledge, willpower, focus, and sheer dumb luck. All of those ingredients are required. And the likelihood of 3 sequential generations having that is very, VERY unlikely. It's especially hard since the kids grow up in the lap of luxury. It's hard to fully develop the necessary qualities in an environment where you never have to pump a bicycle tire, buy groceries, balance your bank account or drive your own car. Even harder for the third generation. The process is essentially self-terminating.
Families can sustain million-level fortunes for quite a while. Those are a lot more forgiving. But at the billionaire level, the wealth is tied up in businesses, where one poorly-performing CEO-owner-son will get the company stomped by competitors.
Re: What's the point? (Score:3)
Ultra wealth only lasts 3 generations? Have you ever heard of the Rothschilds? Not to mention the Fugger, who have been at it for the last 500 years.
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Gates is like 60something isn't he? Why not just stay married instead of making a big deal out of it?
So you think it's a good idea that instead of acting on what ever personal reasons that led to a divorce being a good idea, that they simply bury those feelings and pretend that nothing has happened? Because that leads to suppressed resentment, which turns into barely hidden hatred and ends up with someone changing the WiFi password and the other person retaliating by accidentally wiping the first persons hard drive and installing Linux.
Re: What's the point? (Score:3)
Marriage is just a civil status. They could live in separate houses, grow in different directions, and stay married for that matter. Until one of them wants to marry someone else. This is probably not about Bill squeezing the toothpaste from the wrong side or leaving the toilet seat up, or having a bad snore.
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Why stay married if they are not going to be a couple anymore? They can remain friends if that's their thing. Otherwise at least one of them must have though that he or she prefer to age/get old (to find a better word than "grow", which was an euphemism and nothing more) alone, or perhaps yes find someone else.
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're in an unhappy marriage, no matter how old you are, it's better to get out of it. The "grow separately" is just for public consumption. We don't know (and, I hope, never will know) what was actually going on.
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Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You think it took 27 years for their first "unhappy minute" to happen?
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I know, right? Splitting after only 27 years means they really didn't give it a fair shake. :eyeroll:
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You're thinking like a poor. If you have $100,000 between you, the bite lawyers, etc. will take out of your ass is significant. If you're north of $100,000,000,000 , you don't waste time doing something you're not happy doing. You pay your lawyers and like 700 pages signed later, you're done.
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> Why not just stay married
Ghislane Maxwell
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Well, at 56 she's probably done with menopause and can't be tolerated to give a shit anymore. She's certainly not the same person she was when they married. He isn't either of course, but go talk to divorced men who's wives went from menopause only to turn around and divorce them. Happens all the time.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also the fact that their youngest daughter just turned 18, so there are no longer children to use as an excuse to stay together.
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's also the fact that their youngest daughter just turned 18, so there are no longer children to use as an excuse to stay together.
Probably stayed together "for the sake of the children." Who knows how long they've been unable to stand each other?
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Mod Parent Up!
This is a very interesting point; especially since you can't "prenup" your way out of Child Support, like you can for Spousal Support...
In what kind of a world do you think a pair who spend billions of dollars on charity even remotely give a shit about getting out of child support. What's wrong with you.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Funny)
The microchip was the deal-breaker.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Funny)
Tough for the court will be the custody of Clippy (Score:3)
Now the court will need to decide who gets the control over the 5G-powered mind-control chips :-)
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Announced it on Twitter? (Score:2)
who? (Score:2, Funny)
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It's actually got a bunch of cool games built in. Trivia, Reversi, checkers, and more. You can even send drawings.
Deosn't seem their style (Score:2)
After years pretending otherwise (Score:2)
Can someone break it down for me? (Score:2)
TFS was TL;DR.
Stayed together for the children (Score:5, Interesting)
Divorcing with the stars. (Score:2)
27 years. That's longer than most Hollywood marriages.
Still a pretty good run (Score:5, Funny)
Way more uptime than I would have expected in that application for a guy from Microsoft.
Re:Still a pretty good run (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, the irony. (Score:5, Funny)
From their Twitter announcement:
We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.
Define irony. A guy who started a software company that has no respect for space and privacy is asking for space and privacy. I hope his divorce papers include terms that require him to accept the current Windows license agreement and that the terms of the divorce progressively get worse at regularly scheduled intervals, preferably the second or fourth Tuesday of every month.
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So they will always jointly be the parents of their kids, and with community property and an intent to give money away they'll always be partners in the Foundation.
I wonder, then, what getting divorced will let one or both of them do that they could not have done anyway. Maybe one or both just can't stand being around the other one anymore, or has their eyes on a new partner.
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So his marriage was like Windows: the initial install was great, but got progressively worse as time went on.
Melinda Gates will get half? (Score:2)
The Foundation (Score:5, Funny)
Now renamed: Bill Or Melinda Foundation
Re:The Foundation (Score:4, Funny)
By now.... (Score:2)
... he should be used to things he makes crashing.
(Jokes aside, as much as I may have fantasized so many times about him being devoured alive by his buggy code, a divorce is never a walk in the park so he has my best wishes moving forward)
Please respect their privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Bill asked that we all respect their privacy. That's why he had a press conference to announce the divorce, I guess.
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Surely 3.11, not 3.0.
Re:Better luck with Wife 3.0 (Score:5, Funny)
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No, that would require a workgroup.
Polyamory is a thing, I'm told.
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When you have wealth, money is almost irrelevant as a personal motivator. All that is interesting is whatever you decide to use some of it for. Other people look after making money for you out of the money you already have. Being concerned about money is a choice even for relatively poor people. Greed makes anyone unhappy no matter how much money they have.
Re: What could possibly be wrong (Score:2)
Considering that they both give it all to the foundation, I doubt very much that have the faintest clue. They don't value money, they value what it can do for their causes.as far as I know they were colleagues, and money may have had almist nothing to do with it. If money was the purpose, she would have gotten out years ago, while she still had her youth. I suspect you are just an average moron. And if money is what broke the marriage, it was a pretty useless tool at that. Literally more money anyone ever h
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