Melinda Gates’ toxic college romance left a lasting impact on her body image.
The philanthropist shared in a new interview that she first started feeling self-conscious about her body in high school, and it only escalated after she met her unnamed boyfriend at Duke University.
“[It] was really not a positive relationship for me at all,” she said in Monday’s episode of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show.”
“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.”
Gates admitted she took “too long” to break things off and had already “inculcated too many of those messages” by the time their relationship ended.
“I would say that carried through with me into my 20s and even into my 30s,” she said. “And it wasn’t, probably, until I got to 40 that I got more OK with who I was.”
Now 60, Gates said she looks at her body in a different light.
“I want to be fit ’cause I wanna be able to do all the things I want,” she explained. “I want to be healthy, but I’m not so focused on, you know, am I X weight or Y weight or do I fit in that size pants or another?”
“It’s still there in the back of my head a little bit, but it just isn’t a big call anymore,” she added.
The billionaire noted that when you release yourself from a sense of “perfectionism around weight and body image,” you “have so much more mind space” and peace.
Gates said she worked with “several different nutritionists” and a therapist to better understand her “anxiety” around her body.
While the goal was to improve her own quality of life, she also wanted to teach her daughters, Jennifer, 28, and Phoebe, 22, the importance of self-love.
“I also got to a point where I realized that I was role modeling for my daughters,” she continued. “It was really important that I work on this in myself so I didn’t put any of that on them and so when they had body issues, they could come to me and I could be honest with them.”
In addition to getting help from professionals, Gates said focusing on work also helped heal her relationship with her body.
“Data shows that if women are working and doing meaningful work, they focus less on body image,” she shared, “which, again, how beautiful is it to be able to put that energy and that time into things that you care about doing for the world?”
Shortly after graduating college, Gates met her future husband, Bill Gates, in 1987 at a Microsoft sales meeting in New York City, where she was a product manager and he was the CEO.
The pair, who also share 25-year-old son Rory, got engaged in 1993 and tied the knot one year later. However, they shocked the world in 2021 when they announced their divorce.
In her upcoming memoir, “The Next Day,” Melinda writes that telling Bill she wanted a divorce was one of “the scariest” things she has ever had to do. While the computer engineer, 69, was understandably “sad and upset,” he was also “understanding and respectful” of the decision.
The exes have maintained a “friendly” dynamic and see each other “every now and then” at family events.
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