Melinda French Gates Shares Why She ‘Had to’ End Relationship with Bill Gates, Says New Romance Is ‘Pretty Great’

• Melinda French Gates reflected on the end of her marriage to Bill Gates during a Monday appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
• She explained that she “had to” leave the relationship due to a lack of honesty, which impacted the ability to “have intimacy”
• The couple announced in May 2021 that they were divorcing after 27 years together — though their separation had secretly played out for a year

Melinda French Gates is reflecting on how she knew she “had to” end her marriage to Bill Gates.

The 60-year-old philanthropist and the 69-year-old billionaire Microsoft co-founder announced in May 2021 that they were divorcing after 27 years together.

During a Monday, April 14, appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote her memoir, The Next Day, Melinda spoke about the separation and what she learned from it.

She also provided a brief update about her current love life, echoing what she told PEOPLE in a recent cover story.

Melinda told Colbert that to have a “trusted relationship, which is what I wanted in marriage,” that means that “both partners have to be honest with one another.”

“And if you can’t, you can’t have intimacy and you can’t have trust,” Melinda said of her former marriage. “So in the end, I had to go.”

In The Next Day, Melinda writes about “respond[ing] to the betrayals in my marriage without betraying myself in return,” something she credits to years of therapy.

When asked in her PEOPLE interview about what she faced, she said, “You have to stay true to yourself always, right?” It was one of the lessons she wanted to share with her new book.

“It was important for me to be real,” she said then, adding, “Hopefully it might be helpful to someone else.”

On her talk show appearance on Monday, Melinda also confirmed that she was currently in a “pretty great” relationship.

While she did not provide specifics on the show, she previously told PEOPLE she was dating and was “very, very happy.” She was photographed last fall holding hands with businessman Philip Vaughn.

As she promotes her new book — and talks about her legacy of philanthropy, giving away billions to support women and girls — Melinda is getting candid about what led up to her divorce as well as other turning points in her life.

During a Monday appearance on Good Morning America, she said that leaving Bill was a “painful” experience to live through.

“I ended up learning some lessons and there was some growth in there, too,” she said.

In The Next Day, Melinda recalls having nightmares about her family, including one about her falling down a cliff, before deciding to end her marriage.

“As dramatic as it sounds,” she writes. “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.”

Once she was single, Melinda embarked on a “freedom tour” with friends, traveling to Mexico, she told PEOPLE in her cover story.

“Transitions can be scary, exhilarating or both,” she said. “But anything’s possible. And when you get to the other side, you’re going to be okay”

Bill has also spoken publicly about the end of their marriage, telling the U.K. Times in January that the divorce was “tough” and “the mistake I most regret.”

While on the Today show the following month, he clarified that it wasn’t the marriage itself that he regretted.

“Despite the fact that the divorce wasn’t great, having those three kids, the work we were able to do together — even if I knew that it [wouldn’t] last forever, I would still do it again,” he said then.