Bill Gates Named His Affair Partners to The Times. What. The. Hell. Bill.

So remember when I told you Bill Gates was both a shitty AND stupid cheater? Pull up a chair. Billy boy just proved me right all over again.

The Times is reporting that Bill Gates — yes, that Bill Gates, the one who was definitely just going to Africa with Jeffrey Epstein to fight malaria, don't wait up — has named THREE women he had affairs with. Named them. To a newspaper. Not in a courtroom under oath, not in therapy to someone with a confidentiality agreement, but to The bloody Times.

I genuinely cannot.

For those keeping track, this is the same man who asked women from work out to dinner like some harmless uncle at the company picnic, got busted having an affair with a Microsoft engineer, lost Melinda's no-prenup heart in the process, and apparently learned absolutely nothing.

Nothing.

Three Women, Bill. THREE.

I need to stop here for a second because this is the part that should make your jaw drop. This man has three women out there — women he cared enough about to sleep with — and his big idea is to name them in the British press.

Think about these women for two seconds. Maybe they have husbands. Kids. Careers that don't include being internationally outed as Bill Gates' side piece. Maybe one of them is quietly living her life in Bellevue, coaching little league and attending church potlucks, and she's about to open The Times on her phone and see her name attached to the world's most awkward Kermit the Frog voice situation.

That's not confession. That's a wrecking ball.

What Does Naming Them Even Accomplish?

Here's the thing about men like Bill. They reach a certain age, a certain net worth, a certain level of public therapy-speak, and suddenly they think radical honesty is a personality. It isn't. It's just a different kind of selfish.

Naming your affair partners doesn't make you brave. It makes you the guy who left the crime scene covered in fingerprints and then handed the detective your driver's license.

You want to unburden yourself, Bill? That's what a therapist is for. Or a priest. Or your extremely well-compensated PR team. Not a newspaper read by thirty million people and their mothers.

And did these women consent to being named? Because I'd bet my Ashley Madison membership that at least one of them did not.

The Lesson Buried Under All This Mess

I'm not here to pile on cheaters. Lord knows I've made my own questionable calls — and then written a book about them, which is at least more honest than naming names to a foreign newspaper.

But I've spent a lot of time thinking about what separates the people who navigate affairs without burning everything to the ground from the ones who take out half the city block. It comes down to this: the moment your affair becomes a story you tell about yourself, you've stopped thinking about the other person entirely.

It isn't confession anymore. It's just a different kind of ego trip.

So What Do You Do Instead?

If you've had affairs — one, three, seventeen, whatever your number is — here's the rule: you do not name names. Ever. Not to journalists, not to friends, not to your grown kids trying to understand why mom left, not even in a journal someone could hypothetically find wedged between your nightstand and your copy of The Road Ahead.

You take it to your grave.

The women you were with made their choices with a reasonable expectation of discretion. That's the unwritten contract of every affair that's ever happened in the long and colorful history of human beings being terrible to each other. You honor it — even when the marriage is over, even when you're feeling very Oprah about your personal growth journey, even when some journalist from The Times is sitting across from you with a very encouraging nod.

Especially then.

Bill Gates has more money than most countries and apparently not a single person in his life willing to say — Bill, don't do that, mate.

He could have used my book when it came out. He still could. It's not too late to learn something.

Just, maybe don't name anyone when you're done reading it.