Former first lady Michelle Obama revealed to People Magazine that her marriage to former President Barack Obama has hit very hard points — and it became so bad they had to get a marriage counselor to keep things together.
Michelle said the pressure of the White House — and the stress of raising two children — forced the two apart.
It became so bad the two were forced to enter marriage counseling. But Michelle told People that since they left the White House, they’ve gotten past the hardest parts.
“Before the White House, before the kids, before careers, it was just me and Barack together shaping our lives, building a friendship, being one another’s everything,” Michelle said in the interview.
“That’s what we were able to return to once the White House was over and the kids were grown and you knew they were okay.”
Critics called the reveal “shocking” and one conservative activist speculated there’s more to Mchelle’s message — and that the marriage of the 44th president could be “on the rocks.” Another columnist said their marriage may be “hanging by a threat.”
But Michelle insisted there was no divorce on the horizon and the two have grown closer.
“We came through the struggle together, which makes our foundation even more solid than it was,” she said. “I am happy to say that I can now look up from all of that and look over across the room and I still see my friend.”
This isn’t the first time Michelle has opened up about the marriage counseling that she and Barack had to seek out to keep their relationship alive.
“What I learned about myself was that my happiness was up to me and I started working out more, I started asking for help, not just from him but from other people,” she told Good Morning America in 2018.
“Marriage counseling, for us, was one of those ways where we learned to talk out our differences,” Michelle said.
In his book A Promised Land, Barack had also previously said the White House pressures had driven a wedge between himself and his wife.
“There were nights [while I was president] when, lying next to Michelle in the dark, I’d think about those days when everything between us felt lighter, when her smile was more constant and our love less encumbered,” Obama wrote.
He said he was afraid their marriage would no longer be happy… and instead was heading for divorce.
“My heart would suddenly tighten at the thought that those days might not return,” he said.