Michelle Obama breaks her silence on Barack divorce rumours
The former first lady has hit back at divorce claims – just days after Barack’s brutally honest admission about the state of their marriage.
Marriage
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Former first lady Michelle Obama has hit back at rumours she and her husband of almost 33-years are headed for divorce – just days after Barack delivered a brutally honest admission about the state of their marriage.
Speculation suggesting the couple are in strife has plagued the Obamas for months after the former president attended the late President Jimmy Carter’s funeral solo and then went to President Donald Trump’s inauguration alone.
Now just days after her husband hinted that he’s been working on repairing their marriage, Michelle has shared an impactful statement about the rampant rumours when addressing why she skipped several high-profile events earlier this year.
“The interesting thing is that, when I say ‘no,’ for the most part people are like, ‘I get it, and I’m OK,’” the mum of two said of her decision to turn down key invitations on Sophia Bush’s Work in Progress podcast.
“And that’s the thing that we as women struggle with — disappointing people.
“So much so that people, they couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself, that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.”
Michelle reportedly “scoffed” at speculation she and Barack had called it quits on their three-decade union during the interview, noting that it was unbelievable to some that she could possibly be “a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself”.
“But that’s what society does to us, we actually finally start going, ‘What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?’ And if it doesn’t fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labelled as something negative and horrible.”
Her comments come after the former president, 63, hinted that he’s been working on repairing their marriage while addressing Hamilton College students last week.
His honest, and somewhat brutal admission, came after the university’s President, Steven Tepper, asked Obama what he’d been up to recently, to which he explained he’d mostly been working on the second half of his memoir.
“This is like 50 term papers. I mean, it just goes on forever,” he said, according to the Daily Beast.
“I’m hoping to get to the finish line on that.
“Beyond that, look, I was in a deep deficit with my wife. So I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.”
The former president of the United States has previously suggested that his back-to-back terms in office from 2009 to 2017 took a toll on his relationship with the former first lady.
“Let me just say this: It sure helps to be out of the White House and to have a little more time with her,” he told CBS Mornings in May 2023, adding Michelle was “forgiving” of his shortcomings.
“I did not fully appreciate, I think — as engaged of a father as I was — the degree of stress and tension for her knowing that not just me and Michelle were under scrutiny and in this strange environment, but that we were raising our daughters in a kind of situation that just wasn’t normal.”
Michelle, 61, has also been vocal about the challenges of their marriage on the past, stating that she “couldn’t stand” her husband for a solid decade when their daughters — Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23 — “were little”.
The former first lady candidly discussed the early years of the couple’s union in which she explained that she was doing the heavy lifting while the eventual president was often absent.
“People think I’m being catty saying this. It’s like, there were 10 years where I couldn’t stand my husband,” Michelle said while on the Revolt TV panel in December 2022.
“And for 10 years, while we’re trying to build our careers and, you know, worrying about school and who’s doing what and what, I was like, ‘Ugh, this isn’t even.’
“And guess what? Marriage isn’t 50/50 — ever. There’s sometimes I’m 70, he’s 30, but guess what? We’ve been married 30. I would take 10 bad years over 30. It’s just how you look at it.”
She also said that she talks openly about her partnership “because marriage is hard, and a lot of young people quit on marriage over things that are just a part of the commitment”.
The Obamas, who tied the knot in October 1992, have recently been plagued by unfounded divorce rumours that started in January after Barack’s solo outings. Speculation was further fuelled when an insider insisted that Michelle is simply “checked out” of DC life.
“They don’t pretend that they have this Camelot relationship. They’re not trying to present that they’re this magical couple,” the source, who once worked with the couple, told Page Six in January.
Obama appeared to take aim at the relationship allegations on Valentine’s Day, with a flirty social media post to his wife Michelle affirming she’s still the one after more than three decades together.
“Thirty-two years together and you still take my breath away,” the former president wrote in a post on X in February alongside a selfie of the two beaming together.
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