Michelle Obama explains why she, Barack spoke about ‘hard times’ in their marriage
"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 a recent interview.
The Obamas are known for keeping it real.
That’s why the former first lady opened up about why the couple decided to publicly talk about their relationship woes.
“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,” said Obama in an interview for this week’s People cover.
She explained the couple’s strong foundation helps them get through tough times.
“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.”
She adds, “We came through the struggle together, which makes our foundation even more solid than it was. 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.”
She also explains that in the past it was taboo for couples to discuss their relationship troubles but she decided to speak out because she wants young couples to know it is normal to want to leave.
“We didn’t have role models of the hard times because our parents, their generation were taught you don’t talk about marriage and you definitely don’t talk about the hard times,” said Mrs. Obama. “So, when you’re young and coming up and raising a family together, no one has prepared you for the fact that there will be times when you will have to devote your energies to other things.”
The couple married in 1992 and opened up about having marital struggles in both of their best-selling books.
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In the former President’s most recent best-seller, A Promised Land, he said he could feel when Michelle was not happy in their marriage, as reported by theGrio.
“I continued to sense an undercurrent of tension in her, subtle but constant, like the faint thrum of a hidden machine,” Obama wrote.
“It was as if, confined as we were within the walls of the White House, all her previous sources of frustration became more concentrated, more vivid, whether it was my round the clock absorption with work, or the way politics exposed our family to scrutiny and attacks, or the tendency of even friends and family members to treat her role as secondary in importance,” he continued.
The former president became more candid when spoke about missing the “lighter” days of his relationship and observing his wife and seeing her smile less often.
“My heart would suddenly tighten at the thought that those days might not return,” he wrote.
In the book, Obama also discusses how he believes, in a way, his presidency paved the way for Donald Trump’s election.
“For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House, he promised an elixir for their racial anxiety,” wrote Obama.
Obama said he believes his election created panic for many white people and Republicans who felt as if a ‘“natural order” had been disrupted. He writes that Trump fed on this panic with his birtherism claims and subsequent attacks.
Additional reporting by Chinekwu Osakwe
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