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Barack and Michelle Obama‘s marriage has always been held up as one of the cutest White House love stories and many people look up to them as “couple goals.” While that seems like a sweet sentiment, the former first lady is putting the brakes on that label to give everyone a very realistic look at their lives behind the scenes.
“I don’t want people looking at me and Barack like hashtag couple goals and not know that no, no, there are some broken things that happen even in the best of marriages,” Michelle revealed on the Jan. 8 episode of On Purpose With Jay Shetty podcast. The couple, who has been married for 31 years, have gone through a series of rough patches in their relationship, even during their time in the White House.
“After 31 years, yeah, we still do [cross the line], but you know it quicker. And then you apologize,” she said. “You learn how to say my bad, right? That takes a second, right?” Michelle wants to open up the conversation about marriage because “most people don’t talk about it.” The 58-year-old public speaker wants people to understand what is and isn’t “quit worthy.”
By taking a step back from the situation, Michelle and Barack Obama have learned what is worth fighting for — each other. “You don’t quit on it, right? You learn from it. And that’s what sustaining a relationship is,” she noted. “It’s the choice to figure it out, not to quit when it gets hard. So yeah, I said something that I didn’t mean to say, right? Year five, we might’ve had hurt feelings, and it would have taken days to rectify it. Year 30, it’s like, ‘Ah, there she goes again, or there he goes again.’ I know how to talk to him about it and when because we’ve practiced it.”
The former president has even acknowledged the couple’s bumps in the road, sharing in his memoir, A Promised Land, that one of the hardest times in their marriage was the summer after Malia was born. Michelle was the full-time parent “while her husband was off doing ‘important things.’” He had to learn how to balance a work and family life in ways he never had before. “I was almost forty, broke, coming off a humiliating defeat and with my marriage strained,” he wrote. “I felt for perhaps the first time in my life that I had taken a wrong turn.”
Michelle and Barack Obama persevered through those tough times and it’s something the former first lady is proud of. She told Shetty, “And if we hadn’t hung in there, we would have missed all the good.”
Before you go, click here to see the best presidential love stories in U.S. history.
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