Michelle Obama got real about why her marriage to Barack Obama isn’t always “couple goals,” despite fans praising their romance.
“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, 59, said during the Monday, January 8, episode of the “On Purpose With Jay Shetty” podcast.
Michelle married the former president, 62, in 1992. After more than three decades together, she revealed that there are still times where she has said or done things that she wishes she could take back. “After 31 years, yeah, we still do [cross the line], but you know it quicker. And then you apologize,” Michelle explained. “You learn how to say my bad, right? That takes a second, right?”
The Light We Carry author, who shares daughters Malia, 25, and Sasha, 22, with Barack, noted that relationships are messy.
“I talk about marriage because I just think that No. 1, most people don’t talk about it,” Michelle shared. “Because what happens is that by not knowing, you hit, in your relationship, some natural, like, understandable rough patches, and you want to quit. And it’s like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not quit worthy. That’s just the nature of things.’ That’s why I joked, it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re mad at your partner, you’re mad for a year and you think the marriage is over.’”
Michelle said, in reality, couples will have “decades” of thinking “I don’t know if I like you,” because in marriage there are arguments that you must overcome to make you stronger.
“You don’t quit on it, right? You learn from it. And that’s what sustaining a relationship is,” she continued. “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 first lady confessed that she and Barack have “made a lot of mistakes” and have “gotten it wrong,” but that’s why they’ve lasted. “After 31 years, we’re getting better at it and it gets better and better and better,” she said.
Michelle explained that it’s “natural” for marriage to be hard, even if it’s taboo to admit. “[The] hardest thing you will ever do … is to try to build a life with another person who wasn’t raised in your shoes, who has a totally different temperament,” she continued, noting that once children enter the mix it gets that much tougher.
“Of course, it’s going to be hard, you know, but I wouldn’t trade in my marriage for anything in the world with all the ups and downs, with all the running for president stuff,” Michelle added. “And if we hadn’t hung in there, we would have missed all the good.”
The author pointed out that a successful marriage starts with picking somebody “you respect and like” and never forget that your partner is “deeply, deeply flawed.”
Despite their mistakes, Michelle said the right spouse is someone you can look in the eye and say, “You’re still the person that I like and love and respect. And we can figure this out.”
