Michelle Obama Breaks Silence on Barack Obama Divorce Rumors

Michelle Obama is tired of people jumping to conclusions.   The former first lady of the United States—who has been married to Barack Obama for 32 years—broke her silence on recent divorce rumors, while opening up about decisions that she has made for herself since leaving the White House in 2017.

“The interesting thing is that, when I say ‘no,’ for the most part people are like, ‘I get it, and I’m okay,'” Michelle shared on the April 9 episode of the Work in Progress with Sophia Bush podcast. “That’s the thing that we as women, I think…we struggle with disappointing people. I mean, so much so that this year people were…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.”

“This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right?” the 61-year-old continued. “But that’s what society does to us. We start actually, finally 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 labeled as something negative and horrible.”  Elsewhere in her conversation with Sophia Bush, Michelle—who shares Malia, 26, and Sasha, 23, with Barack—gave some insight into how she’s thinking about “making some big girl decisions” now that she’s in her 60s.

“If not now, when? What am I waiting for? How am I going to spend 20 years?” she pondered. “Now is the time for me to start asking myself these hard questions of, ‘Who do I truly want to be every day?'”  “I’m trying to do that more and more, so what does it look like?” Michelle went on. “It looks like whatever I want it to look like, and I still find time to give speeches and to be out there in the world and to work on projects.”

The Becoming author’s remarks come after Barack also recently shared rare insight into their marriage, explaining how his back-to-back presidencies impacted their relationship.  “I was in a deep deficit with my wife,” the former president told Hamilton College President Steven Tepper at an April 3 event that was part of the school’s Sacerdote Series, “so I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.”