Michelle Obama got real about the challenges of her marriage to former U.S. President Barack Obama with podcaster Jay Shetty.
In an hourlong video posted to YouTube on Monday, the author and former First Lady of the United States touched on her relationship as the couple recently celebrated their 31st anniversary.
However, Mrs Obama does not want people looking at her and her husband as the ideal couple.
“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,” she said.
Around the 30-minute mark, Michelle spoke about sustaining her relationship with Barack after arguments and tough conversations.
“[During] year five, I might have had hurt feelings and it would’ve taken days to rectify it. Year 30? It’s like, ‘Ah, there she goes again or there he goes again.'”
She continued, “I know how to talk to him about it and when because we’ve practised it. We’ve made a lot of mistakes, we’ve gotten it wrong and after 31 years, we’re getting better at it.”
Michelle joked, “If you live with your roommate for 30 years, you would hate them at some point in time. But it wouldn’t be some defining thing. You’ve have friendships – if they last long, you’re going to have some falling out. Why do we put so much pressure on marriage to not be hard?”
Relating her experience to other marriages, Michelle broke down the difficulties of being married to someone with a different temperant and who was raised differently, but assured that she would not trade it “for anything in the world.”
“With all the ups and downs, with all the running for president stuff, ‘I was like, ‘Why’d you do that?'” Michelle joked. “I mean, talk about that being a big gaping thing in our lives. But the good has outweighed it, and if we hadn’t hung in there we would’ve missed all the good.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/X2vNGwMCw-M
Michelle has been candid about the issues she has had with her husband before, even claiming that she did not like him for roughly a decade when their two daughters, Sasha, 25, and Malia, 22, were younger.
“And a lot of young people quit on marriage over things that are just a part of the commitment,” she said on CBS Mornings last year. “We’ve been married for 30 years. If I fell out with him for 10, and we had a great 20 years. I’d take those odds anytime.”