Former First Lady Speaks On Divorcing Former President

Former US First Lady, Michelle Obama has addressed divorce rumours circulating about her marriage to Barack Obama, as she discussed stepping back and making time for herself on a podcast released recently, addressing her recent absences from political events.

Speaking of her life eight years out of the White House with two adult children, Michelle said on the “Work in Progress” podcast with actress Sophia Bush that she now has the opportunity to control her own calendar and can now make “a choice for myself.”

“I could have made a lot of these decisions years ago, but I didn’t give myself that freedom,” Obama said, “Maybe even as much as I let my kids live their own lives, I use their lives as an excuse for why I couldn’t do something.”

She continued: “And now that’s gone. And so now I have to look at my — I get to look at my calendar, which I did this year, was a real big example of me, myself looking at something that I was supposed to do — you know, without naming names — and I chose to do what was best for me, not what I had to do, not what I thought other people wanted me to do.”

She went on to discuss the guilt of saying no and how her recent choices to step away from certain responsibilities raised rumors of a possible divorce from her husband, former President Barack Obama.

“I still find time to you know, give speeches, to be out there in the world, to work on projects. I still care about girls’ education. We, you know, the library is opening in a year from now.

Certain things I am and am not doing with the library,” Obama said.

She continued: “That’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with like disappointing people.

I mean so much so that this year people were, you know — they couldn’t even fathom that I was choosing myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.”

The Obamas have been together for 32 years, according to a post from the former president on X in October.

The former first lady has been open about how Barack Obama’s political ambitions and time in the Oval Office was tough on their marriage, writing in her book “Becoming” that it resulted in loneliness and exhaustion.