Entertainment
Michelle Obama Breaks Silence On Divorce Rumors: ‘Making A Choice For Myself’
Michelle Obama is pushing back against a wave of speculation over her marriage, making it clear that recent personal decisions have nothing to do with a split from former President Barack Obama. Appearing on Sophia Bush’s Work in Progress podcast, the former first lady laid out her reasons for pulling back from certain public appearances, framing them as deliberate choices made for her own well-being—not signals of marital discord.
“That’s the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with disappointing people,” Michelle said. “I mean, so much so that this year people were, you know, 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.”
The Obamas, married since 1992, have long faced public scrutiny, but the recent swirl of divorce rumors reached new levels after Michelle chose not to attend President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in January and also skipped Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration. In the podcast, she directly addressed the noise, challenging the assumptions being made about her marriage and motivations.
“That this couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right?” she continued. Obama added, “That’s what society does to us.”
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She explained that women often feel pressured to justify their choices, especially when those decisions deviate from expectations.
“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,” she said.
Michelle, who turned 61 in January, reflected during the episode on how she wants to spend the next chapter of her life. She said she’s been asking deeper questions about her day-to-day identity and what she wants her future to look like—outside the constraints of others’ opinions.
U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle acknowledge the crowd after President Obama delivered a farewell address at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. January 10, 2017.
“So you know, now is the time for me to start asking myself these hard questions of who do I truly want to be every day,” she said. That, she emphasized, “looks like whatever I want it to look like.”
Despite rumors, Michelle stressed that she’s still actively involved in causes close to her heart. “And 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,” she said.
“You know, the library is opening in a year from now.”
She clarified that while she isn’t involved in every detail of the Obama Presidential Library, she’s still engaged in the broader vision. “But the interesting thing is that when I say no, for the most part, people are like, I get it, and I’m OK, right?” she added.
Her absence from Carter’s January 9 funeral was initially explained by advisers as due to “scheduling conflicts.” A source also told CNN that “she’s actually still in Hawaii for an extended holiday vacation” at the time.
Barack Obama recently admitted that the intense years of his presidency created a “deep deficit” in their relationship—a candid admission that fueled speculation.
