Barack Obama has revealed he’s been working hard to make up to Michelle after two terms at the White House took a toll on their marriage.
“I was in a deep deficit with my wife,” Obama admitted in a conversation with Hamilton College President Steven Tepper Thursday.
“So I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things,” the former president added.
He has previously hinted at the impact his presidency had on his relationship with Michelle.
Barack Obama and Michelle Obama at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. Jacek Boczarski/Getty Images
“Let me just say this: It sure helps to be out of the White House and to have a little more time with her,” he said in an interview on CBS Mornings in 2023.
Michelle has also spoken candidly about their marital struggles, particularly during the years when Barack was rising as a political star while she focused on raising their daughters, Sasha and Malia.
In a 2022 interview on Revolt TV, the former first lady revealed, “There were 10 years where I couldn’t stand my husband.”
The Obamas, who live in D.C., have recently been plagued by wild rumors alleging Barack was having an affair with Friends star Jennifer Aniston.
Right-wing media in particular stoked rumors of marital strife after he attended both President Jimmy Carter’s funeral and Donald Trump’s inauguration without Michelle by his side.
The couple had tried to silence the gossip by posting cozy selfies together on Valentine’s Day accompanied by loving messages.
Michelle and Barack met in the late 1980s at the law firm where they both worked, eventually tying the knot in 1992.
In his 2020 memoir, A Promised Land, the former president wrote he “was smitten almost from the second I saw her.”
At Thursday’s event at the college in Clinton, New York, Obama also broke his silence on Trump’s presidency. Slamming his successor’s attempts to attack law firms and the press, he called out the lack of pushback Trump is getting.
“It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me, or a whole bunch of my predecessors,” he said.
