Former first lady Michelle Obama dismissed divorce rumors about her and former President Barack Obama during a podcast interview published Wednesday.
Michelle Obama had attracted attention and even prompted questions about her marriage after skipping recent high-profile events like President Donald Trump’s inauguration and the late President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, leaving her husband to attend on his own.
“But the interesting thing is that when I say no, for the most part, people are like, ‘I get it, and I’m okay,’ right?” she told podcast host Sophia Bush of how she spends her time. “And 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, 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, you know? This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions herself, right? But that’s what society does to us.”
The former first lady discussed how she has more opportunities now to do things that she really wants to do during the conversation on Bush’s “Work in Progress” podcast.
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“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 continued.
She said she chose to do what “was best for me,” while saying she operated from “guilt” as a woman.
She also talked about how she’s been making more decisions for herself lately during the podcast conversation.
“Now is the time for me to start asking myself these hard questions of, ‘Who do I truly want to be every day?’ And that changes,” she said. “So, who do I want to have a lunch with? How long do I want to stay in a place? Do I want to travel? If a girlfriend calls and says, ‘Let’s go here,’ I can say, ‘Yes, I can.’ And I’m trying to do that more and more.”
She said she still had time for her own projects and issues like education and her husband’s presidential library.
Obama started her own podcast, “IMO,” alongside her brother Craig Robinson in March.
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During the first episode, Obama said her husband needed to adjust to leaving the house on time and being punctual.
“Well, Barack, you know, he had to adjust to what ‘on time’ was,” she told Robinson. “I’ve got this husband who’s like, when it’s time to leave — it’s 3:00 — he’s getting up and going to the bathroom. And I was like, dude, dude, 3:00 departure means you’ve done all that, you know?”
“Don’t start looking for your glasses at the 3:00 departure,” the former first lady said. “But he’s improved over 30 years of marriage, but that was a ‘you must adjust.’”
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