Many couples work hard on their marriage to make it work, and this includes celebrity couples too. It may come as a surprise, but the former POTUS Barack Obama and his wife, the former FLOTUS Michelle Obama, are among those who had to seek couple’s therapy at one point in their marriage to sort out some of their issues.
In the eight years of President Obama’s presidency, their lives had been all about managing the people around them and fulfilling their responsibilities to the nation. They could not go anywhere without being shadowed by their security guards as well as hundreds of staff member, on top of their own two kids.
Considering all this, it’s understandable why the Obamas simply couldn’t find the time to work on their marriage, and hence one can safely presume that seeking couple’s therapy was certainly a great idea for them to make things more manageable, at least matters pertaining to their personal relationship.
Opening Up To Oprah
Michelle recently opened up with Oprah Winfrey about all of this, remarking that, between having two kids and being the wife of a US president, one gets very little time even for one’s own self.
She revealed that Barack is very peculiar about managing his time properly, highlighting how he usually plans out his upcoming tours and travel plans in great detail, while accommodating the many travels he has to make on an ad-hoc basis.
This obviously must leave very little time for them to communicate with each other as a married couple.
When Michelle was asked about what sort of counseling she had sought, she clarified that although people usually consider couple’s therapy to be a way of building a stronger case against their partner, it was definitely not her intention.
The kind of counseling which she sought was one that would help make her married life more pleasant, and at the conclusion of such counseling, it was identified that all she needed was more support, some of which had to come from Barack.
Different Childhoods
Oprah also highlighted the different childhood personalities that both Michelle and Barack had as children and opined that, since both of them had different kinds of childhoods growing up, perhaps this difference was being reflected in their marriage as well.
Apparently, Barack was raised by his grandparents without the presence of his father while his mother paid him an occasional visit. On the other hand, Michelle did not have any such distance with her parents growing up.
However, Michelle found this to be a very positive trait about Barack’s upbringing and remarked that his childhood had contributed to making him a very solid man, while clarifying that it had not reflected negatively on their married life in any way, except perhaps the fact that both of them have a very different understanding of love.
Among the two, Michelle revealed that she is definitely the more vulnerable one, and hence wants Barack to spend as much time with her as possible. In contrast, Barack is not like that and perhaps believes that one can love another even if there is physical distance between the two.