Michelle Obama finally addressed the divorce rumors about her and her husband, former U.S. President Barack Obama. And somehow… Jennifer Aniston got pulled into it too?
Michelle finally talked about all those rumors going around
She said she and Barack were splitting up. She mentioned “making a choice” for herself, which sounded like a subtle clapback to people claiming that her whole marriage was falling apart.
RELATED STORIES
She reflected on how the White House days weren’t so easy
She’s previously said that Barack being president for two terms definitely put some pressure on their marriage and wore her down personally, too.
But now that these days are over, things have calmed down for the family, saying that she finally feels like she’s in a place where she can choose what’s best for her.
She reflects on not giving herself freedom sooner
Michelle was pretty open about it. On the Work in Progress podcast with One Tree Hill’s Sophia Bush, she said, “As a woman, I think if I’m honest with myself, I could have made a lot of these decisions years ago. But I didn’t give myself that freedom.”
She even admitted that even though she let her kids live their own lives, she kind of used their lives as a reason not to make changes in her own. “Maybe, even as much as I let my kids lead their own lives, I used their lives as an excuse for why I couldn’t do something. And now that’s wrong,” she said.
Michelle said she was moving through life “from guilt”
The former first lady admitted that, like a lot of women, she dealt with that constant pressure to make everyone happy, even when it came at a cost to herself.
She talked about how people couldn’t believe she was just doing her own thing
“So much so that this year, people couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself. They had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing,” she said.
“This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions herself, right? But that’s what society does to us.” And she’s definitely not wrong.
Barack admitted he’s in a ‘deep deficit’ with his wife
Just a few days after Michelle’s comments, Barack also had something to say about their relationship. He shared a rare update during a speech to Hamilton College students earlier this month, and it went viral.
While talking about working on his memoir’s second volume, Barack admitted, “I was in a deep deficit with my wife, so I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.”
People thought there were ‘signs’ that indicated their divorce
There were some moments that really got people talking. Like when Michelle wasn’t with Barack at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, rumors about their marriage being in trouble started flying. Then, when Barack showed up solo at Donald Trump’s 2025 presidential inauguration, “Where is Michelle Obama?” started trending. Even though they were still sharing cute pics together online, people still kept jumping to conclusions about a possible divorce.
Jennifer Aniston was dragged into the rumors
Somehow, the whole drama also pulled Friends star Jennifer Aniston into the rumors. Last year, InTouch magazine ran a headline that read, “The truth about Jen and Barack [Obama]!” and claimed Barack and Jennifer were “obsessed” with each other.
But Jennifer shut that down fast. “That is absolutely untrue. It is untrue,” she told Jimmy Kimmel on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last October. She explained she’d only met Barack once and actually knows Michelle better than him.