Michelle Obama and Barack Obama are entering a “new phase” of empty nesting.
“Our kids are grown. They’re gone,” the former first lady said of Malia, 27, and Sasha, 24, on Wednesday’s episode of the IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson podcast.
“They walked out. We looked at each other like, ‘Hey, I remember you.'” Now, he’s not angry about anything. You don’t have to do anything for me. ”
“This is a new phase,” Michelle, 62, admitted. “It takes time. We are in a new phase of life.”
The author said Barack, 64, will still need to figure out who he is in his next chapter.
“I do the same thing,” Michelle pointed out. “It’s a whole new mission and we have to take it into consideration. Now that we’re doing this, it’s back to just me and him. It’s going to take time.”
Meanwhile, the lawyer also said that some of the hard labor she and Barack experienced was “the children’s fault.”
“Without them, many difficult things would not happen,” Michelle reiterated. “When the beautiful, wonderful children we all want to appear, each with their own goals and needs, it’s the first big collaborative project we have to do together.”
Despite being married for 33 years, the philanthropist and politician continues to be active, although she acknowledges that not everyone does.
“Part of the reason I say it’s hard is not because I don’t love my husband, but because our relationship is great,” Michelle said. “We’ve been married for over 30 years. Something is going right. If we don’t let people know about the tough times, I think we got married too soon.”
She also gave listeners great advice for navigating their own relationships.
“That’s why I say things like you can have 10 bad years in a 30-year marriage, but the odds are still high,” Michelle said. “In a long-term relationship, you’re going to have years, months, hours of periods where things aren’t going well. You don’t stop, you dig deeper. And if you don’t dig deeper, you miss everything at the end.
“The level of muscle that Barack and I have is something we’ve gained in our marriage,” the mother of two added. “It’s earned over time and it’s getting better and better. That’s the important thing. It’s getting better and better. We’ve done the job.”
In January, Michelle revealed that she and Barack were going to couples therapy.
“I believe in the habit of having conversations with objective people who can help you figure things out. It’s an ongoing process,” she said on Alex Cooper’s podcast “Call Her Daddy.”
She clarified that listeners shouldn’t be afraid of therapy because “we’re always growing and evolving (and) getting better.”
Michelle also said that they understood early in their marriage that they couldn’t change each other.
“I’ve come to realize that I can’t control him, just like he can’t control me,” she elaborated. “So let me do my job, let him do our job, and together we are united as a whole human being.”
Michelle and Barack first met at a law firm in the late 1980s and married in 1992.
Last year, Barack and Michelle faced rumors of a falling out after they opted out of attending several public events, including former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral and President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025.
However, an insider told Page Six at the time that the podcast host “checked out” of D.C. after leaving the White House in January 2017.
