“People often reach out to me seeking relationship advice. They remark on photographs they’ve seen of me and Barack together—the two of us laughing, or sharing a look, appearing content to be side by side—deducing that we enjoy each other’s company,” Obama shared in The Light We Carry, the follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir Becoming.
“They ask how we have managed to stay both married and unmiserable for thirty years now. I want to say, ‘Yes, truly, it’s a surprise to us, too, sometimes!’ And really, I’m not joking. We have our issues, of course, but I love the man, and he loves me, now, still, and seemingly forever,” she wrote in the book, obtained in advance by Newsweek.
The couple met in 1989 at a Chicago law firm where they both worked. They married in October 1992 and share two daughters: Malia Obama, 24, and Sasha Obama, 21.
Obama said that while their “love is not perfect,” it’s “real” and they’re “committed to it.”
“We are, in many ways, very different people, my husband and I,” she wrote, noting that while “he’s a night owl who enjoys solitary pursuits,” she’s “an early bird who loves a crowded room.”
She joked that while she thinks her husband “spends too much time golfing,” he likely thinks she watches “too much lowbrow TV.” But despite their differences, “there’s a loving assuredness that’s as simple as knowing the other person is there to stay, no matter what.”
“This is what I think people pick up on in those photos: that tiny triumph we get to feel, knowing that despite having spent half our lives together now, despite all the ways we aggravate each other and all the ways we are different, neither one of us has walked away,” Obama said. “We’re still here. We remain.”
In 2008, the Obamas’ lives changed forever when Barack Obama was elected as the 44th president of the United States. The Hawaii native entered office in 2009 and started his second term in 2013.
Michelle Obama said in her book that while she’s “lived in a number of places,” including the White House, she’s “only ever had one real home.”
“My home is my family. My home is Barack,” she wrote. “Our partnership is something we have created together,” adding that they can be “comfortable, often annoyingly ourselves.”
“We’ve come to accept that this sphere we dwell in together, the energy and emotion between us, may not always be tidy and ordered, or exactly how one or both of us wants it, but the plain and reassuring fact is, it endures,” the mom of two wrote. “For us, it’s become a solid piece of certainty in a world where certainty seems exceptionally hard to come by.”
The Light We Carry is available for purchase on November 15.
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