It wasn’t always glitz and glam behind closed doors for former President Barack Obama and his first lady Michelle Obama when they lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. at the White House during his presidency.
Close to four years since leaving the White House, Obama shared intimate details of what his life was when no one [for the most part] was watching him, in a new memoir, “A Promised Land”, according to a magazine article from Essence.
Many people, however, know Obama as being a tender-hearted husband toward his wife Michelle and incredibly proud father to his two daughters Malia and Sasha, the article noted. In an excerpt obtained by CNN, Obama shows that his marriage was a bit “strained” by his job obligations.
“And yet, despite Michelle’s success and popularity, I continued to sense an undercurrent of tension in her, subtle but constant, like the faint thrum of a hidden machine,” he writes in his book. “It was as if, confined as we were within the walls of the White House, all her previous sources of frustration became more concentrated, more vivid, whether it was my round-the-clock absorption with work, or the way politics exposed our family to scrutiny and attacks, or the tendency of even friends and family members to treat her role as secondary in importance.”
“Lying next to Michelle in the dark, I’d think about those days when everything between us felt lighter, when her smile was more constant and our love less encumbered, and my heart would suddenly tighten at the thought that those days might not return,” he continued in the book.
Michelle has also been frank about what things looked like from her perspective to be married to a driven man with presidential-sized dreams. “At home, our frustrations began to rear up often and intensely,” she wrote in her best-selling memoir “Becoming.” “Barack and I loved each other deeply, but it was as if at the center of our relationship there was suddenly a knot we couldn’t loosen.”
Thankfully, the hardships stood the test of time for the Obamas, who just celebrated their 28th wedding anniversary. In a Hallmark-card worthy Instagram post, Obama said that every day he spends with his wife “makes me a better husband, a better father, and a better human.”
Michelle matched his sweet remarks on her own page, writing, “So grateful to have him as a partner through everything life throws at us.”
Barack Obama’s memoir “A Promised Land” goes on sale tomorrow and can be pre-ordered here.
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