Michelle Obama got honest about finding self-fulfillment while in her marriage.
During a recent appearance on Jay Shetty's "On Purpose" podcast, the former first lady, 59, opened up about how she learned to not solely rely on her husband, President Barack Obama, to make her happy.
"There's no way we could be everything to each other," Michelle admitted of her relationship with the 44th president, 62, while adding how it "took her awhile to learn that."
"We have different interests, different goals. There was a stage in my marriage where I thought that was what a partner was supposed to be. You should call me all the time. We should talk all the time," she explained.
"We should be each other's best friends all the time," the former attorney, who wed Barack in 1992, added. "Our marriage got better when I got better about that, because I think he already had that independence. This notion of, 'I love you, even if I don't talk to you today.' That to me is like, I don't need that. I felt like I needed more of that."
As Michelle and the Democratic politician both grew in their romance, the Becoming author figured out how to be responsible for her own joy.
"As I got older, I got more mature, more clear about my own goals," she continued. "I realize that I he can't be responsible for my happiness. I have to be responsible for that. I have to define it for myself. I have to learn how to achieve it. My husband is definitely a part of that. But I cannot put him in the center of my happiness. That freed me up to let him be him and let me be me. I have friends who give me things that my husband doesn't give me. I have girlfriends. One distinction that we have is like, I'm a talker. When I sit down with my girlfriends, we can talk for days. I mean, literally for days, we can take a break for lunch, but we can talk, you know, my husband's not."
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Now, Michelle has made sure to lean on her friends when necessary. "He can talk, but he will come by a friendship session, you know, nine o'clock in the morning. I have a friend staying with me and he's like, 'What are y'all talking about?' It's like, 'Well, we're just now getting into our kids, and we're going to talk about each one of them separately for like an hour,'" she admitted with a laugh.
"He's like, 'I couldn't do that.' He can't be that for me. But I have really good, mostly girlfriends who give me that. We will dissect life to the bitter end. We will wring everything out of every subject," Michelle added. "And he's like, 'I think I'm done.' And I was like, 'Well, you can go be done because I've got her and we just got started!'"
