Michelle Obama believes her and Barack Obama’s decades-long marriage has worked through the “ups and downs” because they “counterbalance” one another.
Michelle explained to People, in a cover story published Wednesday, that she “probably would have been someone who stayed more put” if she hadn’t met her husband.
“Sometimes when you [grow up] so grounded, you’re sometimes afraid to leave that security and comfort,” she noted. “I might have fallen into that.”
The former first lady, 62, shared that Barack, 64, supported her through the most “uncomfortable steps” in her career by making it clear he’d stand by her choices no matter what.
“He made me think more broadly about what I could do with this Harvard law degree besides be a lawyer,” she gushed. “He gave me the courage, he was my ballast. He was like, ‘I got you.’
“However hard it’s been, the ups and the downs, he’s got me,” Michelle added. “He’s like, ‘Try new things. Go leap.’ I can do a lot of these things because I know if I slip or fall or trip, he’s got me.”
On the flip side, Barack credited Michelle with “ground[ing] and anchor[ing]” him.
The politician told the outlet, “This was a one-of-a-kind woman with the integrity and character and smarts and values that was going to make me better. Just being with her made me better. She still does.”
He quipped that they haven’t had “an equal partnership” in their 33 years of marriage, saying, “I’ve gotten, I’m sure, more out of it than she has. But it’s worked out for me really well. For her, it’s probably more of a mixed bag.”
The former president also credited Michelle for giving daughters Malia, 27, and Sasha, 25, “a foundation that would pay off for them over the long term.”
The couple are currently navigating a “new phase” as empty nesters.
“Our kids are grown. They’re out,” she told “IMO” podcast listeners in March. “We’re looking at each other like, ‘Hey, I remember you.’ Now I’m not mad about anything. I don’t need you to do anything for me.”
The author noted that she and Barack both need to figure out what they want for themselves in this next chapter, which she dubbed “a whole new assignment.”
The duo have gone to couples therapy over the years to keep their marriage strong, Michelle divulged in January.
“I believe in the practice of having those conversations with objective people who help you piece through that stuff, and it’s a constant, it’s constant work,” she explained on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast.
“I’ve grown to know I don’t have control over him, just like he doesn’t have control over me,” she elaborated at the time. “So let me do my work and let him do our work and together we come together as whole people.”
Michelle and Barack first crossed paths at a law firm in the late 1980s before tying the knot in 1992.