Michelle Obama breaks silence on divorce rumors between her and Barack Obama

Michelle Obama has addressed the divorce speculations surrounding her and Barack Obama.

In a new interview with actress Sophia Bush on the podcast Work in Progress, the former first lady of the United States talked about her life recently, including how she's been able to make her own decisions and take control of her time more now—eight years since Barack concluded his back-to-back presidencies and left the White House in 2017.

"I could have made a lot of these decisions years ago, but I didn’t give myself that freedom," she said, recalling her time as first lady. "Maybe even as much as I let my kids live their own lives, I use their lives as an excuse for why I couldn’t do something."

"And now that’s gone. And so now I have to look at my—I get to look at my calendar, which I did this year, was a real big example of me, myself looking at something that I was supposed to do—you know, without naming names—and I chose to do what was best for me, not what I had to do, not what I thought other people wanted me to do," she added.

She reflected on being able to make important choices for herself now.

"The interesting thing is that, when I say 'no,' for the most part people are like, 'I get it, and I'm okay.' That's the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with disappointing people. I mean, so much so that this year people were... they couldn't even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing," she said.

"This couldn't be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right?" continued Michelle. "But that's what society does to us. We start actually, finally going, 'What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?' And if it doesn't fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible."

Divorce rumors between them started early this year when Barack was seen at US president Donald Trump's inauguration and Jimmy Carter's funeral without Michelle. 

In her book Becoming, Michelle opened up about how Barack's political ambitions challenged their marriage and led to her feeling lonely and exhausted. 

Barack, who was US president from 2009 to 2017,  also recently shared being in a "deep deficit" with Michelle, adding that he's been "trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things" with her.

Michelle and Barack have been married for 32 years. They share two children: 23-year-old Sasha and 26-year-old Malia.