The former first lady opened up on Sophia Bush’s “Work in Progress” podcast Wednesday after she and husband Barack were dogged by marital woe gossip earlier this year.

Barack Obama made a shockingly honest admission about the state of his marriage to Michelle Obama. “I was in a deep deficit with my wife,” Barack, 63, told Hamilton College President Steven Tepper in a conversation Thursday, according to the Daily Beast. “So I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.”