Michelle Obama reveals intimate details about her marriage

Michelle Obama has spoken about her relationship with former US President Barack Obama, saying they have attended marriage counselling in the past to work through "tough times".

The former First Lady made the revelation on Saturday during a talk with Oprah Winfrey as part of the 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus Tour with WW at the Barclays Centre in New York.

Michelle, 56, told the media mogul her marriage has gone through its ups and downs and attending marriage counselling gave them both "an objective person to just hear you out".

She says they attended counselling together soon after their two daughters were born.

"It taught me that I was responsible for my own happiness," she said of marriage counselling. "I didn't marry Barack for him to make me happy. No one can make me happy.

"If I'm going to show up equal in this partnership, I have to be able to make myself happy and so I had to stop focusing on what he wasn't doing and start thinking about how to carve out the life that I wanted for myself, with or without Barack.

"The more I succeeded in defining myself for myself, the better I was in my partnership."

Oprah, 66, asked Michelle if Barack is her "soul affirming partner" and after 28 years of marriage, does it "keep getting better".

She said: "It's all of that. And this is what I keep trying to tell young people. Marriage is hard and raising a family together is a hard thing. It takes a toll."

Michelle explained that friendship is at the core of their relationship.

"We're coming back to that point where we see each other again because some of the hardest times in our lives we just escaped, we survived it," she said.

"We went through a tough time, we did some hard things together. But now we're out on the other end and I can look at him and I still recognise my husband.

"He's still the man I fell in love with," she said.

Michelle Obama celebrated her birthday on 17 January, with Barack Obama posting a touching tribute to his wife on Instagram.

Featuring photos of the couple taken in a photo booth, Barack captioned it: "In every scene, you are my star, @MichelleObama!" the former president captioned the playful photo. "Happy birthday, baby!"