Now that Barack Obama’s VP, Joe Biden, has been elected as the nation’s 46th president, his work on the campaign trail has come to an end. Now, he’s gearing up for the release of his A Promised Land memoir which is scheduled to come out on Nov. 17.

As with any autobiography, Obama reflects on some of the ups and downs he’s experienced in life. During one of his lower moments, he feared he was losing his wife, Michelle Obama. The former president explained that his presidency took a toll on their marriage.

“Despite Michelle’s success and popularity, I continued to sense an undercurrent of tension in her, subtle but constant, like the faint thrum of a hidden machine,” an excerpt from the book reads. “It was as if, confined as we were within the walls of the White House, all her previous sources of frustration became more concentrated, more vivid, whether it was my round the clock absorption with work, or the way politics exposed our family to scrutiny and attacks, or the tendency of even friends and family members to treat her role as secondary in importance.”

Obama admitted that he often wondered whether he and Michelle would ever be able to reignite the flames of their younger days as a couple. “Lying next to Michelle in the dark, I’d think about those days when everything between us felt lighter, when her smile was more constant and our love less encumbered, and my heart would suddenly tighten at the thought that those days might not return,” he continued.

The Obamas — who are often idolized for their Black love — have obviously survived the White House as well as other obstacles, including the infertility struggles Michelle mentioned in her Becoming memoir. The power couple celebrated 28 years of marriage last month.