In some surprising and very candid statements, Brigitte Macron has confessed to feeling “sometimes sadder than ever” than she had been before arriving at the Élysée alongside her husband, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron. The First Lady of our neighboring country has taken a personal stock of a decade at the forefront of power, in an interview granted to the French newspaper La Tribune.
“Before I had a normal life, children, a job, ups and downs, like everyone else. Here, these ten years have passed so quickly… They have been so intense. I have seen the darkness of the world, the stupidity, the evil. Sometimes I feel sad like I never had before,” declared Emmanuel Macron’s wife, who will have to leave the Élysée in 2027 after serving two terms.
“Sometimes I have trouble seeing the blue sky”, added Brigitte Macron during the conversation with the French newspaper. “I have moments of pessimism that I did not have before.” The former French teacher, who has suffered serious episodes of harassment online, also confessed that writing down her thoughts helped her a lot. Last January, several of her cyberstalkers, accused of spreading insults and rumors related to her gender, were sentenced to up to six months in prison, most of them with suspended sentences.
To combat her darkest moments, Brigitte Macron has a ritual. She goes out to get some air and exercises daily: she does gymnastics in the mornings and bikes on weekends, in addition to a daily one-hour walk to not “feel confined.” As she states in the interview, movement is her best therapy.
The Macrons: a relationship under scrutiny
The relationship between Emmanuel Macron, 48, and his wife Brigitte Macron, 73, whom he met when she was teaching theatre at his high school, has for years been the subject of widespread dissemination of false information. Until the couple finally decided to fight back through the courts in France and in the United States. The First Lady had explained to investigators, when filing a complaint at the end of August 2024, that the rumor portraying her as a transgender woman had had “a great impact” on her surroundings and on herself.
Brigitte Macron, junto a su marido y el rey Felipe en el Elíseo.
Tiphaine Auzière, Brigitte Macron’s youngest daughter, already reported last year that the online harassment suffered by her mother had caused in her “a degradation in her health, as well as in her family and private context.” The president of France’s stepdaughter added then that “I would not wish anyone in this life what she is suffering.”
Brigitte Macron has devoted herself to several causes that particularly interest her, a way to keep her mind occupied and find balance in the face of day-to-day pressure. The First Lady of France dedicates, in particular, much of her time to the Institute of Vocations for Employment and to the Foundation of Hospitals, two commitments that allow her to give meaning to her public role.
Brigitte Macron: the most harassed woman in France
Since the first term of her husband, Brigitte Macron has been the target of numerous attacks and rumors. Labeled by the media in her country as “the most harassed woman in France,” she was harshly criticized at first for her love story with the president, when she was a teacher and he a high school student. There were also countless headlines from the video in which Brigitte seemed to slap her husband, who was obliged to explain the incident.
However, it has been the transphobic conspiracy theory launched by the magazine Faits et Documents, which claimed that she was actually his sister, Jean-Michel Trogneux, that has hurt Brigitte Macron the most. A false news spread by conservative influencer Candace Owens in the United States. “What hurts me is the organization of the rumor. What hurts me is the hate. What hurts me is the lie. And, above all, it is the impact this has on young people,” the first lady confessed in 2024, on TF1’s newscast.
