Mrs. Obama’s difficulties illuminate some of the president’s central challenges in the White House, including how the Obamas’ freshness to political life, a selling point in 2008, became a liability in office. Her worries about his staff point to a chief executive with little management experience who clung to an inner circle less united than it appeared. (Mr. Emanuel’s relationship with the president grew so strained that the chief of staff secretly offered to resign in early 2010; Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, had a tense relationship with Mrs. Obama and with Valerie Jarrett, another adviser). She shared the president’s ambivalence about political chores and the back-patting and schmoozing that can help get things done in Washington.

Like many of the president’s supporters, Mrs. Obama was anxious about the gap between her vision of her husband’s presidency and the reality of what he could deliver. Her strains with the advisers were part of a continuing debate over what sort of president Mr. Obama should be, with Mrs. Obama reinforcing his instincts for ambitious but unpopular initiatives like the overhaul of health care and immigration laws, casting herself as a foil to aides more intent on preserving Congressional seats and poll numbers.

“She does think there are worse things than losing an election,” Susan S. Sher, the first lady’s former chief of staff, said shortly after the 2010 midterm elections. “Being true to yourself, for her, is definitely more important.” Back then, Mrs. Obama sometimes talked about what would happen if her husband lost in 2012. “I know we’ll be fine,” she told Ms. Sher.

Deep Frustrations

As Michelle Obama realized over the summer and fall of 2008 that she was likely to become first lady, she asked a question that probably would have surprised outsiders: could she and her children delay moving to the White House? Perhaps it was better, she told aides and friends, to remain in Chicago until the end of the school year, giving her children more time to adjust, rather than coming right at the inauguration. Her notion, though short-lived, was telling: she didn’t understand or care what sort of message it would send to a public enthralled by the new first family, and she had trepidations about life in the spotlight, let alone the prospect of residing in a monument-museum-office-military compound-terrorist target-home.

She ultimately decided to go to Washington immediately, not because of the obligations of office, but because of “wanting her family to be together,” Ms. Jarrett said.

Even as Mrs. Obama dazzled Americans with her warmth, glamour and hospitality early in the presidency, she was also deeply frustrated and insecure about her place in the White House, said aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity, out of concern about discussing internal strife.

The first couple declined to be interviewed.

A Harvard-trained lawyer, she had given up her career for what initially seemed to her a shapeless post, and she tried to wriggle out of some ceremonial events that she saw as not having much purpose, including the annual luncheon for Congressional spouses held by the first lady since 1912. She tried to limit her public exposure, saying she would work only two days a week; inside the White House, the difficulty of getting Mrs. Obama to agree to doing an event became a running joke.