Is Your Marriage in Crisis?

When the holidays start to feel a bit repetitive, reach for a Sprite Winter Spiced Cranberry and put your twist on tradition. A bold cranberry and winter spice flavor fusion Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry is a refreshing way to shake things up this sipping season, and only for a limited time. Sprite obey your thirst. Hello and welcome to the Naked Marriage podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis, and on this podcast we undress the truth about sex, intimacy and lifelong love. And we are talking about what to do when your marriage is in crisis today. And this is such an important topic because I think so many people deal with this and they honestly don't know what to do. And so we're gonna get really practical and talk about some signs that you are in crisis and what to do to make your marriage stronger.

Yeah, that's right. It's a really, really important issue. But even if your marriage isn't in crisis, still listen to this episode because we're gonna give you some tools to help the couples in your life who might be in crisis and God might use you like in a story we're going to share to really make a difference and possibly even save. Be part of saving a friend's marriage and so listen to it yourself. And then be willing to share this episode with anyone in your life whose marriage might be hurting. Before we dive in, though, I want to share one quick review. Thank you. For those who subscribe and review this podcast, your reviews on itunes and other places are helping people discover the important messages we're sharing here. One from August 27, 2019. The title of it, I loved it. It said, I said no, no, no, exc. But then the review said five stars, but I listened anyway. You guys are awesome. What a great and honest delivery. You know, I think some people are skeptical of listening to a marriage podcast. They have some preconceived notions of what it's going to be. But those who give it a chance, you know, we're so delighted and encouraged by the feedback you guys send our way. It really fuels us to keep going. So thank you for emailing us. Thank you for reviewing. Thank you guys for being part of this community. So let's dive into today's episode.

I'm so glad that we're talking about this topic today because I think that there's so many people out there who are suffering silently and they are going through their day. They're putting on a happy face. They're putting Facebook posts acting like everything is okay. They're putting the pretty pictures on Instagram. But really inside, they feel like their marriage is over, and they feel like they're the only ones dealing with whatever marriage problem they're dealing with. And I just want to tell you, if you're listening to this right now, you're taking, you know, a step in the right direction first and foremost, because you are investing in your marriage just by listening to this podcast. But I also want to level with you and just tell you that you are not alone, that that is a lie of the enemy. I feel like that's one of the biggest lies he tries to put in our minds is that we're the only ones or that we're doomed. And, you know, nobody else would be dealing with this if there was any hope for your marriage. You know, you wouldn't be thinking these thoughts or doing these things. And that's just a lie. You know, we serve a God who just makes masterpieces out of messes. And, you know, I wouldn't want to relive some of the stuff that Dave and I have gone through that we go into great detail about in the Naked Marriage book. But I am so thankful that we went through it, because I literally saw God just create a masterpiece out of a mess right before my very eyes. But it happens in a process, and it takes a lot of time, a lot longer than we ever think it will take. But there is hope. So we're gonna talk about today. What do you do when your marriage, you know, is in crisis? Like what? What do you do in the day to day, practically speaking? And one of the first things I wanna talk about, and Dave's gonna chime in here, is we need to be very, very careful not to fall into what I like to refer to as mental rabbit holes. And these are these thought trails that we can fall into where we start thinking about all the what ifs. Like, what if I was with that person? I bet I wouldn't be feeling this way. I bet he would never treat me this way. I bet she would never do that to me. And we start trolling people on Facebook. We start kind of secretly checking out that old flame in high school or whatever, and we start imagining a life without our spouse. We also can start making negative assumptions when we fall into mental rabbit holes. We start assuming the worst of our spouse instead of assuming the best. And that can really get us into a lot of trouble. And that's very easy to do that because it could be the littlest thing, like, oh, you're late because you don't care about me. You're late because you're valuing your work over your family. You're late because you wanted to be late because you didn't want to see me. You didn't want to come home. You didn't want to hear about all the things that, you know, that you're supposed to do. And you're just leaving on me and thinking, I'm going to take care of this. And we just start falling into these mental rabbit holes. And so I share that, because when we identify those mental rabbit holes that we're falling into, then we can kind of start to dig our way out of those, because we need to dig our way out of those in order to kind of get to the place where we can address what's really going on inside of us.

Yeah, that's so important. And in past episodes, we've. We've kind of talked about specific circumstances that can lead to crisis in marriage. You know, we've talked about infidelity episode how to Affair, Proof your Marriage, Part two, which is all about what to do after infidelity. We've talked about some specific examples that lead to crisis. But in this episode, it's. It's broader. We're not going to focus so much on the specific circumstances that led to the crisis that you're in. We just want to give you some tools and some hope and some perspective to help lead you out of the crisis that you are in. And it's our hope that if you're listening to this right now, that you will. A few minutes from now, when we wrap, by the time we wrap up, you'll have some tools, you'll have some new thoughts that can help lead you to a place that ultimately will bring some healing. And so we're going to give you some warning things of what not to do in the very delicate situation when the marriage feels like it's hanging on by a thread. And we're also going to give you some very proactive things that you. That you can do no matter how bad the struggle might seem. Because when you're struggling, it's easy to believe a lot of lies, that this is never going to work. We never should have been together. It's hopeless to keep trying, falling into those rabbit holes that Ashley was talking about. And we want to help you to climb out of those rabbit holes. And we want to help you get on a path that can ultimately lead to healing. Because in the work that we do over and over and over again, we see miracle stories happen. We see that we have a God who brings dead things back to life. And those dead things can be marriages. We have so many people in our lives who have a strong, healthy, thriving marriage. Who at one time felt like their marriage was dead. Who at one time felt like there's no hope. We're beyond the point of hope. They had divorce attorneys on speed dial, and now those same couples are leading other couples into a path of healing. If you don't give up. And so we don't want to minimize the pain you're feeling. We don't want to just throw kind of cliches at you and kind of Hallmark card sounding Christian cliches that take away the pain you're feeling. We want to acknowledge that you're in a place that's really a struggle. And it's dark and it's hard, but you're not there alone. Bible says God is close to the brokenhearted. He rescues those whose spirits are crushed. You might feel alone in your marriage, but you're not alone because he is with you. And even if your spouse isn't currently joining you in the fight to save the marriage, and there are things you can do, you know, ultimately it will eventually take your spouse joining you in that fight to totally restore the marriage. But still, you don't have to wait for your spouse to come around for you to start being proactive and doing some things that are going to lead to healing. And that's some of what we're going to talk about today.

That's right. I think one of the ways that you can be proactive is by really kind of giving yourself some boundaries, some healthy boundaries in place, especially when you're hurting. Because when we're hurting, we tend to overlook things because all we see is our pain. And it's really hard to see past it sometimes. And we get really lonely. You know, when you're going through a struggle in your marriage and you feel like maybe your spouse is the one inflicting the pain, you know, they're the ones who have created the trouble that you're in, you know, in your mind. And maybe they did create it. Maybe they very well did create it. But, you know, when that happens and we're hurting, we tend to want to find someone, you know, to kind of fulfill what our spouse should be doing, to be that shoulder to cry on, to be that safe place to go to. And the boundary that we need to have in place is we need to resist the urge to share this struggle or anything else with, you know, a friend in quotation marks. Okay. Of the opposite Sex. And I know we've talked about this briefly on other podcasts, but I just want to talk about this because we see this, you know, really cause trouble in marriages that we're already struggling, and then it kind of takes them further down into, you know, more. More of a struggle, and eventually maybe even breaking up the marriage. We've literally seen this kind of thing in marriages. And so you have to be so careful about not going to that person at work that you find easy to talk to. Because when it comes to this quote, unquote, friendship of the opposite sex, you know, when you start to get close, like we always say, intimacy first starts with conversation. There's nowhere else for it to go. And a lot of times people fall into this very innocently. They're just looking for someone to talk to. They're looking for someone to. Who doesn't make them feel lonely, who makes them feel beautiful, who really pours into them and encourages them. And before you know it, they just consider that person a friend. But they start to kind of feel this connection, a heart to heart connection with this person, and then it becomes physical. And whenever we've, you know, had a couple that we're talking to, when we look in their eyes and they're talking about how they had an affair and they never meant to do this, and they can't believe they did this, they always say, I just thought that person was a friend. I was just going them because they were my friend. And I just never intended on being here. I never thought I could do something like this. But that's what happens when we don't set boundaries, man.

It's so, so important who you're talking to. When your marriage is in struggle, crisis, you're exhausted, your defenses are down, you're vulnerable in a lot of different ways. And the voices that you allowed to speak into your situation will have an immense impact on the future of your life and your marriage. And so if you're surrounding yourself not only with the opposite sex, the danger of that opposite sex friend, but the core of people you're talking to. They might be people that you've known and trusted a long time, same sex friends, but they might not appreciate or respect marriage, they might not appreciate or respect your spouse. They might think they're helping you by being a safe place for you to vent, but really what they're doing is they're reinforcing some toxic mindsets that are gonna propel you down the wrong path. And so you need to surround yourself. Ashley always has kind of a Great criteria. For those who you need to give permission to speak into your marriage, they have to do four things. They have to, number one, love you. Number two, love your spouse. Number three, before your marriage. And number four, well, they need to.

As Christians, as believers, we want to make sure that they too, love God, they love the Lord, because if they don't, they're going to have different kinds of values.

Yeah, those four criteria are huge. And if they're missing any one of those four, it's like four legs of a table. If any one of them are missing, the whole table could collapse. And so you've got to find people that have all four of those.

And.

And so if you're surrounding yourself with people who love you, but they don't love your spouse, maybe they love you and they love God, but they don't love your spouse. And they're not really for your marriage. Well, that's not a stable foundation. And they're not going to give you stable advice. And so you've got to start there. You've got to give your marriage every opportunity to thrive. And that can only happen when you're listening to the right voices. Because again, when you're exhausted, you're wounded, you're frustrated, you are so vulnerable right now, more so than you even realize. And so you've gotta be very intentional about the voices you're listening to.

You know, And I do think a lot of times when we're hurting, we just wanna have somebody say, you know, girl, he should, you know, you deserve better. He should never treat you this way. Or, you know, man, I mean, she's always just kinda not been the girl that I saw you with. We just wanna listen to voices that are telling us what we wanna hear. But really, a true friend is going to tell you the truth. That's all over the Bible. It talks about true friends telling you the truth in love and being willing to say the hard things. And it's not easy. It's not easy to be that friend. I've had to be that friend before. And I promise you, I was wrestling with God, like, God, really? Do I really need to tell her this truth? Because she's not gonna like it.

Well, tell that story. Cause I do think that that story, you know, which is, you know, real life for us. And we just saw this couple pop up on Facebook celebrating a birthday. Yes.

They're so precious.

You know, it just makes me smile because I know how close they were. They were to the place where they thought, it's over, it's Done. You know, no hard feelings, we're just going to go our separate ways and go on with our lives. But because they didn't, because they had the right people speaking into them, they stayed together, they've had another child since then. And now they appear to be in like craziest place in the marriage that they've ever been. But during that darkest time when they were so vulnerable, listening to the right voices made all the difference. So, sweetie, you were one of those right voices. Tell us that story.

Yeah, so my friend, we were going on a girls trip and I happened to ride with this friend of mine and we were just laughing together. And all of a sudden it got real quiet in the car. And she said, I want to tell you something because I don't want you to hear it from anybody else. And I want to tell you that my husband and I, we've decided we're getting a divorce. And I'm like gasping like, oh my gosh, what happened? Did he cheat on you? Is he hurting you? What happened? Had he been lying to you? And she's like, no, no, no, no, no, he's a great guy. You know, he did nothing wrong, but we've just grown apart and I just don't really think I'm in love with him anymore. And you know, we both have just decided it's probably best that we get divorced. And at that moment, I mean, my heart was sinking because I do love God. I love her, I love her spouse and I'm for her marriage. So I mean, I'm just brokenhearted for her. And I'm thinking about her kids and I'm thinking about all the good that I know is there in their future for their marriage if they would just work things out. And so, you know, in that moment I really, it was just a move of the Holy Spirit kind of pricking my heart saying, ashley, you have an opportunity right now to speak to your friend, to speak some hard truth to your friend and encourage her to fight for her marriage. And honestly, at that moment, this particular friend of mine is one of my more strong willed friends and opinionated friends. She's one of those that she's gonna tell you the hard truth or whatever's on her mind no matter what. And I just thought, oh gosh, you know, I'm non confrontational. I don't know if I wanna say this to this friend cause she's not gonna like it. But it was like I just felt such a strong presence of the Holy Spirit saying, this is a moment that I want you to speak to her. You don't need to worry about how she's gonna react. I'm gonna deal with her in that. But you need to speak truth to her. And so I did. And I said, listen, I love you guys. I'm so sorry you've reached this hard point in your marriage, But I really think that you're not giving this all you can and you're not allowing God to do the miracle in your marriage that he could. You know, have you tried going to this particular counselor? Have you read this book? Because this really helped Dave and I. Have you gone to the small groups at your church that are for people who are fighting for their marriage? And every time, she would be like, no, you know, I haven't tried that. And little by little, it was like, as we talked, she started opening up more to fighting for her marriage. And it's not anything I said. I know it was the work of God, because I probably was stumbling all over my words at that time. But as we went on that trip, it was only over two days. My other friend was there, and she shared the news with our other friend. And my other friend spoke the same truth to her. Because she, too, loves God, loves our friend, loves her spouse, and is for her marriage. And then at one point on that trip, we all prayed for her and prayed that God would help her to find the courage to fight for her marriage and that she would help her husband to fight for the marriage, and they would find the help that they needed. And, you know, in those weeks and those months that followed, God did a miracle in my friend's heart and in her husband's heart. And they did the hard work. You know, it's never easy. It took more time than they thought it would take. And it took going to the counselor. It took committing themselves to speaking to each other with respect and not falling into old habits of communication. It took them joining that small group at church that is working on marriages. Even when they had every excuse in the world not to go because they had ball games or they had, you know, they were too tired or they had work stuff, they made the commitment to fight for their marriage, and God did the rest. And I just. I tell you that story because we know so many stories like that, like that. I mean, that's one of my favorite parts of what we do, is we see this all the time. But you may not know that you listening to this might be right in the same spot that my friend was all those years ago. Cause this was, like 12 years ago. Okay, this was probably about 12, 12.

Or 16 years ago, it was a while back.

And I just wanna encourage you in saying, you know, it always. It looks darkest before the dawn. You know, I know that is kind of a cheesy thing to say, but it's the truth. Things usually get a little worse before they get better. And this happens in counseling too. Like when you go to counseling, those first few sessions, you're gonna be like, why are we doing this? We are not meant to be together. This is so yucky. But what it is, is you're getting out all the infection, so to speak, that is in your marriage, all the nasty stuff that needs to come out so that God can clean it out and heal it and heal your hearts and help you to talk to each other in a more respectful manner, to help you see each other with his fresh eyes instead of eyes of hurt and eyes of assumptions. And so I just wanna encourage you to let today be a changing day for you and know that it's not all gonna change at once. It never does. It's a process. But God will work through that process. And you'll look back on that and say, you know what? I don't want to go through that again. But I'm so glad brought me through it because we would never be as close as we are today if we hadn't walked through that together.

He will. He will bring beauty to those ashes. He will make it part of your testimony and you can get through this. And you might think, but no, we've tried everything and it hasn't worked. But the truth is, you know, you haven't tried everything. It's what you've been doing isn't working. And you're probably continuing to try to do the same things. It's the definition of insanity trying the same thing over and over, expecting for different results. So you need something new. That something new can very often come through counseling, like Ashley mentioned. But like she mentioned very wisely, counseling will often make things feel worse before it gets better. But that's part of the healing process. That's a doctor cutting out the cancerous tumor. It hurts to get cut, but it's healing because you're removing the tumor so that the healing can begin. I would encourage you to consider a marriage intensive. You know, you can find look up marriage intensive. They offer them all over the country. In the Wind Shape center near Atlanta, Georgia. We've been there. They do a great intensive. It's a multi day focused experience to help you in a very short period of time, get on the right track and work through that period of crisis and move forward. And we're just, you know, here is, we're not trying to encourage you to stay in a situation that's dangerous or toxic or abusive. If you're right now, like, but, you know, I'm being beat up by my, you know, alcoholic spouse. That's not what we're talking about. You need to get safe. And if your spouse is in a toxic, violent place, you might need to create some separation to protect yourself. You've got to be safe. We're not. We're not trying to enable abusers. We're certainly not trying to keep you in a toxic situation like that. But what we're talking about is the vast majority of divorces where it's two people who simply feel like we can't make it work and so we're going to give up. And that's where most people listening are right now. They're saying, we can't make it work. We married the wrong person. We gave this a good shot. It's time to throw in the towel. And what we're challenging you to do is to just look at the things that are in your power to do that haven't been done yet. And you can find that through counseling. You can find that through those intensives. You can find that through surrounding yourself by the right voices. You can find it through praying with and for each other. You can find it through communicating in new ways. You can find it through just trying to dream together again, trying to get past just the survival mode. Because we're not just talking about the win here, isn't just avoiding divorce and surviving as a couple. It's thriving as a couple. It's actually enjoying each other. It's being lovers and best friends and partners in every sense of the word, and then having a mission together where you're changing the world together. You can still do those things, but it's going to take work to get there.

It will. And I also want to mention another resource that might be of great help to you. And we have marriage coaches here at Marriage Today. And these ladies are amazing. And they are counselors who can talk to you via Skype if you're not local. But if you're local and in the DFW area, you can also schedule a time to come to the Marriage Today offices and speak with them. So if you want information on talking to a marriage coach here at Marriage Today, you can go to marriagetoday.com coaches. And I promise you, they are awesome. And they can definitely move you in the right direction.

Yes. Those coaches, they're an amazing resource, and they do a great job. And so, yes, take advantage of that. Now, there's this kind of a serious question that we do get. I want to address kind of real briefly, and that's couples who write in and say, well, how do you just know when it's over? You know, when to throw in the towel? And I hate to give any criteria there because I've seen, God save so many marriages after people would have thought that it was over. So how do you know when it's over? I feel like it has to be a long and consistent pattern of really, truly dangerous and destructive and reckless behavior on the part of one of the spouses without any indication that they have any intent to repent or change or amend their ways. And when you just don't feel safe with that person physically, emotionally, over a period of time that you know that that might be. Might be when it's time to. To create some separation. What I have seen, though, is that most couples separate way too early. They separate, you know, believing the myth that we're going to separate to try to work things out once you separate, unless it's for physical safety for, you know, for a time. Separation isn't a way to heal the marriage. Separation is just. It's a big step toward divorce. And to give you a quick kind of parallel metaphor to the human body, like, if your pinky finger was broken, you wouldn't chop it off and put it in a drawer and say, I'm going to separate you from the body until you're healed. And then once you're healed, we'll reattach you. Now, once you separate it, it dies. If your pinky's broken, what you do is you bind it even more closely to the finger next to it. I think that marriage is in a similar way. If you separate from your spouse, you do so kind of knowing that this is a step not toward healing, but toward the marriage dying. And what we need to do is actually bind ourselves together even more closely so that we can continue working together. We need to stay in the same bed, you know, even if we're kind of curled up on opposite sides of it. We need to stay in the same bed. We need to stay in the same house. We need to work this out in the same home for the sake of our marriage, for the sake of our family. And again, I'm talking about situations where there's not this violent abuse where you're feeling in physical danger. But when it's just a matter of, oh, we can't stand to be around each other, I think that it's well worth working through the issue and staying in the same home.

Definitely. And I think, you know, Dave kind of touched on this. When you feel like you just don't even want to be around your spouse. Like, we'll often hear all we do is fight, so we just need to end this, because all we do is fight. What that usually means is that you're trying to communicate in the same way over and over again. And you really just need to try another way of communication to kind of recalibrate, so to speak. And so what we often encourage couples who are in this predicament to do is, is to write down their feelings. Because if you feel like every time you're around your spouse, there's just this intensity between you guys so thick that you could cut it with a knife, you might need to just step away for a few minutes, pray, write down your feelings, then look at it, read it, and then write it down again in a much nicer way. And then when you're calm, hand that to your spouse and say, listen, I don't wanna fight anymore. Here's how I'm feeling. What you'll find is, in that writing exercise, it really gets to the heart of what's really bothering you. Because when you're fighting and just lashing out at each other and yelling at each other and calling each other names, it gets lost in the fight. What's really going on? The real issue, the real thing that needs to be addressed, gets lost in just the symptoms of kind of how you're feeling. And so it's really important to find out what is it that's bothering me? Why am I so angry with my spouse? Why am I so disappointed and frustrated? And when you write it down, you can really get it on paper. And I just encourage you to write it down several times until you address that issue head on. So you're not sugarcoating it, you're addressing it head on. But you're doing it in the most respectful and loving way possible. And then you give that to your spouse and then have your spouse do the same thing. And then eventually you guys come together and talk about this calmly. But when you hand them a note, they can also take time to think about it. Because a lot of times couples, I feel like they get into more of a fight because one spouse doesn't have the reaction time that the other spouse has. Like, maybe one spouse is really strong at forming an argument. And so they're just lashing right back. Whereas the other is one that needs to maybe think on things a little bit more before forming their thoughts. And so, you know, if your spouse just needs to think about it, that doesn't mean they don't care. It's that they're trying to gather their thoughts and really think about, well, I didn't even realize I was doing this. How do I talk to her about this? How do I talk to him about this? And how do I even change this? Because I didn't realize this was. This was a problem. And so give your spouse time to process and to address the issue. And, you know, you'll find that you can finally sit down and talk. I also do think that, you know, this is a place too, where. Where you have a home, where it's just a constant fight. It's really unhealthy for the kids. And that is one reason many people will give for separating or for divorcing is like, well, we can't really talk without a fight, so we should just separate and go our separate ways. Cause it's unhealthy for the kids. But instead of doing that, I really encourage you, get a counselor and have that person kind of mediate between the two of you. Try this writing exercise. I mean, there's so many other things you can try before saying, like, it's over. I think so many times we're just uncomfortable and we're frustrated and we don't see a way where this is going to work. And so we just get tired and we're like, I'm out. But the bottom line is there's so many things you can do to bring more harmony, to bring more understanding. We just have to be willing to do the work and to try something different.

Man, that's good advice, guys. We've got a lot of articles and different resources to kind of help you dive deeper into this. Ashley's written several of them. Of them, one's called when youn Marriage is Hanging on by a Thread. One is four reasons you and your spouse aren't on the same page. You can find all these articles@marriagetoday.com along with a lot of other resources, including links to our live events and other things as well. Black Friday savings are here at the Home Depot, which means it's time to add new cordless power to your collection. Right now, when you buy a savings battery kit from one of our top brands like Ryobi or Milwaukee, you'll get a Select tool from that same brand for free. Click into one of our best deals of the season and stock up on tools for all your upcoming projects. Get Black Friday savings happening now at the Home Depot limit 1 per transaction exclusion supply full eligible tool list in store and online.

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All right, so we're going to transition into the Q and A time, you know, we could talk about the kind of the these issues, you know, all day because again, we know if your marriage is struggling, your marriage is in crisis. You know, one podcast episode isn't going to be a magic wand to solve everything. But we hope that this is going to start some new thoughts and new conversations and maybe point you to some of the other resources that we mentioned. So before we wrap up today, though, today's Q and A. And again, you can submit questions for the Q and a segment@nakedmarriagepodcast.com so here is the question. What if you feel like you and your spouse are giving everyone their best and you get the rest? Now, this is a big one. We talk about a lot. How do you give your spouse your best and not your leftovers? Sweetie, what are your thoughts?

This is a big one, you know, and I think it's so easy to fall into this negative dynamic. I mean, we've certainly had seasons where we could fall into this, you know, because you're tired and your spouse is the closest person to you and should be the closest person to you. So sometimes because they are the closest person, they can get kind of the brunt of our frustration and our anger instead of getting the best of us. So, you know, I would just encourage you when you come home. And this is something that Dave, years ago committed to, and I really challenged myself to do the same thing. Try not to be on your phone right when you walk in the door. Try not to be on your phone so that when you walk in that door, you can greet your spouse and you can ask them about their day. So every time you come home, every time you walk into the room, greet your spouse. You know, I remember, I think I read an article not too long ago where it talked about, you know, I remember the day that he didn't acknowledge me when I walked in the room. And that was the day that things started going bad in our marriage. And it broke my heart when I read that. But I thought, you know what? As simple as that is, that is definitely a red flag.

Yeah. Wow, that really is.

It really is.

Those little things, they seem subtle, but they're so important.

It is. And it's like, you're not giving. You're giving your leftovers. You're like, oh, there you are. Same old, you know, no big deal. And we just start making assumptions, and, you know, we'll be so sweet to a perfect stranger on the street or somebody in the grocery line. And then we just, like, shrug when our spouse walks by. That's a problem.

That is a problem. As soon as I see you in the morning, I want to grab you and kiss you. I don't care if you brush those teeth yet.

Oh, goodness, no.

We've got to keep doing those little things.

Yes. And they make a huge difference. I mean, just like, I love it when Dave's eyes light up when I come in a room or if he smiles at me. He always wakes up a little bit before I do. Because our youngest, Chatham, is always like, daddy, Daddy, Daddy, get up. And so he gets up with chatham, and about 15 minutes later, I'll get up. And every time I walk into the kitchen, he says, hey, sweetie. Gives me a big hug. And then Chatham says, hey, mommy. Good morning. And so not only is it making your spouse feel good, your kids are watching how you acknowledge your husband, how you acknowledge your wife. And they see, like, is that important? Is it important to just greet each other? And I would say the longer you're married, it's even more important. So just, you know, showing each other that you care and not assuming that your spouse knows how you feel. Not assuming your spouse knows that you're happy to see them because they don't know that. I mean, you need to acknowledge their existence. Notice the new haircut. Notice the new shirt. You know, say, you're looking so good today, and I love you. You know, say those things that you said when you were dating. Continue saying those same things in your marriage and not just, you know, kind of grunt around each other and just go about your day when you've never really even locked eyes all day long.

Man, that's good advice. We've got a lot more to say on these topics. You know, we address these. These kinds of questions in a lot of detail in past podcast episodes at our live events@exomarriage.com and at the articles that we write@marriagetoday.com and so guys, you can check all that out as well as that Marriage on the Rock book that we just told you about, which kind of addresses making each other a priority as well. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. Kind of a heavy topic, but an important topic and we appreciate you sticking with us. So you can help spread the word about these important topics and issues we address by subscrib yourself to this podcast on, on itunes, Spotify, Google play, you know, YouTube, wherever you happen to be listening, leave reviews. Those reviews help others discover it and then share. Spread the word. You know, so many people that reach out to us because they've been impacted by this podcast say that they discovered it because a friend told them about it and so be willing to spread the word.

That's right. We hope you guys join us next time. Bye Bye.