Welcome to the Awesome Marriage Podcast, a place for honest conversations about marriage and how to have the relationship that God has designed for you.

I am your co-host, Christina Dodson. On the show will be our host, Dr. Kim Kimberling and Nill Smith.

To engage with the Awesome Marriage podcast, use the hashtag Awesome Marriage.

This week on the podcast, we're doing a mini series on three tips to communicating well in marriage.

We will be going over one tip each day that will help you better communicate in your marriage.

Today's tip for better communication is make it safe for your spouse to talk to you.

So Dr. Kim, why is this important?

Why is it important that we make it safe for our spouse to talk to you. So Dr. Kim, why is this important? Why is it important that we make it

safe for our spouse to talk to us? I think the thing that I just looked at, what I want to do

with Nancy, I wanted to be her first choice from a conversation. And so I wanted us to have an

atmosphere. And I kind of learned it the hard way. It wasn't like I just said, okay, we're getting engaged, getting married, and I want her to be a first choice. But I saw that she wanted me to be her first

choice, that she really, I was the one she wanted to go through to. So I had to learn to make that

a safe place for her. And we had done pretty good for that. We communicated a lot before we dated.

And so, but I think that as couples look at that, is your, are you the first

choice of your spouse to go to to talk about things to communicate with, whether it's a problem or to

share something or whatever? And you want that be safe so that that's where they go first. Yeah, I agree.

And I think, I think it should just kind of like your household and your spouse really should be like a sanctuary for you or refuge for you. Like those are the two words that I think of when I think of what do I want my home and my husband to be to me and what do I want to be to him. And so I do. I think it I think it's really important. And I think what often happens because I agree. I think most couples do this really well when they're dating

and in the beginning of marriage because they're so infatuated with each other and they're just

talking all the time. So it's natural that you feel safe talking to the person because you're

always constantly talking to them. But I think where a lot of couples start to go wrong is a few years

into marriage when they get complacent and then all of a sudden they aren't

doing these these practices that make it safe to talk to one another and all of a sudden they're

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