Welcome to the awesome marriage podcast. I'm your co-host, Christina Dodson. This is an Ask

Dr. Kim segment where people submit their questions for Dr. Kim Kim, and he answers them.

Thanks for listening. Today on the RF segment of Ask Dr. Kim, we have a really difficult question

that was submitted to us. It says, what does and does not constitute

as abuse in marriage? Sometimes I feel like I'm being emotionally and verbally abused, but how do I

know? What a tough question. What a tough topic. But one that we really do need to discuss,

and that is a prevalent issue in our culture today and one that should not be tolerated. So,

Dr. Kim, what is verbal abuse

and then what is emotional abuse? Yeah, I think it is something we have to talk about. I think

it's, you know, sexual abuse has been in the forefront quite a bit. And I think of this is certainly

needs to be part of the topic. And I think it's hard. I think it's hard for even a, and I'm going to say

a woman in situation because it seems to happen more where the male is doing this to his wife.

Sometimes they don't even realize they're being abused because the way it's done. Sometimes the spouse then

will make them feel like, you'll say, no, that's not bad, you know,

all that kind of stuff.

So verbal abuse really, I think, is just putting your spouse down.

It can be cursing at them.

It can be calling them names.

It can be, there's just a number of ways that some can, and some can be very overt,

and I think some can be more subtle, you know,

and, and, but telling someone like, they do something, you say, well, you're so stupid or you

never do anything right. I mean, that's verbal abuse. That's really putting your spouse down.

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