Welcome to the awesome marriage podcast, a place for honest conversations about marriage and practical advice on how to build an awesome marriage.

I am your co-host, Christina Dodson.

On the show will be our host, Dr. Kim Kimberling.

Dr. Kim is a marriage counselor and has been married for over 50 years.

His passion is to help you strengthen your most intimate relationship.

One common theme we keep hearing from our couples at Asa Marriage is that life and marriage

has been more difficult because all of all the really intense things our country and

our world went through last year and is still going through. It seems like we are still on

edge and being on edge because of that I feel like a lot of us are extra vulnerable,

extra emotional and extra defensive. I think all this anxiety and angst has made us quite prickly. Because we felt the

sharp pain of the metaphorical pins and needles in many ways, we are now walking around with pins

and needles unintentionally hurting those around us with our own prickliness, just like a porcupine.

I mean, after all, where is the reset button after last year? Don't we all need it?

Can I get an amen? Yes. Well, today we're going to be talking about that prickliness and trying

to help you evaluate if maybe you're experiencing some of this in your own marriage and most

importantly, how to work through it if you are. Awesome. So first of all, Dr. Graham, I thought it would be important

to just kind of say that it's totally okay to be in pain. It's totally okay to be hurt and to feel

things and to be upset. Being upset is not the sin. Hurting others because we are upset is. So what are

some healthy ways that we can deal with our pain?

Yeah, and I love what you said about it isn't sin when we feel those things. That's how we handle it.

And I think that's so important because I think some people really put themselves down and

caught up in the thing and really punish themselves because they have those thoughts or those

...