Welcome to the Nakin Marriage podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis. We're so glad you're listening and on this podcast we

address the truth about sex, intimacy and lifelong love. We have got a great topic today and then always stick around for the end because we've got a really,

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You know, sweetie, for most of our marriage, as you know, I have driven really old cars. Yes, partly because I'm just not that into cars, partly because I'm cheap and partly because we've been broke for a lot of our. Yes, we are marriage.

And so one thing I've had to pay attention to, especially in those early years when I was driving the clunkers is the warning light that pops up on the dashboard because when a warning light pops up on your vehicle, it means something is going on under the hood. And in those early days with those old cars, those warning lights would pop up all the time.

And I knew that if I want to keep driving this car, I've got to pay attention to those warning lights. And if I ignore them, something's going to blow up. Now in your marriage, your marriage is of course so much different, so much better than a vehicle in ways that it's hard to even compare the two.

But we're talking about warning lights in this episode. And I do believe that there's kind of this sort of dashboard of your marriage where certain fuel gauges and warning lights need to be paid attention to.

And if your fuel tanks on full, it means you're spending a lot of time together. There's a lot of laughter. There's a lot of good stuff going on, but there are warning lights that can pop up that mean something needs to change. You need to check what's going on under the hood or else there could be a crash.

It's so true. Thinking back to those days when like the check engine light, that's the one I'm just like, it's so ominous. It's like, no, what is it? Because it won't tell you. I know.

Hurts this 20 year old car. Like, oh, why do you have so many problems car? But like that, there were so many years where that would happen. And there's this anxiety that comes along, but there's also this tendency to think, no, you know what? Sometimes less just come on. It's probably nothing. And then we like don't do anything about it. And what happens eventually and I've literally lived this is we end up on the side of the road, having to get a toe and pay all that money to have it to and then there's a bigger problem because we didn't address it. And so that's why we want to talk about like, what is it?

We want to talk about like, what are those things that are huge warning lights when it comes to our marriage? And I want to talk first and foremost about things that we don't necessarily always think of that that can be there. And I think one really big warning is if you find yourself trying to spend less time with your spouse, like trying to not be in the house at the same time, trying to maybe go do stuff with your friends and be away from them as much as possible or or and this is another way we do this, especially for parents, is trying to only.

Just trying to only talk like business talk and then like escape to do something that you have to do right then and there and not really talk about the real things.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that is so easy to fall into. And when we fall into that, we need to take a step back and say, okay, this is essentially a warning light that's popped up. It doesn't mean that it's an emergency, but it could become an emergency if we're not proactive about it. So we need to we need to intentionally continue to invest in our relationship.

And if we found ourselves kind of getting on autopilot, so to speak, our marriage has been on cruise control for too long.

And we've just been going through the motions. We need to take a step back and say, are we are we falling out of touch with each other? And how do we bring that intimacy back?

It's so true. And you know, I do think that the longer you're married and when you have busy work life and you have a children, it's easy to put your marriage on the back burner. And that's that's kind of how we fall into this negative dynamic of not wanting to spend time together.

Because there is this anxiety, just like the warning light bringing on anxiety, when you have that little kind of catch in your heart, where you're like, I really don't want to be with my spouse today.

I don't want to really talk to them. I'd rather just go do my own thing and escape.

You know, it brings on anxiety. But then the thought of actually going and addressing that brings on more anxiety.

And we tell ourselves it really is a lie of the enemy. Well, you know, it's probably nothing. Maybe I should just go watch TV or maybe I should just go get myself enthralled in this project at the house or maybe I should just go, you know, escape with the kids.

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