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Please Pray for Marriages

Daniel Dick — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:29:17 +0000

People who care pray. That is not meant to be judgmental or unkind but to bring attention to our need to pray and take action for the sake of children so they won’t have to grow up in broken families or violent or angry or troubled families.
If you care, then you are already doing something about this problem. If you care, you will not let these things remain unopposed. How do I know? Well, you’re here reading this? That’s taking action. That’s caring!

Have you asked God for help? Have you spent time with Him seeking answers to prayer? If you’re not getting results do you give up or do you care enough to ask why your prayers are not answered?
Will you pray for your children? Will you pray for your parents? Will you pray for your spouse?
Knowing that those who are dishonest and unfaithful in marriage will perish into hell if they don’t repent, will you pray for them?
Will you pray for marriage ministries to grow in success? Will you contribute to their success somehow? If you know divorce and adultery break Jesus’ heart, will you pray or offer yourself to Him to be used to help bring healing?
Will you pray?

Please Pray for Marriages originally appeared on www.family-fanatics.com on November 15, 2009.

Welcome to Family Fanatics

Daniel Dick — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:39:17 +0000

How is your marriage?
I almost cringe to ask that question because many who come to this site come here looking for help. Some people are wonder

Can I save my marriage?”
If adultery is involved, is it too late?
Should I get a divorce?
Where can I find help to save my marriage?
What can I do about child custody?
What can I do about child support?
What is parental alienation syndrome?

This site is here to help you find answers to these questions. It is also here to help people who want to join together and bring changes to some corrupt laws such as

Unilateral no-fault divorce that favors the unfaithful
Federal funding for child support enforcement that in essence bribes the courts to favor the unfaithful and the stronger potential payer.
Corruption that pays attorneys to lose their client’s cases
Corruption that drags the faithful into court to be threatened with the loss of everything precious, then uses that to extort protection money in the form of attorney fees
Corruption that threatens you, your children, your loved ones

Your senators and your representatives could speak out against this very obvious and very widespread corruption, but they are afraid. They are afraid of the power of a very large legal community who prospers from the destruction of children’s families.
If we do not speak up, if we do not protest loudly, if we do not bring substantial political pressure to overcome this corruption, then it will remain as it has been for the past 35 years, and millions of families, faithful parents, and children will suffer.
And you can be sure it will affect you.

Welcome to Family Fanatics originally appeared on www.family-fanatics.com on October 29, 2009.

Breaking the Vicious Cycle of Addiction and Divorce

Daniel Dick — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:06:15 +0000

One thing divorce and substance abuse have in common is they are both bad solutions to ordinary problems.
In fact, neither substance abuse nor divorce are solutions. They are escapes. When people sign up for marriage, they sign up to be warriors of love, honoring, cherishing, making choices to seek wisdom to create a family together with somebody and bless that family with love.

Some people honor and love sincerely and courageously and stay in the battle. They pray. They serve. They seek what will bring the greatest good to the family. They care.
Some people see others as possessions for pleasure. Those “assets” or “possessions” who do not comply and bring instant gratification continually can be discarded at will. The promise of marriage to them are nothing but a means of acquisition of pleasure and comfort of marriage. When marriage and family become inconvenient, they run from the battle.
Substance abuse is another way of numbing pain. Sometimes people do this so they can gain strength to face a problem straight on and bring it to resolution. That is not a very good approach because it leads to dependency and addiction. They’re enslaved. When the difficulties of the responsibilities of the family and the world come upon them, they would rather escape through self medication than benefit from facing responsibilities head on and resolving problems.
In a marriage, any kind of addiction can lead to a vicious cycle where the addiction causes marital problems and marital problems cause pain that drives the addict to run to his or her addiction to numb the pain of marital problems.
The solution is so obvious. Break the cycle. But rather than taking positive action to bring this cycle to a close, the couple play ping pong with blame. We hear people use the phrase, “You drove me to drink” or “You are going to drive me to drink”. That would be a veiled threat if it were veiled. It’s a way of saying, “If you don’t stop doing what I hate and begin giving me what I want, I’m going to grab a bottle of whiskey and get snockered”.
Can you see that all of this is a struggle to manipulate and control and gain power over another person through misbehavior?
In a family, boundaries are vital to trust, love, happiness, and health. And, one element of love and courage is the willingness to put away all forms of abuse, dishonesty, and illegitimate control. First, we have to face the situations where we might be tempted to resort to those inappropriate ways and decide to refuse the temptation and deny that temptation any victory. We have to decide not to do anything except through honorable means even if it seems we are the only ones behaving honorably.
Second, we have to make a deliberate, conscious decision not to comply with this kind of controlling behavior no matter what the cost is. We have to refuse to have anything to do with revenge or teaching someone else a lesson and we need to learn to be happy with doing the right thing and lovingly refusing to bail the offender out of his or her consequences for bad behavior. If you have a spouse who escalates to infinity, you may have to separate. You may have to call the police and report a crime. If you have children, it may behoove you to refuse to allow any illegal drugs into your house and make it clear that any found will be reported to police, but you will be happy to stand by your spouse through a drug rehabilitation program.
I wish I could say courage has no costs, but like any precious jewel, courage usually costs, but the costs are nothing compared to the benefits of a courageous heart of love. Courage is a willingness to put up with present pain and danger for the sake of righteousness and a better long term result.
If you want to have a good marriage and a good family, courage is a must-have. Without it, family life degenerates.

Breaking the Vicious Cycle of Addiction and Divorce originally appeared on www.family-fanatics.com on May 16, 2008.

Will Children Be OK if we Handle DivorceLike Grown Ups?

Daniel Dick — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:13:04 +0000

Divorce — The Worst Child Abuse
Depriving children of the faithful love between their parents is as abusive as depriving them of food, clothing, water, and air. Too many times adults try to comfort themselves with the notion that the children will be OK, but that does nothing at all for the children and only helps sooth the consciences of their unfaithful and unloving parents.
What if somebody threw scalding hot water into the face of a child an said, “Children are resilient and heal quickly?”
Yet we throw scalding hot divorces into the face of our children and say, “Children are resilient and will be OK if we handle this divorce like adults.”
Nothing shows more cowardice or contempt for our children’s well-being than when we shelter ourselves from their suffering so we can divorce comfortably.

Divorce is one of the worst forms of child abuse known. Some families are destroyed by violence or abuse in the home, and often families are broken up by adultery.
No family is broken because one spouse fails to meet the needs of the other spouse or fails to make the other spouse happy. That’s a lie from the pit of hell. A family is broken when one spouse is willing to hurt others to get what they want. A man is willing to wreck his family to sleep with a sexy woman. A woman is willing to abuse her children and spouse with public insults and disrespect and threaten divorce to get what she wants. Abuse, manipulation, cruelty, unfaithfulness. The stuff that hell is made of.
When people say children are resilient and all will be well if the parents handle the divorce like adults, the first lie is that the unfaithful parent really cares how the divorce affects the children. Truth is, the unfaithful parent cares more about the appearance of caring and cares more about the fear of losing everything than about how this divorce affects the children. It’s a facade. Posing. Posturing. Play acting. Parents who really care about their children are sensitive to their children’s needs for their parents to stay together in a loving and mutually supportive relationship.
The second lie is that the children will be OK. This is not said to comfort or bless the children. This is said to numb their own feelings of guilt. Truth is divorce hurts children and this lie denies children their right to have their suffering known and seen for what it is.
The third lie is that faithful spouses have no right to oppose divorce or speak unfavorably about it to the children. Not only does every person have a right to do so, but everyone has a duty to do so.
And mark my words, the judge who claims otherwise is a liar and a coward, and an abuser of the faithful and their children. He has violated the religious and free speech rights promised in the Constitution that he vowed to protect. His court is not a court of justice, but a court of injustice and harlotry. He is not a judge, but a pimp. A highly paid pimp. Paid for by our taxes, and then paid for by the extortion extracted from poor and faithful spouses throwing their life savings at the legal community in hopes of protecting their families and their children.
And people wonder how a loving God could send anyone to hell.
This needs to change!!!
If this doesn’t change, then we have no business judging people like Darren Mack for going crazy and shooting a judge.
Divorces are too easy to get these days. Not too easy for the abused spouses, but too easy for the unfaithful ones. The unfaithful spouses know it. The abusive spouses know it. And they use it to their advantage because our laws let them do so.
The reason so many people suffer abuse and adultery is because we enable them. We take away the consequences of their actions and foist them upon their spouses and their children and everybody else.
And, since we live in this nation, we need to decide what we will do about it? Will we be found going with the flow and letting things stay the way they are? Or will we oppose it and stand up for the faithful and their children?

Will Children Be OK if we Handle DivorceLike Grown Ups? originally appeared on www.family-fanatics.com on May 15, 2008.

Freedom From the Threat of Unfaithfulness

Daniel Dick — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:51:36 +0000

Divorce and adultery are among the most severe forms of child and spousal abuse.
Suggested Reading

Breaking Free From the Affair by Dr. Bob Huizenga

The pattern
Adultery often begins with one spouse using the threat of unfaithfulness or divorce to bully their way to instant gratification. This pattern of behavior does not usually begin during marriage or even during courting, but it usually begins in childhood with parents, siblings, and friends.

So many of us “faithful ones” fail to see faithfulness cannot be offered in exchange for something. By the time a person threatens unfaithfulness, all true faithfulness, integrity and true love have been totally obliterated from that person’s heart, mind, and soul. All appearances of honor are merely a conveniently placed mirage, a charade, a facade, a virtual reality.
Usually this starts back in childhood when a child blackmails his or her parents and siblings holding them hostage under constant fear of abuse, rejection, abandonment, or self-destruction. So, those around these spoiled children comply, and the children learn to control their environment through this kind of manipulation and abuse. When others resist and the child escalates the abuse, rather than letting the child experience the consequences, those around him or her weaken and comply, and if someone clamps down, one person comes to the child’s defense and cries, “abuse”.
Some say it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to raise a monster.
So, this child grows up learning that if abuse doesn’t work initially, step it up a notch. Be a bit more extreme. Scream louder. Abuse more painfully. And, if you can get others to comply, rather than giving them relief in return, blame them for delaying your gratification, and if you punish them enough, they will comply more quickly next time around.
Look at the bridezilla’s on TV. I cannot think of a better way to get a fool for a husband than to be a bridezilla. Any man with any wisdom would flee to the hills from a bridezilla. But, a wise man would not give a woman the opportunity to become a bridezilla.
And it seems so many women marry abusive men because they would rather live with an abusive man than be alone. That is a horrible choice to make. Why bring children into this world under the iron fist of a narcissistic, unfaithful abuser?
The fear of breakup or divorce is just one weapon in the arsenal of an abuser. Some abusers abuse with their fists. Others abuse by doing all they can do to make their spouses feel worthless, calling them pieces of dirt, pieces of dung, people of bad morals, idiots, morons, questioning their manhood or femininity, accusing them falsely of lying or breaking promises they never made, threatening divorce, calling them incompetent, ugly, threatening suicide, cursing, swearing, screaming, walking out, having affairs, driving recklessly, getting drunk, taking drugs, gambling away the finances, blackmailing, or otherwise attacking whatever is sensitive and brings the most emotional pain possible.
When the faithful spouse can no longer comply, perhaps a real affair or imminent divorce will step up the abuse another notch. And then by manipulating the faithful spouse and children into feeling guilty because they cannot keep up with the demands, the unfaithful shelter themselves from responsibility.
There is one solution to this, and that is to make a firm decision to stand firm and refuse to comply with such behavior.
Think clearly about this for a moment. What are you afraid of losing? What is holding you hostage, entrapping you, enslaving you to fear? What is it that makes fear your god, your lord, your taskmaster, your supreme being of total unswerving worship? Dump it. Your freedom comes when you face your fear and press into it and let the consequences happen and embrace them, accept them, appreciate them, and have faith that something good somehow will come out of it.
Are you afraid of losing someone’s faithfulness? It’s already long gone. The best you can do is let the consequences for their choices fall back onto them and stop sheltering them so you can get free and perhaps that can help them come to the place where they see how important faithfulness is to them. But, don’t invest your heart into fears and slavery. You are not doing your loved one any favors by enabling him or her to continue to be an abuser.
Use common sense. Don’t cry abuse where there is none. Don’t go looking for it. Look for good in your spouse and your children and give it attention, and ignore bad behavior steadfastly refusing to reward it. If it comes to illegal or dangerous or abusive behavior, do what is wise and best. Separate. Call the authorities and report it. If your spouse or children misbehave and suffer and try to blame you, don’t argue. Let them rattle on, and don’t reward them for it. Ask them if they enjoy the consequences of their behavior maybe. Don’t seek revenge. Don’t try to teach them a lesson. Do what is right and mature and wise. Hold your dignity. Make choices that you feel are honorable and right and wise and identify yourself in your mind as a repentant, forgiven, wise, confident person.
Isn’t this so much better than going into a panic when your spouse threatens an affair or goes into an affair or threatens divorce?
The affairs are about the unfaithful person and never about the faithful spouse or the children. If your spouse decides to be a male or female harlot, that doesn’t mean you’re one. And, it doesn’t mean you made your spouse that way.
Think about it. Think about what happens when you panic and give in. Even if you think you can comply and keep your spouse satisfied by giving in for the rest of your life, you can’t. Sooner or later you will run out of ability. Perhaps you will die from the stress and strain and still find your spouse going into an affair because you cannot continue to meet your spouse’s demands while you are aging, becoming weaker, less attractive, or while you are on your death bed.
And, if you support your spouse’s and children’s narcissism, how will that affect your future generations, their happiness, their success in life, their success in marriage and family life, and such?
We train our children by the way we live. When we let down our boundaries and enable our spouses’ and childrens’ narcissism to thrive, we train them to become accustomed to living this way, and when it’s time for them to marry, they will naturally tend to look for somebody who will help them continue to live in the way to which they had become accustomed.
That is why it is so vital that parents be the adults, that they model the kind of behavior that the children should have. That is why it is so important that parents be faithful, that they love as promised, that they stay true to the wedding vows, that they don’t look for the worst in others but look for the best. That is why strong, healthy boundaries are absolutely necessary to the security and emotional well being and development of wisdom, integrity, courage, and love in children.

Freedom From the Threat of Unfaithfulness originally appeared on www.family-fanatics.com on May 15, 2008.

What are Illegitimate Marriages and Are They Binding?

Daniel Dick — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:24:55 +0000

Mark 6:17-18
17: For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, whom he had married.
18: For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.”
Questions

Did Herod marry Philip’s wife? (See verse 17)
Did John say it was ok for them to stay married since they had already married?
Do you defend second marriages between unfaithful spouses and their affair partners, or do you admonish the unfaithful to divorce the second spouse and return to the first spouse?

Jesus said except for cause of unfaithfulness to divorce one’s spouse and marry another is infidelity.
At the end of the Book of Ezra, men were commanded to divorce themselves from their illegitimate marriages.
In light of this, is it Godly to suggest that people remain in adulterous marriages rather than returning to faithfulness to the spouse of their youth?
Is it right to accept as members in good standing couples in illegitimate marriages?
Is it honest to perform adulterous marriages and call them “holy matrimony”?
Is it right to perform a marriage and call it “Christian” if it is not clearly and openly set apart from illegitimate marriages?
If the immoral and dishonest and cowardly are going to perish into the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8), is it loving to let the unfaithful perish thinking they’re OK and that they have met the “repentance” requirements while they continue to live out thier lives in sin?
If the intention is to warmly welcome sinners in and not chase them away with intolerance, is it really loving to be silent and let their sin stand as a strongly defended, excused, justified, and supported example for others in the church to follow knowing it may shut the doors of heaven on them?

What are Illegitimate Marriages and Are They Binding? originally appeared on www.family-fanatics.com on May 13, 2008.

Pride, Divorce, and Welfare

Daniel Dick — Sun, 11 May 2008 03:30:50 +0000

With the advent of unilateral no fault divorce, faithful spouses suffered the worst and most unjust kinds of torment possible this side of hell. Unfaithful spouses would gang up with their lovers to plot a strategy for divorce that would rob the faithful spouse blind while they endeavored to save the marriage rather than protect themselves from the unjust fallout of divorce.
Courts made money off the destruction of families–especially those with young children, and the unfaithful found that by getting to the court first, they could easily gain the upper-hand in the divorce. Furthermore, the unfaithful spouse has usually gone through the transition of the heart to another lover and feels no rejection or loss but rather feels fully supported while the faithful spouse is often so stressed and torn that they are unable to fight back.
Often faithful spouses would end up kicked out of their homes, robbed of their children and devastated financially, and then forced to pay spousal and child support on top of this. But so much of the time it is because they have no strength to fight or money to give a lawyer to fight for them, and even if they do, the additional stress for the faithful spouse can be life threatening. So, in hopes of getting the stress to end, the faithful spouse begins to make concessions hoping that it will appease the unfaithful and unreasonable and selfish spouse so that the battle will finally end and everyone can heal and rebuild.
But, it’s not over. The unfaithful spouse wants more and more and more. The faithful spouse may be so stressed that they look at their work and just cannot think. They cannot get things done around the house or anywhere. They suffer stress related memory loss and a breakdown and cannot work, so they lose their job.
Then what happens? The unfaithful spouse tries to convince the court that the faithful spouse quit his or her job just to get rid of support payments to get revenge for the divorce. Does the unfaithful spouse have to prove anything? No, not at all. The burden of proof falls upon the faithful spouse to prove himself or herself unable to work. So, a doctor’s note on letterhead is brought to court along with medical documents showing treatment for depression. The doctor’s not claims the faithful spouse has been unable to work due to stress related to the divorce. But, that’s not good enough. One would think that stress related problems like this would be so common that any judge should not require proof greater than this or even this much, especially for the spouse who was faithful.
A Solution
The stress of a divorce and child custody battles has brought many people to the grave by suicide, by heart attack, by stroke, and by other health problems. Stress related depression and memory loss is very common as is shutting down. And, often just stopping work to rest up and heal is not enough. Courts often require more substantial evidence.
But, in my case, I found myself being hindered by pride from going onto disability or social security or welfare, so I tried taking a leave of absence and returning, and the problem was still with me. I lived off my 401K plan until it was exhausted as I travelled back and forth for court hearings and for shared custody and just to cover the cost of living not to mention extremely exorbitant attorney costs.
After awhile my savings were exhausted and I still owed taxes on it. Had I known better, I should have gone onto disability insurance. After all I paid into it for over two decades. But, by the time I realized it was the thing to do and was strong enough to sign up for it, I was still not strong enough to fight for it, so the disability from stress related depression was the very disability that created the need but it was also the very handicap that would prevent me from getting the needs met from the very system I paid into.
And, since I did not have disability insurance, my living came out of my retirement, so I was on the hook for taxes and early withdrawal penalties. Is that fair? No. For one thing, this is using a disability to put disability benefits out of reach. Was I entitled to unemployment insurance? Probably not because I was not fired or let go. How about social security? It takes six months for them to get started.
Conquering Pride
My parents and attorney tried hard to convince me to put aside pride and apply for welfare, but I would not do it. Then finally, my attorney ripped into me, not to be mean but to bring home to my mind the reasons it was foolish and irresponsible for me to be letting pride get in the way of getting the help I needed to heal. I had been questioning her begging her to say somehow that it was ok for me to go back to some kind of work even if it were unstressful work.
Here’s the catch. Truth is, stress has taken its toll on me. I cannot work under stress the way I used to. My mind shuts down and I cannot go further. So, when I try, it works for awhile, then my ex-wife takes me back to court, and then suddenly I am staring at my computer screen or anything else I’m supposed to do and my brain shuts down.
I force myself to fight this shutdown and work anyway, but eventually I come to the place where I cannot force myself any more.
So, what are the implications? The implications to the court, if I work, are that I can work and that I should have been working for a long time. So, they would impute either the salary I was making or perhaps even the higher salary I was able to make before this stress of divorce took its toll on me. Then interest would be added to that. Then support costs would be calculated on my current salary and added to it and the whole amount would continue to accumulate interest leaving me in a very difficult debt to pay off.

Now, suppose in that situation the inevitable happens and I shut down losing my job. I’m still required to pay unless i can get back into court to revise the support payments. Then it takes time to get that changed, and meanwhile I’m losing more money I don’t have to a spouse who was unfaithful and unfair.
When people get into this state, they often lose hope and take a leap off the nearest bridge or take drugs or jump in front of a train. Or they become homeless and wander the streets without hope until they die. After all, if they recover, they’ll still be broke forever. Hope is lost.
But, if victims of adultery and divorce would set aside pride and allow disability insurance, social security, and welfare to help while they go to the county for mental health care, counseling, and perhaps an anti-depressant or whatever medication is appropriate, the following benefits can be realized:

The horrible stress of an unfair burden of support can be eliminated or reduced. This can help heal.
You can get medical help and time to de-stress and heal.
You can protect yourself from losing your entire retirement along with early withdrawal penalties and taxes.
You can heal and help your family better during this time.
You take away your spouse’s incentive to hurt you in court and slander you to take away your kids and use them for obtaining support payments.
You can heal faster and become productive again faster.
You can have greater success avoiding suicide, heart attack and stroke.
And this helps communicate back to every governmental agency the need to take care of this problem of divorce and begin to save marriages.

By doing this, you can help protect your family from loss and your children from suffering, and it can help hold the government accountable and encourage it to hold the unfaithful accountable for their actions.

Pride, Divorce, and Welfare originally appeared on www.family-fanatics.com on May 11, 2008.

How to Pray for Lost Loved Ones

Daniel Dick — Sat, 10 May 2008 22:03:17 +0000

How to Pray for Lost Loved Ones
by Dutch Sheets
This book is small but awesome and to the point if you have lost loved ones. And, if someone in your life is unfaithful in marriage, this book can help learn what it takes to become effective in prayer.

How to Pray for Lost Loved Ones originally appeared on www.family-fanatics.com on May 10, 2008.

Save My Marriage Today

Daniel Dick — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 04:36:14 +0000

Recommended E-Book
Save My Marriage Today
By: Amy Waterman, M. A.
I have not read this e-book personally, but it has obtained very high reviews Sometimes a little help from a book like this can help bring life back to a marriage quickly.

Save My Marriage Today originally appeared on www.family-fanatics.com on January 12, 2007.

Saving Your Marriage With Love, Trust, and Commitment

Daniel Dick — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 04:35:05 +0000

Recommended E-Book
Saving Your Marriage With Love, Trust, and Commitment
How to Save Your Marriage or Relationship
Even if You Have Lost All Hope

Saving Your Marriage With Love, Trust, and Commitment originally appeared on www.family-fanatics.com on January 12, 2007.