Alyssa suffered through 11 years of her husband's addiction, and she feared the worst.

After we had called focus on the family, that was really the journey where we started to see God moving and working. I know that focus on

the family was just an answered prayer. I'm Jim Daly. This season help us

give families hope and when you give today your donation will be doubled.

Donate at focus on the family.com slash gift.

Thank you for downloading the Focus on the family marriage podcast. You can find more

relationship insights at focus on the family dot com slash marriage podcast.

You know just hearing the word divorce kind of conjures up some feeling of pain because we've all seen it.

We've all seen the effects of divorce and today we're going to be talking about how you can avoid

divorce. I'm John Fuller along with Greg and Erran Smalley and today we're

returning to a conversation that Jim Daly had with counselor Dr. David Clark and they talked about how to

deal with an indifferent spouse in a God honoring way. They touched on

Matthew Chapter 18 and also had previously addressed stages of

confrontation and shunning. That next step after that shunning phase would be a separation. I've had marriage experts sit here, John, and say we need actually a bit more separation in marriage to make people appreciate what they have. I don't know that that is the

right thing but talk about the effect and the good outcome of separation.

Well this is the last stage of Matthew 18. You don't want to go there

but God says now this is next if we have someone who doesn't respond to

shunning, okay now you're going to circle the wagons, you're going to get

financially ready, you're going to make your cure your kids

already. You got your support team in operation, got your church on board, and now you're

going to, you may have to get a job, get retrained, you're going to have to see an attorney all these things are

important now for the separation it's a big deal but you know what that's to

...