Fighting for Love

“What could be more rewarding than turning conflict into genuine intimacy? In this clear, practical, and life-changing book, Mari Frank and Leonard Szymczak combine their experience as mediator and psychotherapist to show couples how to stop destructive patterns, negotiate win/win solutions, and rediscover love and intimacy. Highly recommended!”

– William Ury, co-author of Getting to Yes and author of Getting to Yes with Yourself

“Couples that continually fight over who’s right or who’s to blame are simply digging their own deep chasm of separation. Let Mari and Leonard support you in building an indestructible bridge of love and connection. If you’re interested in authentic intimacy, then read this book, or even better, read it together!”

– Thomas Crum, author of The Magic of Conflict, Journey to Center, and Three Deep Breaths

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Do you want to feel like lovers again and resolve conflict easily?

If you want to create long lasting loving relationships, you need creative concrete tools to help you bond emotionally, intimately, and deeply with your partner. The techniques and skills in Fighting for Love: Turn Conflict into Intimacy will help you re-ignite your passion for each other and fall in love again… In the process, you will come to believe, as the authors do, that conflict is a gift in disguise, and love is the only thing worth fighting for!

Mari Frank, an attorney mediator, and Leonard Szymczak, a psychotherapist, combine their seventy years of professional experience to help couples fight for love. Mari uses collaborative mediation strategies to show couples how to transform hostile behavior and peacefully speak with each other to resolve conflict from the outside in. Leonard uses engaging therapeutic tools to alter thoughts and beliefs to help clients heal conflict from the inside out to connect more authentically. Together they enlighten and entertain readers with stories, insights, strategies, and exercises to empower couples to successfully fight for love, heal wounds, reignite relationships, and embrace greater intimacy.

Mari J. Frank is an attorney, author, speaker, and radio show host of Fighting for Love on KUCI. She helps clients resolve conflicts and transform adversity into collaboration. The Author of Negotiation Breakthroughs’, Stepping Stones to Success, and several other books, she is a professor of negotiations and conflict management.

Leonard Szymczak is an author, speaker, psychotherapist, and life coach who has helped couples resolve conflict both in Australia and America. He is the author of The Roadmap Home: Your GPS to Inner Peace and the light-hearted novels Cuckoo Forevermore and Kookaburra’s Last Laugh. He writes, coaches’ clients, and conduct seminars.

What People Are Saying

Praise for Fighting for Love: Turn Conflict into Intimacy—A Couple’s Guide
“Mari Frank and Leonard Szymczak offer a brilliant book for transforming relationships. Mari’s expertise as a mediationattorney and Leonard’s skill as a psychotherapist help shine the light on forgiveness, healing, and intimacy.”

—Marci Shimoff, #1New York Times bestselling author of Happy for No Reason, Love for No Reason, and Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul
“The secret to relationship success is not how deeply you care for a person, but how compassionately you respond to the bumps in the road: the conflicts, disagreements, and disappointments. This excellent book, written by two seasoned experts, shows you how to turn fragile love into lasting love, and how to turn any fight into a win-win story for everyone.”

—Mark Waldman, co-author of Words Can Change Your Brain and How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain
“Countless couples are miserable or break up for two reasons: They gave up on love and increasing conflict drove them apart. Fighting for Love is a book that eloquently, effectively, and sometimes humorously solves this. If you long for intimacy but live in conflict, this book is just what you need.”

— Dr. Lee Jampolsky, psychologist and best selling author of
“Fighting for Love is a roadmap to understanding what it truly means to connect with another on an intimate level of love and harmony. Unmet expectations set the stage for bitterness and conflict in relationships. The authors have presented a “love guide” to teach how acceptance of self opens the door to a future of long-lasting love. Let this book be your guide to the deep intimacy you so desire.”

— Barbara Miller, bestselling author of You Lost Your Marriage Not Your Life
“The ultimate expression of love is forgiveness. I have helped many couples create a more intimate relationship, stronger than the one that brought them almost to a divorce, by practicing both forgiveness of the other and forgiveness of self. This book helps couples forgive and is a must read for every relationship with love challenges.”

— Azim N. Khamisa, author of From Murder to Forgiveness
“Mari and Leonard offer many useful tools to navigate the complexity of transforming conflict into an ongoing, loving relationship. They show it is possible to recognize and heal our early wounds and to give and receive the love we truly desire.”

— Joan Gattuso, bestselling author of A Course in Love
“As you read Fighting for Love, you will easily feel the passion and love that went into writing this book. It’s a thorough, easy to understand book on how to navigate through, and even benefit from, the inevitable relationship conflicts we all go through. The exercises throughout the book will help you apply the wise and clearly written words. I highly recommend this book!”

— Todd Creager, author of The Long Hot Marriage
o “Fighting for Love is, above all, a useful book, as the authors combine the twin insights and methodologies of mediation and psychology. They reveal practical bridges that can easily be crossed by couples seeking to transform their conflicts into insights, intimacy, and improved relationships. They list hundreds of ways couples can end destructive patterns and constructively turn their conflicts into positive directions.”

— Kenneth Cloke, author of The Dance of Opposites