How to Win a Family Fight

It’s Time to Fight Right

If you’re involved with one or more people in a continuing relationship, you can bank on one thing for sure: there will be conflict. Are you married? You will disagree. Are you single and living with parents or roommates? You will have different opinions. Do you work with clients or co-workers? You will face friction. Whenever there is conflict, you will either hurt (even destroy!) one another, or you will build up each other and benefit from the experience. It all depends on whether you fight wrong or fight right. Let Will Cunningham, in his refreshingly creative fashion, show you how to turn any disagreement into a winning situation—every time.

How Family Fights Resemble Athletic Events:

Most take place on weekends (typically Sundays)

Two or more opponents gather in one place

Participants are in it to win

Friction-free households do not exist. While you can’t avoid a family feud, you can make disagreements constructive, rather than destructive!

Enter: a referee with a whistle. An honest scoreboard. The home court advantage. Will Cunningham’s How to Win a Family Fight reveals less about how to crush your opponent, and more about how to strategize a win. Discover the who, what, where, when, why, and—most important—the how of constructive confrontation. You’ll swing open the door to greater harmony, honest communication, creative solutions, and deeper respect for one another.

The key difference between a family fight and your favorite sport: If you set out to win, you’ll lose in the long run. So set out to win…er, lose…and let this book help!





We don’t choose in-laws; we inherit them in the same way we inherit the smell of a car we buy.



Story Behind the Book

“This book sprang from a premarital class that Cindy and I taught in the mideighties. We were honestly just trying to convey information without boring our students to sleep! The class was a tremendous success. When Gary Smalley caught wind of it and encouraged me to shape my thoughts into a book, I was somewhat skeptical. Having hardly recovered from all the books I had to read in seminary, I didn’t want to write one, much less wish the burden of reading on any other poor soul. But when Don Jacobson convinced me that I could offer readers a new perspective on their patterns of family conflict, we published the first edition of this book, and I am still teaching its content. Now this revision specifically meets today’s audience.”

—Will Cunningham

Will Cunningham is the director of K-Kaua‘i, the newest member of camps in the Kanakuk Kamp family. Having directed K-Kountry for eight years and counseled professionally since the mid-1980s, Will is the author of four books, including It Happened at the Sunset Grille (Nelson, 1993), Letters from the Other Side (Nelson, 1995), and Sins of the Fathers (Nelson, 1997). Will and his wife, Cindy, live in Branson, Missouri, with their two teens, Wes and Peter. He enjoys guitar, tennis, weightlifting, fishing, and hanging out with his family.