The Exceptional Seven Percent is not about fixing your marriage.
It is for those who already have good marriages to make them exceptional. Because it only marginally addresses bad behaviors, it is a totally positive vision of marriage. The reason I mention it to Hold is that he (and his wife) feel so low, that his goal is to just remove some of the pain. He doesn't even believe he can get back to zero.

Everyone needs a positive vision, a higher goal than survival.

I was discussing this with Mark1952 last year. Many of the people here are under the water. They are dying to just get to the surface to for a breath of fresh air. But once you save yourself from drowning, and look up there is a whole other world out there. You don't have to just kept treading water. There is land to walk on, mountains to climb, maybe even fly up to the clouds, like all these other creatures are doing.

Marriage Builders is tough, not because it is negative, but because it deals with eradicating the negative and developing positive behaviors... in yourself first. It holds up a mirror to you. It's like a physical fitness program that makes you stop drinking, smoking, and eating junk food, with regular exercise that makes you shed fat and tone up. We know how scary that is to people who are badly out of shape. The reason most of them can't even start such a fitness turnaround is that they cannot envision themselves as lean, healthy and full of energy. All they can see is the hard work.