Research documents that men "drag their feet" when it comes to seeking couple therapy. Masculine gender role socialization is one explanation for men's reluctance to seek professional help for relationship problems. This study sought to extend the relationship help-seeking literature by applying the theory of planned behavior (Azjen, 2012) within a SEM alternative model testing framework to examine how specific aspects of traditional masculinity are linked with men's intention to seek couple therapy in a community-dwelling adult sample (N ϭ 292). Men reporting stronger endorsement of self-reliance and emotional control norms reported more negative attitudes and subjective norms around couple therapy. Men perceiving greater concrete barriers to seeking couple therapy also reported less perceived behavioral control of seeking help. In addition, past experience with couple therapy was linked with more positive attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. In turn, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control all accounted for variance in intention to seek couple therapy. Bootstrap analysis of indirect effects showed that attitudes and perceived behavioral control, but not subjective norms, acted as mediators between distal variables (e.g., masculine norms) and the intention to seek couple therapy.

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Research suggests men are reluctant to seek couple therapy. Parnell and Hammer (2018) established the utility of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) in explaining men’s relationship help seeking. The present study addressed gaps in their investigation by using a sample of men (N = 206) who reported being unhappy with their romantic relationship; incorporating the key theoretical constructs of relationship satisfaction, self-stigma of seeking help, and perceived need; parsing the unique relationship of conformity to the masculine norms of self-reliance and restrictive emotionality with help-seeking perceptions; and determining whether personality (i.e., neuroticism) obviated the importance of accounting for conformity to masculine norms when seeking to understand couple help seeking. To address these important research gaps, an structural equation modeling (SEM) alternative model testing framework was used and bootstrap analyses were conducted to test for indirect effects. The results evidenced several important findings: (1) conformity to masculine norms accounted for unique variance in help-seeking perceptions beyond neuroticism, (2) self-reliance and restrictive emotionality evidenced differential direct and indirect effects on help-seeking outcomes, (3) perceived need and self-stigma accounted for the most variance in the SEM model, and (4) relationship satisfaction was not associated with attitudes but low relationship satisfaction was associated with more perceived social pressure (i.e., subjective norms) to engage in couple therapy. Our results provided further support for the use of TPB in understanding men’s relationship help seeking and highlighted several implications for how to engage men in couple therapy.

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