A study of 47 men found three ways they seek support after a break-up. A coach says the problem is not effort, it is the absence of feedback
BOULDER , CO, UNITED STATES, October 12, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The assumption that men do not seek help after a relationship ends turns out to be wrong. What the research found instead is that most of the help they find has no other person in it.
A study published in Qualitative Health Research, based on 47 in-depth interviews with men about their mental health help-seeking after an intimate partner relationship break-up, identified three patterns.
The first was solitary work and drawing on existing connections. Men used relationship-focused self-help books and online resources, and some confided in friends or family.
The second was reaching outward to build new connections, including peer-based men’s groups and social or educational activities.
The third was engaging professional mental health care, among men who were first-time, returning and continuing users.
The researchers concluded that the findings challenge longstanding commentaries that men actively avoid mental health promotion, by showing the wide range of resources men actually use.
Curtis Kastner, co-founder of RB4M, which works exclusively with men whose marriages are in trouble, said that conclusion matches what he sees and is rarely what people expect.
“Everybody assumes he is doing nothing. He is doing an enormous amount,” Kastner said. “He reads. He listens to things in the car. He watches videos at one in the morning. What he does not have is a single person who can tell him whether any of it is working.”
Why the network goes with the marriage
Kastner said the isolation is often structural rather than chosen.
“Most of the friendships were hers, or they were couples, and couples pick a side,” he said. “His own friends do not know what to say, so they say nothing and buy him a drink. That is not unkindness. Nobody taught them what to do either.”
He said the effect is that a man ends up studying his own marriage with no second opinion available.
“You cannot correct a pattern you cannot see, and you cannot see it from inside,” Kastner said. “That is not a character flaw. It is a structural problem with doing this alone.”
The year nobody sees
Kastner said the men who reach RB4M have usually been working on it far longer than anyone around them realizes.
“By the time a man asks for help, this has been going on for about a year,” he said. “He has been trying the whole time. He has just been trying without feedback.”
Why the men’s group matters more than it looks
Kastner said the study’s second pattern, men reaching out to build new connections, is the one he considers most underrated.
“The thing that changes a man is being in a room with other men in the same position who are further along,” he said. “Not because they give better advice. Because he finds out he is not uniquely broken.”
Linda Kastner works alongside her husband at RB4M and said her role begins once a man has some understanding of the patterns and needs help recognizing them as they happen.
“A man will tell me about an exchange he had with his wife, and he cannot tell me why it went well or why it went badly. He only knows how it ended,” she said. “I take it apart with him. Here is what she was likely experiencing at this point. Here is what shifted when you said that.”
She said that kind of review is almost impossible to do alone.
“He was inside it. He cannot see it from her side while it is happening, and afterwards he only remembers how it felt,” Linda Kastner said. “Somebody has to sit with him and replay it.”
Where coaching ends
Curtis Kastner said the third pattern in the study, professional mental health care, is not in competition with what RB4M does.
“We are coaches. We are not therapists and we do not pretend otherwise,” he said. “If a man is dealing with depression, addiction, or anything clinical, that needs a licensed professional, and plenty of the men we work with are doing both.”
He said the more common problem is doing neither.
“The men we worry about are not the ones in therapy,” Kastner said. “They are the ones who have told nobody at all.”
About RB4M
RB4M works with men in distressed marriages and long-term relationships across the United States and internationally. Founded by Curtis and Linda Kastner, the practice is built on the 12 Blind Spots framework, developed from seven years of research into why women leave men they love. More at rb4m.com.
Media Contact
Linda Kastner
Linda Kastner
RB4M Relationship Bootcamp For Men
media@rb4m.com
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