Nearly a third of U.S. adults have now either attended couples therapy or seriously considered it, and the reasons they’re going are shifting from last-resort crisis management toward proactive relationship upkeep, according to a new survey from the therapy platform Grow Therapy.
The 2026 Couples Therapy Survey, fielded by YouGov among 2,514 U.S. adults between December 18 and 22, 2025, found that 15% of adults have attended couples therapy and another 16% have considered it without following through. Sixty-six percent said they’d never attended and never thought about it.
Among people who did go, the payoff was real: 71% reported a noticeable improvement in their relationship afterward, with 34% pointing specifically to better communication, 30% to a stronger overall relationship, and 26% to a deeper emotional connection.
What’s changing is who shows up and why. Older generations skew toward therapy as damage control — 47% of Baby Boomers who’d attended said they used it as a last attempt to prevent a separation, and divorced adults overall were more likely to have attended (26%) than married adults (20%). Younger daters are approaching it differently. Among Gen Z respondents, 35% said they sought therapy proactively to strengthen a relationship that wasn’t in crisis, and 38% said a friend’s recommendation influenced the decision — a sign couples therapy has shed some of its old stigma as something couples only do once a relationship is failing.
Gender also shapes who pushes for it. Women were far more likely than men to say they’d sought therapy proactively — 28% of women who’d attended, compared with 18% of men — and women were also more likely to say a partner’s disinterest kept them from going at all, 15% versus 8% of men.
Parents were another group driving demand: 22% of adults with children under 18 had attended couples therapy, compared with just 9% of adults without kids, pointing to the particular strain that comes with co-parenting.
When choosing a therapist, respondents cared most about neutrality — 54% said it mattered that the therapist “doesn’t take sides” — followed closely by affordability and insurance coverage (52%) and expertise in communication and conflict resolution (51%). Cultural fit mattered more to some groups: 27% of Black respondents said sharing a cultural background with their therapist was a priority.
The biggest reason people who’d never attended gave for staying away wasn’t cost or stigma — it was simply not feeling they’d needed it yet, cited by 54% of that group. Only 11% pointed to cost or insurance concerns, and another 11% said a partner wasn’t interested. As more couples start treating therapy as maintenance rather than emergency repair, that calculus looks likely to keep shifting.
