Comparing the effectiveness of emotion-focused couple therapy and schema model couple therapy on marital burnout in women affected by their husband's infidelity

Subject Areas : Psychology

zohreh tayebi ¹ , mohsen jadidi ² , parvaneh qodsi ³

1 -
2 - Department of Psychology, Shahr-e-Quds Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
3 - Assistant Professor, Department of General Psychology, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Received: 2024-11-26 Accepted : 2025-01-18 Published : 2024-12-28

Keywords: Marital burnout, emotion-focused couples therapy, schema model couples therapy, women affected by their spouse's infidelity.,

Abstract :

The present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of emotion-focused couple therapy and schema-based couple therapy on marital burnout in women affected by their spouse's infidelity. The present study was a quasi-experimental study in which a pre-test-post-test design was used with a control group with baseline measurements after the intervention and 3-month follow-up. A total of 105 women affected by their spouse's infidelity who referred to counseling centers and psychological service clinics of the Welfare Department of District 1 of Tehran between May and September 1402, considering the entry criteria, 45 of those who were willing to participate in the study were selected and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. All participants completed and measured the marital burnout questionnaire in three stages. The aforementioned emotion-focused couple therapy sessions (8 90-minute sessions) were conducted in a group setting. The hypotheses regarding the effectiveness of the research intervention were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance and Bonferroni post hoc test. The results of the present study showed that there was a significant difference between the two experimental groups in marital burnout and that emotion-focused couple therapy had better effectiveness (p<0.001). The results of this study showed that emotion-focused couple therapy can be used as a psychological intervention to improve marital burnout in women affected by their husband's infidelity.

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