Phenomenological explanation of women's lived experience of marital happiness
Subject Areas : Psychology of couples
mohsen niazi
1
,
Seyed Hossein Siyadatiyan
2
*
,
ZAHRA NIKKHAH
3
1 - Department of Social Sciences, Kashan University
2 - Lecturer in the Psychology Department of Kashan University
3 - Kashan University
Keywords: Phenomenology, Lived Experience, Marital happiness, Women,
Abstract :
© 2020 The Author(s). This work is published by family and health as an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted, provided the original work is properly cited.
This research was done with the aim of phenomenologically explaining women's lived experience of marital happiness. In this research, the qualitative method of descriptive phenomenology was used. The participants of the research were 17 married women with an age range of 23 to 39 years who had a high marital happiness score from the marital happiness questionnaire (Azrin, 1973). The participants were selected by purposive sampling method. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analyzed with Colaizzi's 7-step method. The results indicated the extraction of 3 main themes and 17 sub-themes. The main themes are (1) family factors (1- family satisfaction, 2- economic equality, 3- cultural/religious commonalities, 4- family support, 5- non-interference); (2) interpersonal skills (1- interest, 2- compatibility / understanding / mutual understanding, 3- respect, 4- verbal communication, 5- cooperation at home, 6- past, 7- expression of affection, 8- honesty and trust), (3) background factors (1) - being the same age / small age difference, 2- education, 3- existence of children, 4- economic well-being) which were examined in detail in the research. According to the results, it was determined that various factors play a role in creating marital happiness, and the results of this research can be used to improve the quality of relationships between couples. Also, psychologists and family counselors can use the findings of this research to reduce problems between couples.
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