Efficacy of Gottman’s marital Counseling on marital satisfaction and marital adjustment of married women willing to get divorced

Abstract

Citation: Padash Z, Yousefi Z, Abedi M.R, Torkan H. Efficacy of Gottman's marital Counseling on marital satisfaction and marital adjustment of married women willing to get divorced. Background: Divorce tendency resulting from marital conflicts, which lead to less marital satisfaction and marital adjustment can be decreased by therapy approaches including Gottman's couple therapy. Aims: The present study aims at investigating the effectiveness of Gottman's couple therapy on marital satisfaction and marital adjustment in married women seeking divorce. Methods: Quasi-experimental design involving pre-test, post-test, and a control group was used to addres the purpose of the present study. All the women referring to three counselling centers in Isfahan in 2019 comprised the research population out of which 30 married women seeking divorce were selected as the research sample through convenievnce sampling method and were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. Data were collected using couple satisfaction index (Funk & Rogge, 2007) and dyadic adjustment scale (Spanier, 1976). The experimental group women were trained for 10 ninety-minute sessions. Both groups responded to the questionaries at pretest-posttest stages. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (ANCOVA) were used to analyze data. Results: It was revealed that Gottman's couple therapy would increase couples' satisfaction and improve marital adjustment and, in turn, the subscales of marital adjustment, i.e., satisfaction, attachment, agreement, and affection in women seeking divorce (P <0.001). Conclusion: Gottman's couple therapy along with the seven research-based principles for a successful marriage proved to be an effective and efficient method to increase marital satisfaction and marital adjustment and could be used by therapists in family interventions to improve marital relationships.