A Theoretical Explanation of Marital Conflicts by Paradigmatic Approach

Due to the economic, social and cultural changes in recent decades and consequently alterations in the form and duties of families and expectations of individuals from marriage, the institution of the family and marriage are enormously involved with different challenges and conflicts in comparison to past years. Fragile marital relationships, conflicts and divorce are results of such situations in Iran. Accordingly, the present study, which is designed through meta-analysis and deduction based on the concept analysis and reconceptualization of recent studies, has committed to manifest a proper different paradigm to explain marital conflicts. This paradigm is relying on various theoretical approaches, particularly the theory of symbolic interactionism as the main explanatory mean, and also applying the concept of “Marital Paradigm” as the missing information in previous studies of this field. It explains the marital conflicts between couples as paradigmatic conflicts; and its main idea is that marital conflict is not the result of one or more fixed and specified factors, but it is the production of encountering the opposing (or different) paradigms.