Presenting the causal model in explaining the relationship between personality features with marital satisfaction based on the mediating role of forgiveness

Relationships between couples play a key role in various aspects of their lives, affect their lifestyle and are the basis of marital satisfaction of couples. The aim of this study was to explain the relationship between personality features with marital satisfaction based on the mediating role of forgiveness.

The research method was descriptive-correlational and the statistical population included all married teachers working in the first and second secondary schools of Tehran's 6th educational district, with a total of 4080 people, among whom using random sampling 28 schools and finally among them, 304 were selected as volunteer teachers according to Klein's (2016) suggestion. To collect research data NEO-Five Factor Inventory of Costa and McCrae (1989); Family Forgiveness Scale by Pollard, Anderson, Anderson & Jennings (1998) and ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Scale by Olson, Fournier & Druckman 1983 were used. After deleting 10 distortion questionnaires and 3 outliers, for data analysis, structural equation modeling was used.

The results of the present study showed that the indirect path coefficient of conscientiousness (p<0.01, β=0.065) and agreement (p=0.01, β=0.184) personality characters with marital satisfaction were positive and the indirect path coefficient between neuroticism personality character and marital satisfaction (p<0.01, β=-0.0171) was negative and significant at the level of 0.01.

By focusing on increasing forgiveness between couples in couple therapy, it is possible to increase the marital satisfaction of incompatible and conflicting couples and reduce the manifestations of negative personality and the consequences of marital dissatisfaction such as emotional divorce and real divorce, thus achieving healthy families.