The Role of Forgiveness and Spiritualism in Predicting Couples' Happiness

 Happiness is one of the concepts of positivist psychology that is important today in married life as well as mental health. Forming and maintaining a family and preventing it from collapsing requires family members to have certain skills and abilities. Accordingly, the present study was conducted with the aim of explaining the role of forgiveness and spirituality in couples' happiness.

 This is a descriptive-correlational study. The sample population of the study included all the couples living in Kermanshah during 2019, out of whom 300 were selected by available sampling method. The instruments used in the present study included the Oxford Happiness Scale (Hills & Argyle), the Family Sensitivity Measurement Scale (Pollard etal.), and the Spirituality Scale (Shahidi and Farajnia). Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, correlation matrix, and step-by-step regression. In this study, all ethical considerations have been observed and no conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

 The results showed that there is a significant relationship between forgiveness (r=0.519; P<0.05) and spirituality (r=0.688; P<0.05) and couple happiness. On the other hand, among the dimensions of forgiveness, the sub-scales of feelings of recovery and light-heartedness, recognition/acknowledgment and realistic understanding could more strongly predict the couple's happiness. Also, among the subscales of spiritualityspiritual ability and spiritual attitude had a stronger predictive power for the happiness of couples, respectively (P<0.05).

 According to the results, it can be stated that forgiveness and spirituality can play an effective role in promoting the happiness of couples, and there is a need to pay more attention to these structures in counseling centers.