Effects of Cognitive-Behavioral Couple Therapy on Resilience and Quality of Life in Women Affected by Infidelity

Marital infidelity may severely deteriorate couples' relationships. Researchers and family therapists have offered several definitions of marital infidelity. Generally, it is a violation of a couple’s stated contract regarding emotional and/or sexual behaviors. Marital infidelity potentially disrupts couples' relationships and causes numerous disorders and psychological problems among individuals. Accordingly, performing appropriate interventions to reduce its negative effects seems critical. Cognitive–Behavioral Couple Therapy (CBCT) is an intervention with effective outcomes for various marital problems. This approach, in addition to mental cognitive reconstruction, uses different behavioral interventions to strengthen couples' coping skills. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the effects of CBCT on resilience and quality of life in women affected by marital infidelity.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population of the study included all women affected by marital infidelity in the western region of Tehran City, Iran who were referred to psychological clinics (4 counseling centers), in 2019. Using the purposive sampling method, 30 eligible volunteers were selected and randomly assigned to the experimental (n=15) and control (n=15) groups. The inclusion criteria of this study included having the experience of infidelity; a minimum level of education (middle–school degree); having lived together for at least one year; presenting voluntary consent to participate in the research; the ability to attend all research meetings, and no diagnosable physical and mental illnesses. All study subjects completed the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003) and the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHOQOL–BREF) (1996) before and after the training. The experimental group was provided with twelve 90–minute weekly CBCT sessions in groups according to the protocol of Khanjani Veshki et al. (2017); however, the control group received no intervention. The obtained data were analyzed using Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) in SPSS.

The present research results suggested that CBCT improved resilience (p<0.001) and quality of life (p<0.001) in the experimental group.

According to the study findings, CBCT was effective on resilience and quality of life in the explored infidelity–affected women.