An Investigation of the Structural Changes of the Family Institution through Examining Women’s Extramarital Affairs with GT Approach: A Case Study on the Women of Qazvin City

The aim of the present study is to identify the reasons and motivations of women in the conceptual model of extramarital relationship and the causes of the collapse of the family structure.

To this end, with the present research has applied a qualitative approach and grand theory. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 17 married women in Qazvin City who had the experience of an extramarital relationship. The interviewees were selected through targeted snowball sampling method.

Based on the findings, the causal conditions of this study were identified as sexual diversity, lack of sexual skills and knowledge, justification of extramarital relationship and absence of spouse. The central phenomenon was the metamorphosis of intimacy or mutual love emerging in the context of alternatives for the growth of social relations and change of social values, increase of leisure time and facilitation of new technologies.

Individualism, gender bias, spouse indifference, female inferiority in earning as intervening conditions, and finally the fact that that women, in these actions and reactions, engage in an extramarital affair with a desire for consumerism, body management, and hesitation in the continuation of married life and justifying this kind of relationship, caused consequences such as increased hedonism and the normalization of extramarital affairs.